I have been using this for 2 weeks now. By miles and far, this is the best "netbook" i have tried so far.
No problems running 1080p content (ripped BD) out of the hdmi, cpu activity stays at 25% or so.
For normal 1080p content, or mkv's as we know them, cpu activity never goes above 65%. For the heck of it, i connected 2X24" 1080p screens, one via HDMI and the other via VGA, crammed all usb ports with what i could find, had activity both on wireless, BT and Ethernet. It still performs really really well. This thing with a 160GB Intel gen 2 SSD would rock.
Original installation is full of bloatware though, as usual with Acer home pc's. It actually takes longer time to uninstall everything you dont want/need than wipe the harddrive and install Win 7 via usb key.
This is really something official reviewers have to keep an eye on. if not, we consumers will have to put up with this forever. Original Install had 68 processes running after boot and 1.7gb ram used. Clean drive and new install had 35 processes and .9gb ram im use.
My personal "dreambook" would have to be this with a slightly better cpu, built in 3G, Intel gen 2 SSD and a magnesium body with slightly bigger buttons below the touchpad. i'd easily fork out $1200 for that. That would also effectively kill the astronomical prices HP, Dell and Lenovo charges for their 12" line of semi-professional Notebooks.
The $399 model is missing from this lineup, how could they overlook the model that is making the biggest splash right now?
A 3 lb, 11 inch "netbook" with a core 2 duo!
(yeah its a SU2300 "celeron" but intel is playing games with names, this is no atom-esque slouch)
It pretty much puts a hard ceiling on realistic prices and configurations of atom netbooks, especially some of the overpriced ION types considering this has enough cpu guts to play a fair amount of hd video without 'assistance'.
Also, gateway (made by acer) has variants that may be slightly more appealing to some people, its hardware and price configurations are basically the same.
The other "netbook" I am looking forward to seeing soon is the 12" MSI coming with an amd dual core and a new IGP that might not completely suck.
These laptops are pretty unattractive. I can see Toshiba making something like this, but somehow I expected better from Acer. I know they can do better and they proved it with the Gemstone (I think thats what it was called). Thats a beautiful laptop. Apple has proven over and over that people care as much about looks and possibly more, then they do about specs. Actually most people don't really even understand specs anyway.
Hi
If Asus can overclock the ASUS UL80Vt, what would it take to overclock the timeline models?
I very much like the 13" model, but a bit more beaf would be great!
M.
looks like the Su7300 is the top of the line CPU now, I wonder why? Cost? No Intel SSD option either, though I did wonder how they managed to do that with a SU9400 for $900 (or $800 at Newegg) and make money.
Still, handy little laptops (I have the 3810T-6775), never noticed any performance issues and the battery life is simply amazing. With WiFi on and general use (not idling, not at full load either) I've had nearly 7 1/2h out of a single charge. Mouse buttons and speakers aren't great and the keyboard takes a little getting used to, but other than that I'm very happy. Be putting Win7 on it as soon as my upgrade disk arrives :)
I got my 4810TZ for $449, from Radio Shack (of all places). It works great. It does what I need for the most part. However, it is right on the edge of not being powerful enough. For example, it starts to bog down a bit when I have more than half a dozen firefox tabs open (with at least one youtube clip) and WMP running.
The battery does last a long time. I dont even have to charge it every day. Sleeping overnight only consumes about 4% of the battery.
I dont think there is a better performing notebook for $450 that still gives you the battery life of a netbook. It is simply a larger, more powerful netbook that costs little more than most other netbooks.
Well i kinda share my opinion with you but not entirely. The CPU is way too slow than you are saying. But again, neither it's designed for everyday highly technical job.
These CPUs are going to be more than twice as fast as Atom CPUs like the N280, so I wouldn't say "netbooks are netbooks". Plus, you get 4GB RAM instead of the 1GB or 2GB on netbooks, and as bad as GMA 4500MHD is, it can do plenty that the GMA 950 can't (i.e. some gaming, plus HD video decode offload). For the price, I'd take any of these in a heartbeat over an Atom-based netbook.
Writing an article solely based on PR from a company is a dangerous line to cross. I stopped reading PCMagazine when they started posting "previews" of products on their website. It generates plenty of traffic, because you can find these sites when you search for a review of the product. But if you look closely, they're "reviewing" a product they've never seen or touched.
