a few associates are raving about these netbooks, i've taken a look at a few myself and they seem to be pretty pointless.
for a start, in terms of cost, they aren't actually that much cheaper than a full featured notebook, and secondly, they aren't actually any more portable - you've still got to cart around a carry case of some description - so really, what is the point of them?
the ones i've looked at, a dell something or other had pretty appalling build quality, flimsy keyboard and cheap looking (even though it cost nearly 400 quid), i can't see the point of paying 400 quid to stare at a 9" screen when for the same cost you can get a full featured hp compaq laptop which not only looks a damn sight better, has a great big 17" screen which is got to be better on the eye.
if you simply must work on the move, isn't a blackberry or iphone a much more sensible prospect in terms of portability (ie, you can stick it in your pocket)?
"netbooks"?
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Dr Lobster*
- Posts: 2107
- Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14
I agree entirely on the cost front. In terms of spec, you're not paying remotely close to what that spec represents.
I disagree about portability though. Although I'd always want to have my proper laptop for doing the majority of my work, assuming someone handed me the cash, having a netbook which was very light, and had 8 hrs+ battery life would be very attractive for throwing in my messenger bag and having whenever I needed it for more token tasks, or perhaps even attempting to throw VS on it to do some work wherever inspiration strikes (that potentially being a bit less successful
). There's simply no way for me to have my laptop on my person without knowing for damn sure I have a laptop on my person.
I disagree about portability though. Although I'd always want to have my proper laptop for doing the majority of my work, assuming someone handed me the cash, having a netbook which was very light, and had 8 hrs+ battery life would be very attractive for throwing in my messenger bag and having whenever I needed it for more token tasks, or perhaps even attempting to throw VS on it to do some work wherever inspiration strikes (that potentially being a bit less successful
). There's simply no way for me to have my laptop on my person without knowing for damn sure I have a laptop on my person.The netbook concept is inherently stupid but if all you're going to do is dabble on facebook, check some emails and flood your system with malware of some kind then the 17" Compaq seems a little like giving a 2 year old toddler a mountain bike if you ask me.
my current laptop is a clunky lump of a toshiba 17 inch thing. It's just horrid, its heavy, its slow, and its an utter nightmare to cart around, not helped by the chunky power supply I have to take around with it.
The idea of a little gismo I could essentially shove in my bag with my other stuff is very tempting, although I'm unsure of the size of the power bricks for these things. Esepcially as the reason I normally need my laptop is just to do a bit of internet and word processing away from my bedroom.
Having said that, the prices are preposterous. There's something to be said for the criticism levelled against them changing over to Windows. The price of that alone can shove up the base prices significantly. Even then though I don't think they should be charging more than £200 for the posh ones, I'd buy one for £150 but when you see some of the companies trying to charge £350-400 for the thing its stupidity as you could get a full blown laptop for that money.
The idea of a little gismo I could essentially shove in my bag with my other stuff is very tempting, although I'm unsure of the size of the power bricks for these things. Esepcially as the reason I normally need my laptop is just to do a bit of internet and word processing away from my bedroom.
Having said that, the prices are preposterous. There's something to be said for the criticism levelled against them changing over to Windows. The price of that alone can shove up the base prices significantly. Even then though I don't think they should be charging more than £200 for the posh ones, I'd buy one for £150 but when you see some of the companies trying to charge £350-400 for the thing its stupidity as you could get a full blown laptop for that money.
"He has to be larger than bacon"
The concept of a laptop smaller than the current norm is nothing new - 'notebook' was originally coined as a term for A4ish laptops with internal batteries with a reasonable lifespan as compared to somewhat larger stablemates which often were either completely tied to the mains or would chew through a fully charged battery in half an hour. And of course the Toshiba Portege range gave you an ickle little tiny laptop running a full version of Windows back in the mid-90's.
To me, the current buzzword of 'netbook' started with the original Asus EEEPC 701 series from late 2007. I bought one of these in early 2008 and it's an amazing thing - the build quality is surprisingly high, it weighs very little and has a tiny almost A5 footprint (I will happily carry it around in it's nifty neoprene clutch case without concern - except of course for my sexual orientation being somewhat called into question
), it's 7" screen may be small but the fact that it's only 800x480 resolution means that it can be seen clearly, it's use of a solid state disk rather than a mechanical hard drive means that it can take a knock without fear of damage, the generic IBM compatible hardware means I could ditch the glorified PDA like OS it came with and install Windows XP to turn it into a real road warrior with all my favourite applications on - and above all else it only cost £180.
