I don't know how all that works, but if you wanted to use the 3G card then you'd have to sign a contract with whatever company, correct? (AT&T for example)
I don't know how all that works, but if you wanted to use the 3G card then you'd have to sign a contract with whatever company, correct? (AT&T for example)
Yes, and they're typically hideously overpriced, often limiting your monthly bandwidth to an amount measured in megabytes, even if you subscribe to a so-called "unlimited" plan.
I'm not really interested right now, the tech for "everywhere wireless internet" just isn't quite there yet. We'll see how things go when WiMax hits.
Wimax will (hopefully) be glorious. I could see sprint, who's going to be the first company in the US to be 4G/Wimax, seriously dominating the competition if they could keep their prices reasonable and do a large marketing push for it.
archonwarp on
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Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
Wimax will (hopefully) be glorious. I could see sprint, who's going to be the first company in the US to be 4G/Wimax, seriously dominating the competition if they could keep their prices reasonable and do a large marketing push for it.
I think that's the main thing that will make it succeed or fail. The technology might be great, but if they rape us in price or limit monthly bandwidth, it will most certainly fail. If they can offer truly unlimited service for somewhere between $20 and $40 a month, I think it will succeed wildly.
Ugh. It seems Best Buy's offer of the Acer Aspire One with the 120gb hard drive has ended or something and they don't seem to be getting any more in stock. I've checked during two shipments and neither have had it in. I'm pretty discouraged at this point.
But then Engadget reported on this; http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/05/acer-aspire-ones-6-cell-is-a-whole-lot-cheaper-bundled/ that is now sold out and not even saying it has anything of the sort of stock. I have a notifier set on it. I think I'll just try once more next Wednesday at Best Buy if I'm not notified before then from Amazon, and if the Amazon deal is out too then I don't know what I'll do at that point. That 350-400 price tag is just way to appealing to want to go higher. And how I've got my mind set up on how I'm going to use it, a SSD drive version is just out of the question.
Maybe it's just me but the sheer volume of Acer laptops that come into my work dead compared to Asus (never seen one with anything more complex than a dead HDD or RAM) is enough to discourage me from ever buying one.
Maybe it's just me but the sheer volume of Acer laptops that come into my work dead compared to Asus (never seen one with anything more complex than a dead HDD or RAM) is enough to discourage me from ever buying one.
But doesn't Acer sell more than Asus in the first place? I've never met, or even heard of a person using an Asus laptop until the eeePC came out, whereas Acer is a common brand. Even if Acer was more reliable, if they sold two or six or ten times as many laptops in the North American market, they would have more coming in for repairs than Asus. Do you have a % rating of Acer failures vs. other laptop failures?
Damn, that Dell is tempting. I've always had good experiences with Dell laptops, and I like the aesthetics of it. But really, 16gigs is the top end of storage?
I may wait and see how Ubuntu looks on one of these, as I wouldn't mind being able to check it out on a little webbook I'm only using for browsing and word processing.
Shit, the Ubuntu version is a pretty sweet deal for $350. Basically the only difference between this and the A1 is you are saving $30 and getting a smaller SSD. Pretty good deal either way.
I was a bit worried that this would come out and make me look like a fool for getting my fiancee the A1, so I'm secretly glad that it's not a better deal. Of course, the ability to play with one in a store was a pretty huge point for the A1 anyway, so it's all moot.
God I hate dell's pricing sheanigans though. $439 - "$40 instant savings." What the shit dell? The thing just came out! You can't put something "on sale" when it was never "not on sale"
I don't know how all that works, but if you wanted to use the 3G card then you'd have to sign a contract with whatever company, correct? (AT&T for example)
Yes, and they're typically hideously overpriced, often limiting your monthly bandwidth to an amount measured in megabytes, even if you subscribe to a so-called "unlimited" plan.
I'm not really interested right now, the tech for "everywhere wireless internet" just isn't quite there yet. We'll see how things go when WiMax hits.
I pay 30$ for 4 gigs of net traffic over 3g, at that rate it's useful but hardly the sort of thing most real users would pay for. It's definitely slow... feels on par with 56.6k dialup.
Ego on
Erik
0
Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
Depends on the type of SSD. SLC SSDs are generally faster and last longer, but they're ludicrously expensive. MLC SSDs are cheaper, but they are generally much slower and have a shorter lifespan, and are still more expensive than hard drives of the same size. Most of the SSDs in these netbooks are either totally MLC, or some combination of a small SLC and a larger MLC. There is apparently still some confusion on whether the Dell netbook is going to use SLC or MLC for its drive, so that could be a big deciding factor for some people.
