20110919

eMachines D443 with the new AMD E-450 APU

We got the newest eMachines 14.1" notebook featuring AMD's E-450 Fusion APU. At 1.65Ghz, E-450 is a very minor upgrade to E-350's 1.6Ghz.

Specs include:
CPU: AMD-E450
Graphics: AMD 6320
RAM: 2GB DDR3
Hard Disk: 500GB
Optical Drive: DVD Writer
Wireless Network: b/g/n
Battery: 6 cells
OS: None

I don't know the mall price (if it can be found in retail), but at our buying price of less than 17k, this makes more value and performance sense for most business users rather than any netbooks in the market right now.

Unfortunately, since we're an Ubuntu/Linux shop, we can't make the laptop work with Ubuntu 10.04 or even 10.10 Beta yet. With frequent glitches and crashes, the E-450 is just too new. Same thing happened with E-350 and 10.10 and it looks like the problems of latest hardware not working with Ubuntu is still going to be a major issue. We might try some other distros. Hopefully, by the time 10.10 launches next month, we'll get a more stable experience in Ubuntu.