It's one thing if you're previewing a new and innovative product, but to preview a standard refresh... I for one would prefer if you would keep to reviews and not previews.
I also agree. I will only read previews if and only the reviewer has the product in hand and is expecting to release a actual review shortly. These previews without the actual product is just PR and paid PR to be exact.
I sincerely hope Anandtech doesn't change from their standards and start branching out in the hopes for more ads, like Tom's, or something someone there likes personally like digital cameras. Mind you I love cameras and photos but it's not a PC, I would like Anandtech to stick to PC :)
Thanks for the feedback. I'll be discussing these comments with Anand to determine what direction we should take. In the meantime, I have a few points to make.
I can say we don't get paid by Acer (or anyone else) to post these types of articles. I have also been in contact with Acer and they say that they should have a Timeline my way shortly. As far as battery life goes, given the similar specs to the UL80Vt, there's little reason to assume they won't come close to the target (and exceed it in idle testing).
Part of the problem is that if companies don't view you as a legitimate source of, in this case, laptop coverage -- which means more than a few articles a month on laptops -- it's more difficult to get hardware for reviews. The hope is that we'll have more hardware in hand and we will work to get "First Look" articles like the UL80Vt done as quickly as we can, following up with more in-depth reviews as necessary.
Trust me, I'm not keen on doing press release recycling, and you'll notice that I didn't quote from the press release here but provided my own spin on things. There are plenty of people that don't know what new products are available and they don't want to scour around to find out. If we can provide information on what's coming out as well as a general summary of the good and/or bad points, that's useful to readers. We can't recommend a system without testing, but we can certainly look at the specs and design and say, "Yeah, barring QA issues this should be a very good product for the price."
As long as they stay in the blog, are clearly labeled as hands-off previews, and don't take away time that otherwise would've been spent writing or testing for an actual hardware review, then I don't really have a problem with it. If writing these articles means you guys can get more hardware to review, then that would obviously be a good thing.
It would be nice to see articles like this concentrate primarily on interesting and innovative products, though, because it could get a bit repetitive to have a bunch of articles going, "Here's yet another laptop that's exactly the same as the last dozen laptops we've looked at."
Speaking subjectively, one thing that I've always enjoyed about anandtech is the sober way it usually approaches hardware and other topics. Some of the other sites, which I won't mention by names, can have dozens of preview articles out before some gadget even comes out. These would be things like a photo of the retail cardboard box, etc. I'm sure this creates customer frenzy and that's what manufacturers like. But anandtech shouldn't deal with that kind of garbage. The previous posters are correct. What you guys do here is a great thing. Keep going and resist industry influence when it doesn't feel right.
Agreed. I see "probably" and "should" way to much in this blog. Yes, it's not a review, but the author is sure making a lot of assumptions that could have easily been checked first hand. There is no reason Acer couldn't have sent AT one of these for review since they've been on sale for ages now, and that alone puts me off these Timelines. People who have bought them haven't been overly impressed either, reporting tons of quirks and issues that I've long forgotten.
I agree because they are putting the reputation of Anandtech.com on the line. Posts like these can be posted on DailyTech instead. So they can write "Acer claims the laptop has a 5 hour battery life." Instead of writing "Battery life should exceed 8 hours in light operations." Yes there were quotes around all the other battery life figures but real world usage numbers would be better because different manufactures claim battery life numbers differently. Wouldn't be far to quote each manufacture's given number. Better to get laptop, do a real benchmark, and post them.
According to the Acer site (the link in the table heading for each laptop will take you to the appropriate base page), the Timeline 1810 and 3810 include BT 2.1 and 2.0 respectively. The 4810 and 5810, oddly, do not include BT.
The touchpad is centered with the keyboard (under the spacebar) just where it should be, not center with the chassis. If it wasn't centered with the keyboard, your palm would be resting on the touchpad while typing, making the cursor jump around the screen.
I've seen other people get all OCD over this, and I can't figure out why. Do you want the notebook to look symmetrical, or be usable?
I've actually seen some companies (Dell?) release notebooks which have the touchpad centered with the chassis instead of the keyboard. Looks like a nightmare to use, especially for a lefty as they would have to lift their right hand off the keyboard to get to the touchpad.