Honestly, unless you absolutely have to have a shock proof drive, there aren't really many advantages to using SSDs over normal HDDs (and there are actually many disadvantages to using them, such as price and speed). The technology isn't quite there yet, or at least not at any reasonable price. In a couple of years I think these things will start to become much more beneficial and reasonable. For now though, in terms of normal computer usage, they're more of a novelty than anything else.
Isn't one of the main advantages heat? Since there's no moving parts and the machines are using a SHITTY and INEFFICIENT chipset (capped for truth), anything to cut back on heat is a godsend. Just because I'm curious, just how overpriced is the Eee 901, all things considered?
archonwarp on
0
Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited September 2008
Heat is one thing I have read a lots of opinions about but still have no idea how much of an issue it is one way or another. It almost seems like a case-by-case basis. Some people report extremely hot SSDs, while some claim they are completely cool. I really have no idea, so if anyone has anything to add in that regard, please do.
As for the Eee 901, I wouldn't say it's all that overpriced. You can get it for $550 from Newegg, and cheaper from some places. I'd say it needs to be at a $500 price point and offer a HDD option, but otherwise it's pretty good. I'd buy it at $550 if they offered a version with a 1.8" HDD, but with that currend SSD configuration they're using, no thanks.
Honestly, after reading up on the new Asus N10, I think that's the one for me. It's more expensive, but the extra features offered while still retaining a relatively small form factor and excellent battery life are worth it to me.
Maybe it's just me but the sheer volume of Acer laptops that come into my work dead compared to Asus (never seen one with anything more complex than a dead HDD or RAM) is enough to discourage me from ever buying one.
But doesn't Acer sell more than Asus in the first place? I've never met, or even heard of a person using an Asus laptop until the eeePC came out, whereas Acer is a common brand. Even if Acer was more reliable, if they sold two or six or ten times as many laptops in the North American market, they would have more coming in for repairs than Asus. Do you have a % rating of Acer failures vs. other laptop failures?
Maybe it's just over here, but a lot of people have Asus laptops. If I'm going to recommend a brand I recommend Asus, if nothing else because their warranties are awesome. They're the only laptop dudes I know of with a service centre in our city, the warranty is two or three years (I forget which), global, and they send a frickin' truck to collect it from you.
As for Acer versus other brands, they're better than the trash like Fujitsu and whatnot and about on par with HP or Toshiba as far as I've seen for severity of fuckups. Maybe worse. I mean, I have no statistics but it's true that when I see someone bring in their Acer laptop (though I have not seen their netbooks) I usually think, yeah, that's probably fucked. Asus, hands-down the best brand. I can't bust out the percentages because these are just my observations.
I don't know how all that works, but if you wanted to use the 3G card then you'd have to sign a contract with whatever company, correct? (AT&T for example)
Yes, and they're typically hideously overpriced, often limiting your monthly bandwidth to an amount measured in megabytes, even if you subscribe to a so-called "unlimited" plan.
I'm not really interested right now, the tech for "everywhere wireless internet" just isn't quite there yet. We'll see how things go when WiMax hits.
I pay 30$ for 4 gigs of net traffic over 3g, at that rate it's useful but hardly the sort of thing most real users would pay for. It's definitely slow... feels on par with 56.6k dialup.
Using a go phone (at&t) sim card, you can activate a plan where its 3g connectivity for 20$ a month, unlimited access (within reason, which means you arent getting caught I think?). no contract and unlimited usage. Ive just been looking for a cheaper 3g modem. Theres a bluetooth capable 3g phone right now for 60$, which works perfectly with the 901. Ive been looking for a cheaper phone to use with a datacable, but am not having much luck so far. I think ill break down and buy the 60$ phone for this soon.
DiannaoChong on
0
Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited September 2008
I guess Amazon sold out, but Zipzoomfly now has them for $450 as well. I wonder if we'll be seeing a price drop across the board soon. Maybe to better compete with the Aspire One?
Edit - Wait, it was. Or maybe still is. I don't know what's going on.
It's still showing when you click on the "show new or used" thing for 450 from Amazon. But then when you go into the cart it says it "usually ships within 1 to 2 months" How accurate is that? if I pay the bucks for the 3 day shipping and don't get it for 2 months am I screwed since it says 1 to 2 months? Does it actually take 1 to 2 months? 'Cause that is mighty tempting since I can't find a Acer Aspire One to save my life.
I know that it's "never the right time" to buy technology, but I feel like right now is really not the right time to buy a netbook. I'm thinking that the soon to be released atom dual-core and the super low wattage AMD athlon underclock will be a big improvement over what we have now. The biggest reason to wait for the N10, given the fact that it has an hdmi port, is the likely chance that it will be on a newer chipset. As it currently stands, the board on the current atom boards is using what, 2x the wattage of the chip at peak power? Wait a bit and see how that improves.