To me, the original EEE was an absolute masterstroke. For some reason (particularly since the start of 2009) manufactuers producing things in the 'netbook' category have completely lost the plot. 'Modern' netbooks (can't believe my 14 month old machine allready belongs to a different era) are significantly larger bringing back the 'do I really want to lug this thing around?' issue which traditional laptops have, they have largely turned to normal 2.5" laptop hard drives for storage in order to increase capacity but loosing the durability of solid state storage in the process, screen resolutions have been pushed up whilst screeens necessarily have stayed around 9/10" making them harder to read, and the average price of a decent 'netbook' class portable has rocketed from less than £200 12 months ago to around £350 and upwards now - so you're much more wary about dragging your netbook around with you.
Even Asus, who made the brilliant little machine I own have gone the same way, with newer versions of the EEEPC suffering from the same issues noted above.
The absolute badge of ridicule however must go to Sony with their entry to the netbook category - the 'P' series Vaio. We have one of these on display at work. It has a 60GB 1.5" hard disk which can barely tolerate being moved whilst switched on, an 8" ultra wide screen at a non-standard aspect ratio with the resolution whacked up to 1600x768 - absolutley ridiculous at this screen size being that everything is so small you need a magnifying glass to read it. Even Sony's own website can't hide how preposterously unreadble the screen is:
http://195.2.39.244/res/images/image/11 ... 649711.jpg
The poor little Intel Atom processor driving the thing is then forced to (try to) run Windows Vista Home Premium - which predictably, it's just not up to (the hardware won't even run aero - I think the only time I've ever seen a computer *supplied* with Home Premium which can't). And on top of everything else, this thing carries a £750 price tag so you will always worry about loosing it.
Asus really had a brilliant idea with the netbook 2 years ago, for some reason no one (including themselves) seems to realise quite how great it was.
To me, the current buzzword of 'netbook' started with the original Asus EEEPC 701 series from late 2007. I bought one of these in early 2008 and it's an amazing thing - the build quality is surprisingly high, it weighs very little and has a tiny almost A5 footprint (I will happily carry it around in it's nifty neoprene clutch case without concern - except of course for my sexual orientation being somewhat called into question
), it's 7" screen may be small but the fact that it's only 800x480 resolution means that it can be seen clearly, it's use of a solid state disk rather than a mechanical hard drive means that it can take a knock without fear of damage, the generic IBM compatible hardware means I could ditch the glorified PDA like OS it came with and install Windows XP to turn it into a real road warrior with all my favourite applications on - and above all else it only cost £180. To me, the original EEE was an absolute masterstroke. For some reason (particularly since the start of 2009) manufactuers producing things in the 'netbook' category have completely lost the plot. 'Modern' netbooks (can't believe my 14 month old machine allready belongs to a different era) are significantly larger bringing back the 'do I really want to lug this thing around?' issue which traditional laptops have, they have largely turned to normal 2.5" laptop hard drives for storage in order to increase capacity but loosing the durability of solid state storage in the process, screen resolutions have been pushed up whilst screeens necessarily have stayed around 9/10" making them harder to read, and the average price of a decent 'netbook' class portable has rocketed from less than £200 12 months ago to around £350 and upwards now - so you're much more wary about dragging your netbook around with you.
Even Asus, who made the brilliant little machine I own have gone the same way, with newer versions of the EEEPC suffering from the same issues noted above.
The absolute badge of ridicule however must go to Sony with their entry to the netbook category - the 'P' series Vaio. We have one of these on display at work. It has a 60GB 1.5" hard disk which can barely tolerate being moved whilst switched on, an 8" ultra wide screen at a non-standard aspect ratio with the resolution whacked up to 1600x768 - absolutley ridiculous at this screen size being that everything is so small you need a magnifying glass to read it. Even Sony's own website can't hide how preposterously unreadble the screen is:
http://195.2.39.244/res/images/image/11 ... 649711.jpg
The poor little Intel Atom processor driving the thing is then forced to (try to) run Windows Vista Home Premium - which predictably, it's just not up to (the hardware won't even run aero - I think the only time I've ever seen a computer *supplied* with Home Premium which can't). And on top of everything else, this thing carries a £750 price tag so you will always worry about loosing it.