I've been using this for a few days and like it's many great features. But my one annoyance with it is that in fact the touchpad is NOT centered with the keyboard. Yes it is about a 1/2 inch left of the chasis center, but it's a 1/2 inch to the right of the center of the keyboard. After I have moved the mouse cursor to where I want to type and then put my hands on the keyboard, the cursor jumps around because the left side of my right palm touches the right side of the touchpad.
They have a feature in the touchpad settings called PalmTracking to help detect if it's your palm and not your fingers touching it, but that seems to only work when a lot of the palm is resting on the touchpad. I've set it to maximum, but it doesn't help when your palm touches the edge of the pad as in my case. I've never had this problem with any other touchpad.
I have to consciously train myself to keep my right palm elevated.
I believe VMWare will run regardless of whether or not your CPU has virtualization extensions; it will just run more efficiently on those CPUs that do.
If you're using Microsoft's VirtualPC like XP Mode does, then it depends on where the virtual machine is located - if you want to run it on your local machine, then yes: no virtualization on the CPU = no local XP Mode. If the VM is running on a corporate server and you only use remote desktop to get in, that should work regardless of whether your CPU has virtulization extensions or not.
If it has polarised glasses, then I assume it's a similar technology to what you see in 3D movies, which is pretty cool. Much better than blanking each eye alternately, which is what's been done until now. But I agree that it'd be a good idea to wait for the reviews at least.
Apart from the larger cache, note that SU4100 does not have hardware virtualization. So no XP mode in Win 7 apart from loss of performance in most VMs.
none of these system are win7 pro, so XP mode not work any way
but i would recommend you get one that dose support Intel VT,
Note Any AMD64 dual core CPU supports AMD-V so you do not have to be hit or miss if it has it or not amd64 form AM2 and higher allways have AMD-v,
its the semprons that norm do not support AMD-V (but i think the AM3 or AM2+ semprons even come with AMD-v now dual core semprons i am 90% sure but thats stil an guess)
there is no reson for Intel to not have VT in all there chips as all the Core cpus support it but they decide to turn it off in some cpus models (some that are even the same model xxxx range) even thought it has 0 performance benerfit for norm users
I don't believe hardware virtualization is necessary for XP mode; we have had stuff like VMware for a long time without hardware virtualization. What the Intel VT does is allow virtualized OSes to run a bit faster. I think it will only matter if you're running some seriously demanding stuff, though, since I've even done things like running Folding@Home SMP through VMware (back in the Pentium D days) and it ran at about 90-95% of native.
Of course, you'd need Win7 Business or Ultimate for the XP mode anyway. It's one of those features that people seem to mention all the time, but I don't think the vast majority of non-business users will ever need/use/want XP mode.
Okay... so MS can't do what VMware has been doing for what, a decade? Whatever. The point still stands that I see XP-mode virtualization as unnecessary, particularly since I don't intend to buy anything above Win7 Home Premium. $100 extra for Win7 Business and XP-virtualization isn't really a priority in anyone's book when they're looking at entry-level laptops, is it?
MS Virtual PC 2007 can run on platforms that don't have hardware-assisted virtualisation. The new MS Virtual PC and XP Mode require hardware-virtualisation.
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mackanz - Monday, November 9, 2009 - link
I have been using this for 2 weeks now. By miles and far, this is the best "netbook" i have tried so far.No problems running 1080p content (ripped BD) out of the hdmi, cpu activity stays at 25% or so.
For normal 1080p content, or mkv's as we know them, cpu activity never goes above 65%. For the heck of it, i connected 2X24" 1080p screens, one via HDMI and the other via VGA, crammed all usb ports with what i could find, had activity both on wireless, BT and Ethernet. It still performs really really well. This thing with a 160GB Intel gen 2 SSD would rock.
Original installation is full of bloatware though, as usual with Acer home pc's. It actually takes longer time to uninstall everything you dont want/need than wipe the harddrive and install Win 7 via usb key.
This is really something official reviewers have to keep an eye on. if not, we consumers will have to put up with this forever. Original Install had 68 processes running after boot and 1.7gb ram used. Clean drive and new install had 35 processes and .9gb ram im use.
My personal "dreambook" would have to be this with a slightly better cpu, built in 3G, Intel gen 2 SSD and a magnesium body with slightly bigger buttons below the touchpad. i'd easily fork out $1200 for that. That would also effectively kill the astronomical prices HP, Dell and Lenovo charges for their 12" line of semi-professional Notebooks.
