Now ‘AMD inside’ a netbook  Gateway PC comes  to India, doubling memory, hard disk

Netbook used to mean Intel’s Atom inside. Perhaps not anymore. Acer has just launched in India a ‘netbook with a difference’ from Gateway: the LT 3111. The ‘difference’ is three –ways: The processor under the hood is AMD’s 1.2 GHz L110 Athlon 64 processor. The RAM is not 1 GB but 2GB ( DDR2). The hard disk stores 250 GB not 160. The LCD screen is a generous 11.6 inch ( 1366 by 768 pixels) and the speaker headphone is optimised Dolby.

The beefed up specs means they can port a full function Windows Vista Home Basic – but we are wondering why Acer is offering Vista after its shelf life is almost over and Windows 7 is here. The key pad – sorry “Gesture” pad allows twos sliding fingers to browse the Net; while a 5 in 1 card reader accepts almost all current formats and sizes of memory card.

No optical drive; but Netbook users have learnt to live without that, seeing you can stack 64 GB or 128 GB quite easily on a USB flash drive ( after that it becomes very pricey).

At Rs 24,607before tax, the L T 3111 is not the cheapest Netbook around. But we would say for its superior CPU and memory/storage, this is good value. They do throw in a 0.3 megapixel web cam – useful for basic video conferencing and the 6-cell lithium ion battery is adequate, making the whole machine just under 1.5 kg. Can’t see too many customers complaining at this price and for these specs.

Bangalore Nov 28