Asus really had a brilliant idea with the netbook 2 years ago, for some reason no one (including themselves) seems to realise quite how great it was.
As a network engineer I'm often standing by a router or firewall, sometimes in the middle of a field somewhere by a mast, changing cables with one hand and holding my laptop (acting as nothing more than a terminal emulator) with the other.
In these circumstances I find that a small, lightweight device, that nonetheless has a proper keyboard, is an absolute godsend.
I agree that these machines are something of a niche product but they're not entirely without merit.
In these circumstances I find that a small, lightweight device, that nonetheless has a proper keyboard, is an absolute godsend.
I agree that these machines are something of a niche product but they're not entirely without merit.
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Ebeneezer Scrooge
- Posts: 326
- Joined: Tue 23 Sep, 2003 13.53
- Location: Scrooge Towers
Mrs Scrooge bought me an EEE pc 901 for my 30th this year, it's absolutely brilliant! I told her that it wouldn't replace our laptop as it's designed for a different purpose, but just as I used my desktop less when I got my laptop, I think I've only used the laptop twice since I got the netbook.
I got rid of the terrible xandros installation and replaced it with the easypeasy distro of ubuntu straight away. Now I run apache, php and mysql as a portable web server and although I couldn't use it for the graphics, I spend hours coding on it. That is where it's strength is for me. It goes easily in my bag to go to work (my laptop was far to big since I cycle to work), it went on holiday with me a couple of weeks ago so I could entertain myself while the wife and friends were reading (I've never been taken with reading).
And no, I don't think it was close to a similarly spec'd laptop - £248 with 1gb ram, 20gb SSD and most importantly 4-5 hours of battery life.
The push toward the 10" range is getting far into the grey area between laptop and netbook however. My choice to go for the 9" was based on it being ever so slightly bigger than the original 7" eee pc, but not so you'd really notice!
I got rid of the terrible xandros installation and replaced it with the easypeasy distro of ubuntu straight away. Now I run apache, php and mysql as a portable web server and although I couldn't use it for the graphics, I spend hours coding on it. That is where it's strength is for me. It goes easily in my bag to go to work (my laptop was far to big since I cycle to work), it went on holiday with me a couple of weeks ago so I could entertain myself while the wife and friends were reading (I've never been taken with reading).
And no, I don't think it was close to a similarly spec'd laptop - £248 with 1gb ram, 20gb SSD and most importantly 4-5 hours of battery life.
The push toward the 10" range is getting far into the grey area between laptop and netbook however. My choice to go for the 9" was based on it being ever so slightly bigger than the original 7" eee pc, but not so you'd really notice!
Snarky
I've got a big Sony Vaio for all my games and *work* and stuff, but then I've got on order a new netbook. It's got a screen that rotates and folds down over the keyboard, turning it into a touchscreen tablet PC.
The main appeal for me is the weight and size. Its perfect to dump in my bag with my school books, I don't need to take the charging cable either which is a bonus. It's also great for when I stay at my dads and just need it for facebooking. The lightness is great in cities, where you can almost forget you have it, but then use it to check emails in Starbucks etc. The touchscreen's great for lectures and talks to make quick handwritten notes on.
It just depends I suppose on what you need it for.
The main appeal for me is the weight and size. Its perfect to dump in my bag with my school books, I don't need to take the charging cable either which is a bonus. It's also great for when I stay at my dads and just need it for facebooking. The lightness is great in cities, where you can almost forget you have it, but then use it to check emails in Starbucks etc. The touchscreen's great for lectures and talks to make quick handwritten notes on.
It just depends I suppose on what you need it for.
so returning to here, I'm now strongly considering getting the dell inspiron mini 10 with the 16gig solid state for £250 for the purpose of carting around with me to the library and what not. (obv i'll get the linux one and then make use of one of the many copies of xp i have lying around rather than shell out a load of extra money)
My main thinking on this is weight. I was considering getting a brand new proper laptop for around £450/500 but then as they're approx the same weight as this lump at 2.5-2.7kg and said netbook is 1.2kg I am now edging closer and closer towards netbook.
So the question comes down to: are other netbooks fabber?
My main thinking on this is weight. I was considering getting a brand new proper laptop for around £450/500 but then as they're approx the same weight as this lump at 2.5-2.7kg and said netbook is 1.2kg I am now edging closer and closer towards netbook.
So the question comes down to: are other netbooks fabber?
"He has to be larger than bacon"