Apricot Picobook Pro netbook

Intel Atom? Pah! VIA's C7-M makes good

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

27th October 2008 12:02 GMT

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Does having a single-core CPU matter? You'd think so looking at the PCMark results, but our Gimp test results tell a slightly different story. Yes, the C7-M isn't on a par with the Atom, but it doesn't fare so very badly, and running classic netbook apps, you'd probably not feel much of a difference.

The Gimp Results

Time in seconds
Shorter bars are better

But then this is a Windows machine, and because of that we can see people attempting to run other kinds of apps on it, potentially less happily. The undoubtedly sub-par hard drive speed doesn't help.

The Pro's battery life is a little sub-par too, even falling below some Atom-based machines set to run at half clock-speed. That said, it has the same capacity as, say, the Acer Aspire One, but delivers a much longer runtime. But there are longer-running netbooks out there.

Battery Life Results

Time in minutes
Longer bars are better

Our test is a worse-case scenario - for most other tasks, the battery will last longer. But it does give an indication of how well each SCC can eke out its charge.