Product Listing

Gigabyte M912 Netbook - Touch Friendly

By Aloysius Low - 8 Aug 2008

All Hot and Touchy

All Hot and Touchy

Given all that we've touched upon so far, it does seem that Gigabyte has a pretty decent product on their hands, give or take a few issues. We've yet to encounter a perfect netbook as yet, as each netbook has its own significant pluses and minuses that makes us shy back from giving it the ultimate accolade. Not that we don't want to really, but given the hugely competitive netbook market segment, we'll probably stumble upon it soon enough.

By itself, the Gigabyte M912 is a worthy entrant to the netbook market, especially when you factor in its features that we've yet to encounter in other netbooks. As the first Vista loaded Atom based netbook that we've reviewed so far, the M912's quick boot up speed and void of any notable lag when it comes to using Vista and its associated interface is indeed an impressive feat. From our previous review of the HP 2133 Mini-Note netbook, we recall its Vista performance while being decent, didn't feel as smooth as the Gigabyte M912 that has just 1GB of memory (which is half of the HP counterpart). However, there are two more aspects to the equation. Windows Vista Home Basic was found on the Gigabyte netbook versus the Windows Vista Home Premium edition on the HP netbook with Aero interface. That and of course the more capable Intel platform on the Gigabyte versus the VIA platform on the HP further contributed to the overall usage experience noted.

Furthermore, while it may seem gimmicky, the touchscreen does serve a useful addition to the tiny and hard-to-use trackpad. On the other hand, the onscreen virtual keyboard does leave much to be desired, especially when we find ourselves wanting to use the cramped and tiny physical keyboard of the M912 instead (which in itself is reminiscent of the ASUS Eee PC 900 whose keyboard we disliked). If only Windows Vista Home Premium or the Business edition was loaded, the operating system would have supported the full Tablet-like functionality and would have immediately catapulted it as a great full-fledged Tablet PC 'netbook' on the cheap. Yet another concern was the heat output of the unit which we did not expect to have to deal with as we weren't quite expecting a netbook to get so hot (to the point where we were quite uncomfortable with using it on our laps).

It might seem a little pricey at $1199, but if you do have the cash for this, you'll find that you will be getting a different sort of netbook that's quite unique (for now anyway). Do take note of the issues we've highlighted before you plunk down the cash and you'll be fine.

If you're looking for a portable computing device that can handle Vista capably while having the additional touchscreen based experience on a netbook, then the Gigabyte M912 is for you. However as highlighted above, it's not a perfect and it could have been so much more if only the right OS was loaded (which isn't a retail option sadly). That said, it's not going to come cheap with the features it boasts and the Gigabyte M912 will set you back by S$1199 (and estimated to be over US$700 on the global market).

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