Daventure - Sunday, November 8, 2009 - link
Asian and EU models of Timeline series have the option of integrated ATI HD-4330. Might be a price position issue or marketing issue with Intel?JarredWalton - Sunday, November 8, 2009 - link
I've heard you basically can't sell a laptop/PC in Asia without discrete graphics (for some reason).Bauxite - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
The $399 model is missing from this lineup, how could they overlook the model that is making the biggest splash right now?A 3 lb, 11 inch "netbook" with a core 2 duo!
(yeah its a SU2300 "celeron" but intel is playing games with names, this is no atom-esque slouch)
It pretty much puts a hard ceiling on realistic prices and configurations of atom netbooks, especially some of the overpriced ION types considering this has enough cpu guts to play a fair amount of hd video without 'assistance'.
Also, gateway (made by acer) has variants that may be slightly more appealing to some people, its hardware and price configurations are basically the same.
The other "netbook" I am looking forward to seeing soon is the 12" MSI coming with an amd dual core and a new IGP that might not completely suck.
TejTrescent - Monday, November 2, 2009 - link
Getting over 8 hours with light use is ENTIRELY possible. I've regularly gotten 10 with light browsing and note taking being the only things I do.I'm pretty happy with the thing, honestly. Core 2 Solo ULV still blows away Atom.
MonicaS - Monday, November 2, 2009 - link
These laptops are pretty unattractive. I can see Toshiba making something like this, but somehow I expected better from Acer. I know they can do better and they proved it with the Gemstone (I think thats what it was called). Thats a beautiful laptop. Apple has proven over and over that people care as much about looks and possibly more, then they do about specs. Actually most people don't really even understand specs anyway.Monica S
Los Angeles Computer Repair
http://www.sebecomputercare.com">http://www.sebecomputercare.com
mschira - Saturday, October 31, 2009 - link
HiIf Asus can overclock the ASUS UL80Vt, what would it take to overclock the timeline models?
I very much like the 13" model, but a bit more beaf would be great!
M.
mattthemuppet - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
looks like the Su7300 is the top of the line CPU now, I wonder why? Cost? No Intel SSD option either, though I did wonder how they managed to do that with a SU9400 for $900 (or $800 at Newegg) and make money.Still, handy little laptops (I have the 3810T-6775), never noticed any performance issues and the battery life is simply amazing. With WiFi on and general use (not idling, not at full load either) I've had nearly 7 1/2h out of a single charge. Mouse buttons and speakers aren't great and the keyboard takes a little getting used to, but other than that I'm very happy. Be putting Win7 on it as soon as my upgrade disk arrives :)
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
I got my 4810TZ for $449, from Radio Shack (of all places). It works great. It does what I need for the most part. However, it is right on the edge of not being powerful enough. For example, it starts to bog down a bit when I have more than half a dozen firefox tabs open (with at least one youtube clip) and WMP running.The battery does last a long time. I dont even have to charge it every day. Sleeping overnight only consumes about 4% of the battery.
I dont think there is a better performing notebook for $450 that still gives you the battery life of a netbook. It is simply a larger, more powerful netbook that costs little more than most other netbooks.
jepc - Friday, October 30, 2009 - link
I also bought the 4810TZ at Radioshack for $449, but it has a SU2700 single core processor, which is noticeably slower than the 4100 and 7300.AstroGuardian - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
Well i kinda share my opinion with you but not entirely. The CPU is way too slow than you are saying. But again, neither it's designed for everyday highly technical job.Netbook is just a netbook.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
These CPUs are going to be more than twice as fast as Atom CPUs like the N280, so I wouldn't say "netbooks are netbooks". Plus, you get 4GB RAM instead of the 1GB or 2GB on netbooks, and as bad as GMA 4500MHD is, it can do plenty that the GMA 950 can't (i.e. some gaming, plus HD video decode offload). For the price, I'd take any of these in a heartbeat over an Atom-based netbook.AstroGuardian - Friday, October 30, 2009 - link
You are right. They do, but this machine can't go anywhere near my older HP 4310s. I guess i am just making a David vs Goliath comparison. My bad...Drag0nFire - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Writing an article solely based on PR from a company is a dangerous line to cross. I stopped reading PCMagazine when they started posting "previews" of products on their website. It generates plenty of traffic, because you can find these sites when you search for a review of the product. But if you look closely, they're "reviewing" a product they've never seen or touched.It's one thing if you're previewing a new and innovative product, but to preview a standard refresh... I for one would prefer if you would keep to reviews and not previews.
