Your netbook options – Light, cheap and fast. Choose two, but you can only choose light and cheap. Fast is not an option with the netbook. Netbook owners who bought their machine hoping for a fast machine will be sorely disappointed. If you’re getting a netbook and expecting it to perform like an entry-level laptop, you’re in for a big letdown.

If netbooks are not fast, then what kind of performance can we expect? Most netbooks from Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Asus, Acer and Samsung, available today come with the Intel Atom 1.66GHz CPU. My Dell Mini 10v with the Intel Atom 1.66GHz CPU is less than half as fast as my three-and-a-half year old entry-level MacBook. How did I get to that figure? Look at my Geekbench and Xbench results below.

Geekbench benchmark score:

MacBook 1.83GHz: 2473

Dell Mini 10v Hackintosh 1.66GHz: 1042

Xbench benchmark score:

MacBook 1.83GHz: 113.75

Dell Mini 10v Hackintosh 1.66GHz: 48.10

Does this mean netbooks are bad? Of course not. They are not meant to replace laptops. A laptop is like a general purpose workhorse while a netbook is a pony for having fun. This “pony” was designed to access the web and web-based applications. Remember that, and your netbook performance will not be a problem for you.

I for one, am happy with my Dell Mini 10v netbook’s performance. Are you happy with your netbook?

Related posts:

1. Battle of the Netbook Web Browsers: Javascript Performance Benchmark on a Hackintosh Laptop