Rendered on a Packard Bell dot s netbook in under 20 minutes
Not just possible, but downright desirable! Being able to create entire 3D scenes in something not much larger than a paperback book, with a battery life that’s good for a whole chunk of a day – I mean, what’s not to love?
OK, there’s some limitations, but nothing show-stopping. The biggest limitation is the screen resolution. At 1024×600 for most smaller netbooks your work area is going to be a little cramped, to say the least. There’s way and means around even that problem though (to the point where it becomes not a problem at all), and remember that screen resolution has no bearing on the size of the images you can make. Want a 4000×3000 behemoth of a render? If you’re prepared to wait for it, no problem. If you really want more screen estate (seriously, it’s not needed) then you could attach a 22″ LCD display and still have plenty of change from the cost of a laptop.
More significant is the trade-off in processor speed. A typical desktop box will run rings round a little Intel Atom powered netbook when it comes to raw number-crunching, and that means render-times will be slower than you’d get from a desktop machine (or even a full sized laptop for that matter). Given that a netbook is half to two-thirds the price of a laptop though, and a third that of a desktop setup, it’s well worth slightly longer the wait. And that wait isn’t long at all if you’re using DAZ Studio. The render above took just under 20 minutes to complete. The one below in seven minutes – and that’s with high-resolution textures and UberEnvironment lighting. That’s good enough for me.
More about the hows and whys of running DAZ Studio on a netbook, next time.
As my old and battered laptop is now officially a dead old and battered laptop, we picked up a replacement yesterday. It’s a Packard Bell dot s netbook. Yeah. I know. Silly name. That’s why I called mine Oscar instead. Good name for a netbook, Oscar.
I’ll be writing a full hands on review of this teeny tiny ‘puter, but in the meantime here’s 10 things to know about Oscar (in no particular order).
- He’s red. C’mon – given the choice between a red or a black, who wouldn’t pick red?
- 250Gb hard drive. That’s a quarter terrabyte of storage in something which fits under my arm. My first computer had two 720k 3.5″ floppy drives and no hard disk so numbers like that still boggle my mind. That’s two hundred and fifty thousand megabytes, people! And yes, I will fill it.
- Intel Atom N280 processor and 1Gb memory. That’s 1.66Ghz in speed so only marginally faster than the icky Celeron 1.5Gz on the old laptop, but it feels much faster thanks to Hyperthreading. It might also be due to the fact that…….
- It’s running Windows 7. On a teeny-tiny netbook? Oh yes. And it’s great – quick, efficient, reasonably unobstrusive (for Microsoft) and streets ahead of Vista in terms of…. well, everything really. This is the Starter Edition which means I can’t change the desktop background (thankfully, it’s quite nice), no DVD playback (there’s no DVD drive anyhow) and no multi-monitor support. None of those are deal-breakers for me, and can most likely be fixed with other apps.
- The screen is bloody gorgeous. No, really. I was going to go for the Samsung N110 but in the netbook line-up this screen shone. It’s bright, sharp, clean and just plain superb. It’s streets ahead of any of the other netbook screens out there. With a resolution of 1024×600 I highly recommend using winsupermaximize to reclaim some screen estate. This is a tiny free app which removes the titlebar from any window when you press WIN-F11. Set the taskbar to auto-hide and that resolution is more than enough, even for…………
- DAZ Studio. Oh yes. It works. I can render on a netbook. I am happy. Both DAZ Studio 2.3 and 3 work thanks to the (better than I expected) Intel 945 chip. That supports OpenGL 1.4 – not exactly cutting edge but more than up to the task for my needs. Just remember: Hardware Optimization needs to be turned off in the options or that baby will crash. When it comes to rendering, it’s twice as fast as my old lappy. Which is nice.
- There’s a scroll wheel in my touchpad. Slide my finger up and down the right edge of the touchpad and the window scrolls. I like that.
- Less pre-installed crud than you’re expect, but still more than you’d want. The netbook comes with Microsoft Works and Photoshop Elements all set up and ready to use, which is great – this is a netbook you really can pick up and be working with right from the start. It took an age to successfully remove the useless piece of in-your-face malware crap that is jokingly called Norton Internet Security though. The netbook also comes “complete” with a horde of poor quality game demos (just install Torchlight instead, ok?) and trial versions of Microsoft Office. Into the bit-bucket they go!
- Battery life. They claim 6 hours, I believe ‘em, and more. I used it for 4 hours last night sans power-lead and it still reported 43% charge remaining. That’s while I was throwing together a couple of test renders, installing and de-installing and generally hammering the poor baby into submission. I’ve read reviews of this netbook which say it’s good for 6 hours solid use or up to 9 hours general light service and I see nothing to say they’re lying. That’s basically a full day between charges, folks. Techhead nirvana.
- The keyboard. Yes, it’s smaller than I’m used to and some of the keys (the TAB key most of all) are too darned small, but after a day of getting used to it I’m touch-typing like a pro again without making too many mistaeks. The keys have decent travel and bounce nicely as you press ‘em. Just like me.
Overall, I think me and Oscar are going to get along just fine.
Laters.
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