The0ne - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
I also agree. I will only read previews if and only the reviewer has the product in hand and is expecting to release a actual review shortly. These previews without the actual product is just PR and paid PR to be exact.I sincerely hope Anandtech doesn't change from their standards and start branching out in the hopes for more ads, like Tom's, or something someone there likes personally like digital cameras. Mind you I love cameras and photos but it's not a PC, I would like Anandtech to stick to PC :)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Thanks for the feedback. I'll be discussing these comments with Anand to determine what direction we should take. In the meantime, I have a few points to make.I can say we don't get paid by Acer (or anyone else) to post these types of articles. I have also been in contact with Acer and they say that they should have a Timeline my way shortly. As far as battery life goes, given the similar specs to the UL80Vt, there's little reason to assume they won't come close to the target (and exceed it in idle testing).
Part of the problem is that if companies don't view you as a legitimate source of, in this case, laptop coverage -- which means more than a few articles a month on laptops -- it's more difficult to get hardware for reviews. The hope is that we'll have more hardware in hand and we will work to get "First Look" articles like the UL80Vt done as quickly as we can, following up with more in-depth reviews as necessary.
Trust me, I'm not keen on doing press release recycling, and you'll notice that I didn't quote from the press release here but provided my own spin on things. There are plenty of people that don't know what new products are available and they don't want to scour around to find out. If we can provide information on what's coming out as well as a general summary of the good and/or bad points, that's useful to readers. We can't recommend a system without testing, but we can certainly look at the specs and design and say, "Yeah, barring QA issues this should be a very good product for the price."
KikassAssassin - Thursday, October 29, 2009 - link
As long as they stay in the blog, are clearly labeled as hands-off previews, and don't take away time that otherwise would've been spent writing or testing for an actual hardware review, then I don't really have a problem with it. If writing these articles means you guys can get more hardware to review, then that would obviously be a good thing.It would be nice to see articles like this concentrate primarily on interesting and innovative products, though, because it could get a bit repetitive to have a bunch of articles going, "Here's yet another laptop that's exactly the same as the last dozen laptops we've looked at."
Kelv00n - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Speaking subjectively, one thing that I've always enjoyed about anandtech is the sober way it usually approaches hardware and other topics. Some of the other sites, which I won't mention by names, can have dozens of preview articles out before some gadget even comes out. These would be things like a photo of the retail cardboard box, etc. I'm sure this creates customer frenzy and that's what manufacturers like. But anandtech shouldn't deal with that kind of garbage. The previous posters are correct. What you guys do here is a great thing. Keep going and resist industry influence when it doesn't feel right.Lifted - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Agreed. I see "probably" and "should" way to much in this blog. Yes, it's not a review, but the author is sure making a lot of assumptions that could have easily been checked first hand. There is no reason Acer couldn't have sent AT one of these for review since they've been on sale for ages now, and that alone puts me off these Timelines. People who have bought them haven't been overly impressed either, reporting tons of quirks and issues that I've long forgotten.feelingshorter - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
I agree because they are putting the reputation of Anandtech.com on the line. Posts like these can be posted on DailyTech instead. So they can write "Acer claims the laptop has a 5 hour battery life." Instead of writing "Battery life should exceed 8 hours in light operations." Yes there were quotes around all the other battery life figures but real world usage numbers would be better because different manufactures claim battery life numbers differently. Wouldn't be far to quote each manufacture's given number. Better to get laptop, do a real benchmark, and post them.mattsm - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
None of the vendors sites say that these laptops have bluetooth, can anyone confirm?DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
According to the article, the Timelines do.JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
According to the Acer site (the link in the table heading for each laptop will take you to the appropriate base page), the Timeline 1810 and 3810 include BT 2.1 and 2.0 respectively. The 4810 and 5810, oddly, do not include BT.Spivonious - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Any reason why the touchpad isn't centered? My OCD is twitching.Lifted - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
The touchpad is centered with the keyboard (under the spacebar) just where it should be, not center with the chassis. If it wasn't centered with the keyboard, your palm would be resting on the touchpad while typing, making the cursor jump around the screen.I've seen other people get all OCD over this, and I can't figure out why. Do you want the notebook to look symmetrical, or be usable?