So I was at staples a couple days ago, and had a chance to play with the HP Mini-Note, MSI wind, and Aspire One. They were display units not turned on, so I could only see the hardware, and really just play with the keyboard. Now, I have an Aspire One, and the keyboard on it is pretty good, except the left shift key, I'm pretty happy with it. But the HP mini-note's keyboard is fantastic. Seriously, it's tons better than the aspire one. The keyboard of the MSI wind is about the same as the Aspire One with one difference, the keys are a bit more matte, which means they are not smooth like the A1's, which is actually nice. My biggest problem with typing on the A1 is that sometimes my fingers slip off keys since they are a touch smaller. The wind doesnt' appear to have this.
Now, I still think the keyboard on the A1 is pretty good, and I don't regret getting it now after playing with the MSI and HP netbooks. Acer made a good keyboard, but MSI's is slightly better, and HP just plainly got it right.
Of course, HP got the rest of the notebook wrong by using the VIA C7.
well ya, there's that. They gambled by putting one out second to asus in hoping that more people would buy it before the flood came, they lost becuase of the processor. I would have bought a mini note for $700 when it came out if it would have had Atom inside.
Seriously, I want to see someone mate that upcoming ULV AMD chip with the HD3200 for a gaming netbook.
It could probably handle WoW or an RTS on med/low, but I doubt you'll get more than that out of it.
Though, you get a $400 netbook that'll run WoW pretty good and you'd have a lot of interested people.
Snake Gandhi on
XBL: That Stone Dude
0
Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited September 2008
The 1000H dropped to $450 on Newegg as well, so I'm thinking this might be the new official price point. The 901 has also officially dropped, and it's selling for $500 now across the board. Hooray for competition!
It looks like I had some false hopes. It's still using the same (shitty) intel chipset, but it does have a geforce 9300 IN ADDITION to the GMA 950. Gaming netbook you say, why of course! :-)
archonwarp on
0
Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
edited September 2008
Yes, I'm very, VERY tempted to get the N10, despite the price. I just don't think I can pass up the 1000H for $450 though. That puts the top tiered N10 at nearly twice the price of the 1000H, for features which are only marginally better imo. The 9300 is nice, but honestly, how great could it be paired with the Atom? And considering I won't be using it for games anyway, that's not a big deal to me.
But a better part of my brain is going 'THREE DEE NETBOOK!'
What's taking AMD so damned long to get their shit adapted to the mini-ITX form factor? It draws a fuckton less power than Intel's Atom/945 combo and it's considerably faster. You'd think with their problems scaling the phenom to high end, they'd be all over this sort of opportunity.
So, that 120 GB HDD Acer Aspire One at Best Buy is no longer an option since they've finally said they won't be getting any more shipments of them or at least not for a long while that they know of.
When I found out I couldn't get it first hand at Best Buy I started rethinking the EEE PC 1000H, but for 50 dollars less and twice the HD space for what I want the A1 was the better choice especially with the 6 Cell battery.
It looks like I had some false hopes. It's still using the same (shitty) intel chipset, but it does have a geforce 9300 IN ADDITION to the GMA 950. Gaming netbook you say, why of course! :-)
Not bad, it'd run WoW just fine.
But $700 for a netbook is way to much.
Snake Gandhi on
XBL: That Stone Dude
0
Big DookieSmells great!Houston, TXRegistered Userregular
Posts
Yes, and they're typically hideously overpriced, often limiting your monthly bandwidth to an amount measured in megabytes, even if you subscribe to a so-called "unlimited" plan.
I'm not really interested right now, the tech for "everywhere wireless internet" just isn't quite there yet. We'll see how things go when WiMax hits.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
But then Engadget reported on this; http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/05/acer-aspire-ones-6-cell-is-a-whole-lot-cheaper-bundled/ that is now sold out and not even saying it has anything of the sort of stock. I have a notifier set on it. I think I'll just try once more next Wednesday at Best Buy if I'm not notified before then from Amazon, and if the Amazon deal is out too then I don't know what I'll do at that point. That 350-400 price tag is just way to appealing to want to go higher. And how I've got my mind set up on how I'm going to use it, a SSD drive version is just out of the question.
Steam: Car1gt // Tumblr // Facebook // Twitter
I may wait and see how Ubuntu looks on one of these, as I wouldn't mind being able to check it out on a little webbook I'm only using for browsing and word processing.
Doesn't the SSD have a lot of problems though?
I pay 30$ for 4 gigs of net traffic over 3g, at that rate it's useful but hardly the sort of thing most real users would pay for. It's definitely slow... feels on par with 56.6k dialup.
