Features & Specifications
The OCZ Neutrino weighs 2.86 pounds and measures 263 mm W x 185mm D x 19.6-27mm H. the LCD of the machine is a 10-inch 1024 x 600 LED backlit screen and the little rig is powered by an Intel Atom N270 CPU. One ice feature of the machine you don't see often on netbooks today is a 34mm PCI-Express slot. The keyboard is an 83 key unit and power comes from a 4-cell 2200mAh battery. Wi-Fi is integrated along with a 1.3MP webcam and dual 1.5W speakers. The graphics chipset is the Intel 945GSE.

Testing and Use
The OCZ Neutrino is a bit of an odd duck in the netbook market. The little machine is missing some key components needed to be fully functional including the OS, storage, and RAM. The DIY aspect of the machine is that you have to add these components yourself. The OCZ Neutrino retails for $289.99 meaning that if you need to buy these components separately odds are the Neutrino will end up costing you more than a complete netbook from some other manufacturer.

OCZ is clear that the person it is targeting with the OCZ Neutrino is the enthusiast who has a SSD or HDD along with RAM and a Windows XP license sitting around already. For the user who has these key components, the price for the OCZ Neutrino is good. This may be the perfect machine for the user who wants to try out Windows 7 beta or install Linux.

For my review, OCZ sent the Neutrino along with 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a 60GB SSD. The first thing you need to do right out of the box is install the RAM and storage. This is done my removing a few small Phillips screws that secure the large back panel onto the machine. Once the panel is removed, installing the RAM and SSD took all of two minutes and the machine was ready for OS installation. I have a Windows XP Pro license and installed the OS onto the machine.

OCZ offers clear instructions for installing these components into the Neutrino. The hardest part of the install for first timers will be installing the OS. Since the netbook lacks an optical drive, you will need either an external optical drive or a flash drive with your OS of choice on it. I used an external optical drive and did have to set the first boot device to be the USB optical drive in the machine bios. After that, the install of Windows was business as usual.

OCZ includes a full install CD that has all the XP drivers needed for the machine. Should you be using a flash drive for installing your OS, you could always copy and paste the drivers folder form the CD to your flash drive.

Once the OS and drivers were installed, it was time to test the machine out. With the same basic hardware that 90% of the netbooks on the market offer, I expected performance for the OCZ Neutrino to be very similar to the other netbooks on the market.

I am using a new test for battery life starting with the OCZ Neutrino review called Battery Eater Pro v2. The test is particularly harsh on battery life, so you can expect to get more run time out of the battery on the Neutrino in the real world. The little 4-cell battery is smallish by most netbook standards, it turned in a run time of about two hours and two minutes with Wi-Fi on, and the screen set to maximum brightness. That isn't actually all that bad for a 4-cell battery; sure, a six-cell battery would be better but the larger the battery the more weight and bulk a netbook has and one of the key aspects of these machines is portability.

I also ran a new iTunes encoding test on the OCZ Neutrino where I took MP3 versions of the 12 tracks on one of my favorite CDs and turned them into AAC versions using iTunes. The OCZ Neutrino took 8 minutes and 20 seconds to encode the entire album, just about what I expected from a netbook. I also used Windows media encoder to turn the Microsoft Wonder of Flight video form the 1080p HD variety into a smaller file suitable for streaming online. Encoding the video to DVD quality 2Mbps CBR with CD quality CBR audio took 17 minutes and 20 seconds. Again, that time is right in line with what is expected from a netbook.

The OCZ Neutrino has a decent keyboard with well-spaced keys that suffers from all of the same caveats as any netbook keyboard, which is to say it is cramped and takes some getting used to. The keyboard uses a standard layout with the right shift key sized well and in the correct location. Something you can’t always count on with netbooks like the Asus 1002HA. Typing feel is good and the keyboard offers decent tactile feel.

The track pad is positioned even closer to the keyboard n the Neutrino than the track pad on the Wind U100. This was a source of frustration for me when I reviewed the Wind because I often set my palm on the track pad accidentally causing the cursor to move during typing creating some very strange mistake sin long Word documents.

The screen of the Neutrino is bright, offers good color reproduction, and works very well for streaming video from Hulu. Skin tones were realistic and colors were natural making this a good netbook for watching video.

Some netbook fans may look at the OCZ Neutrino and think that the machine is not a good deal once you figure in the costs of the parts you need to get the machine running. If this is what you think, you are missing the point of the Neutrino. OCZ is going for the user who has components needed to build the machine already. For this type of user, the Neutrino is a decent deal. Another user who might want to consider the OCZ Neutrino are those who want a larger SSD, but don’t want to swallow the huge markup most computer makers want for them. These are the users who the OCZ Neutrino is designed for.