I've actually seen some companies (Dell?) release notebooks which have the touchpad centered with the chassis instead of the keyboard. Looks like a nightmare to use, especially for a lefty as they would have to lift their right hand off the keyboard to get to the touchpad.
rjp0503 - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
I've been using this for a few days and like it's many great features. But my one annoyance with it is that in fact the touchpad is NOT centered with the keyboard. Yes it is about a 1/2 inch left of the chasis center, but it's a 1/2 inch to the right of the center of the keyboard. After I have moved the mouse cursor to where I want to type and then put my hands on the keyboard, the cursor jumps around because the left side of my right palm touches the right side of the touchpad.They have a feature in the touchpad settings called PalmTracking to help detect if it's your palm and not your fingers touching it, but that seems to only work when a lot of the palm is resting on the touchpad. I've set it to maximum, but it doesn't help when your palm touches the edge of the pad as in my case. I've never had this problem with any other touchpad.
I have to consciously train myself to keep my right palm elevated.
rjp0503 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Sorry, this post about the touchpad was intended for the review of the Asus UL80VT. For this Acer, the touchpad does appear to be keyboard centered.JimmyJimmington - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Does that mean you can't access your workplace virtual machine in vmware?Voo - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Afaik if you want to run a 64bit guest OS you need hardware virtualization, otherwise you should be fine (at least with VMware)NTB - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
I believe VMWare will run regardless of whether or not your CPU has virtualization extensions; it will just run more efficiently on those CPUs that do.If you're using Microsoft's VirtualPC like XP Mode does, then it depends on where the virtual machine is located - if you want to run it on your local machine, then yes: no virtualization on the CPU = no local XP Mode. If the VM is running on a corporate server and you only use remote desktop to get in, that should work regardless of whether your CPU has virtulization extensions or not.
Nathan
ET - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
If it has polarised glasses, then I assume it's a similar technology to what you see in 3D movies, which is pretty cool. Much better than blanking each eye alternately, which is what's been done until now. But I agree that it'd be a good idea to wait for the reviews at least.codedivine - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Apart from the larger cache, note that SU4100 does not have hardware virtualization. So no XP mode in Win 7 apart from loss of performance in most VMs.leexgx - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - link
none of these system are win7 pro, so XP mode not work any waybut i would recommend you get one that dose support Intel VT,
Note Any AMD64 dual core CPU supports AMD-V so you do not have to be hit or miss if it has it or not amd64 form AM2 and higher allways have AMD-v,
its the semprons that norm do not support AMD-V (but i think the AM3 or AM2+ semprons even come with AMD-v now dual core semprons i am 90% sure but thats stil an guess)
there is no reson for Intel to not have VT in all there chips as all the Core cpus support it but they decide to turn it off in some cpus models (some that are even the same model xxxx range) even thought it has 0 performance benerfit for norm users
codedivine - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
To be clear, SU4100=smaller cache, no Virtualization. Su7300=larger cache and has virtualization.JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
I don't believe hardware virtualization is necessary for XP mode; we have had stuff like VMware for a long time without hardware virtualization. What the Intel VT does is allow virtualized OSes to run a bit faster. I think it will only matter if you're running some seriously demanding stuff, though, since I've even done things like running Folding@Home SMP through VMware (back in the Pentium D days) and it ran at about 90-95% of native.Of course, you'd need Win7 Business or Ultimate for the XP mode anyway. It's one of those features that people seem to mention all the time, but I don't think the vast majority of non-business users will ever need/use/want XP mode.
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
You absolutely need virtualization support for XP Mode in Windows 7. VT for Intel and AMD-V for AMD.JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Okay... so MS can't do what VMware has been doing for what, a decade? Whatever. The point still stands that I see XP-mode virtualization as unnecessary, particularly since I don't intend to buy anything above Win7 Home Premium. $100 extra for Win7 Business and XP-virtualization isn't really a priority in anyone's book when they're looking at entry-level laptops, is it?rajeshshenoy - Friday, October 30, 2009 - link
MS Virtual PC 2007 can run on platforms that don't have hardware-assisted virtualisation. The new MS Virtual PC and XP Mode require hardware-virtualisation.