Honestly, unless you absolutely have to have a shock proof drive, there aren't really many advantages to using SSDs over normal HDDs (and there are actually many disadvantages to using them, such as price and speed). The technology isn't quite there yet, or at least not at any reasonable price. In a couple of years I think these things will start to become much more beneficial and reasonable. For now though, in terms of normal computer usage, they're more of a novelty than anything else.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
As for the Eee 901, I wouldn't say it's all that overpriced. You can get it for $550 from Newegg, and cheaper from some places. I'd say it needs to be at a $500 price point and offer a HDD option, but otherwise it's pretty good. I'd buy it at $550 if they offered a version with a 1.8" HDD, but with that currend SSD configuration they're using, no thanks.
Honestly, after reading up on the new Asus N10, I think that's the one for me. It's more expensive, but the extra features offered while still retaining a relatively small form factor and excellent battery life are worth it to me.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Maybe it's just over here, but a lot of people have Asus laptops. If I'm going to recommend a brand I recommend Asus, if nothing else because their warranties are awesome. They're the only laptop dudes I know of with a service centre in our city, the warranty is two or three years (I forget which), global, and they send a frickin' truck to collect it from you.
As for Acer versus other brands, they're better than the trash like Fujitsu and whatnot and about on par with HP or Toshiba as far as I've seen for severity of fuckups. Maybe worse. I mean, I have no statistics but it's true that when I see someone bring in their Acer laptop (though I have not seen their netbooks) I usually think, yeah, that's probably fucked. Asus, hands-down the best brand. I can't bust out the percentages because these are just my observations.
Using a go phone (at&t) sim card, you can activate a plan where its 3g connectivity for 20$ a month, unlimited access (within reason, which means you arent getting caught I think?). no contract and unlimited usage. Ive just been looking for a cheaper 3g modem. Theres a bluetooth capable 3g phone right now for 60$, which works perfectly with the 901. Ive been looking for a cheaper phone to use with a datacable, but am not having much luck so far. I think ill break down and buy the 60$ phone for this soon.
I think that seals the deal for me.
Edit - Wait, it was. Or maybe still is. I don't know what's going on.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
It's still showing when you click on the "show new or used" thing for 450 from Amazon. But then when you go into the cart it says it "usually ships within 1 to 2 months" How accurate is that? if I pay the bucks for the 3 day shipping and don't get it for 2 months am I screwed since it says 1 to 2 months? Does it actually take 1 to 2 months? 'Cause that is mighty tempting since I can't find a Acer Aspire One to save my life.
Steam: Car1gt // Tumblr // Facebook // Twitter
Edit - And the zipzoomfly deal is now out of stock. Something's definitely up.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Now, I still think the keyboard on the A1 is pretty good, and I don't regret getting it now after playing with the MSI and HP netbooks. Acer made a good keyboard, but MSI's is slightly better, and HP just plainly got it right.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
It's true. And the fact that it's expensive.
well ya, there's that. They gambled by putting one out second to asus in hoping that more people would buy it before the flood came, they lost becuase of the processor. I would have bought a mini note for $700 when it came out if it would have had Atom inside.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
It could probably handle WoW or an RTS on med/low, but I doubt you'll get more than that out of it.
At 1024x600, I bet it could handle some light-duty FPS gaming. The HD3200 is about on-par with the 8400M GS.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Preorder the N10 now! :-)
It looks like I had some false hopes. It's still using the same (shitty) intel chipset, but it does have a geforce 9300 IN ADDITION to the GMA 950. Gaming netbook you say, why of course! :-)
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
A part of my brain is just going 'Atom... 9300?'
But a better part of my brain is going 'THREE DEE NETBOOK!'
What's taking AMD so damned long to get their shit adapted to the mini-ITX form factor? It draws a fuckton less power than Intel's Atom/945 combo and it's considerably faster. You'd think with their problems scaling the phenom to high end, they'd be all over this sort of opportunity.
However, i guess it's for the best since I just (pre-)ordered this Acer Aspire One http://www.amazon.com/Acer-8-9-inch-Processor-Battery-Sapphire/dp/B001EYV9TM/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1221100005&sr=8-3 from Amazon. I don't really know when I'll get it, but I suppose I can be patient for a while longer for a 400 dollar 160GB 6-cell battery netbook. Does anyone know how to find out when something that says "not yet available" will in fact be available?
When I found out I couldn't get it first hand at Best Buy I started rethinking the EEE PC 1000H, but for 50 dollars less and twice the HD space for what I want the A1 was the better choice especially with the 6 Cell battery.
Steam: Car1gt // Tumblr // Facebook // Twitter
Samsung has entered the fray.
edit: The keyboard looks excellent. Full-sized right shift key. I can't even begin to express how important that is to me.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
Fuck the right shift key. all the cool people live on the left side.
But $700 for a netbook is way to much.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
Like a bisexual