Best Buy via eBay offers the 2.14-lb. Asus Intel Atom 1.3GHz 11.6" Laptop, model no. X205TA-SATM0404G, for $129.99 with free shipping. That’s $20 under our mention from a month ago and the lowest total price we’ve seen. (It’s a current low by $64.) It features an Intel Atom Z3735F 1.33GHz Bay Trail quad-core processor, 11.6" 1366x768 LCD, 2GB RAM, 32GB flash memory, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0, USB, microHDMI, and Windows 8.1.
I bought two of these from WOOT over the past few weeks. They’re solid little machines. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for a small, portable web browsing machine.
For the price of Microsoft Windows 8.1, you get a very capable travel netbook for free. I do mean capable, it runs all of MS Office and Access just fine (not included). It’s about 10% slower than pricier laptops, but it runs great! Java runs wonderful on this portable, unlike some other netbooks running some cheaper processors.
Upside: It has no fan! no noise to speak of.
Downside: No disc drives, who needs it anyways.
How does this compare to the HP Stream 11 offered earlier this week? I’m mostly concerned about whether there’s space to install Java AND HOW IT PERFORMS when running Java applets.
The HP Stream’s processor is a 64-bit SoC (System on a Chip), where as this one is a 32-bit Atom. My company has a couple of JAVA based applications (don’t think they are applets) that are 64-bit. They do not run on the ASUS. No problems on pubic apps, so far. I ordered a Stream and it has not arrived yet, so no comparison yet.
I like ASUS and I like this X205TA. Nice size, reasonably peppy for the cost. Will be awesome for personal travel and migrating photos from memory cards to pocket disk.