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Netbooks -- Opinions and Thoughts - Passing Fad or Here-to-stay?
Bamelin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm thinking about getting a netbook. Lately I've been having to fly around alot and need something to check emails/surf while at hotels. Usually I don't check any bags so a netbook would be perfect as they are so light.
Anyone have any recommendations?
Currently I'm looking at the Acer Aspire One, the MSI Wind and the new Dell Mini 9.
I'm leaning towards the Acer Aspire One as my top choice simply because it's the cheapest one (in Canada). Well the Dell one is about the same price but specs wise the Aspire One is currently better (includes a 160 gig drive, dell one only 16 gig SSD)
Anyone have any of these things? What do you guys think of netbooks in general? Alot of people say they are a fad, however every time I'm in a store I see people oohing and ahhing over them. All completely ancidotal of course, but most sales people tell me they are flying off the shelves, and are difficult to keep in stock.
Anyone have any recommendations?
Currently I'm looking at the Acer Aspire One, the MSI Wind and the new Dell Mini 9.
I'm leaning towards the Acer Aspire One as my top choice simply because it's the cheapest one (in Canada). Well the Dell one is about the same price but specs wise the Aspire One is currently better (includes a 160 gig drive, dell one only 16 gig SSD)
Anyone have any of these things? What do you guys think of netbooks in general? Alot of people say they are a fad, however every time I'm in a store I see people oohing and ahhing over them. All completely ancidotal of course, but most sales people tell me they are flying off the shelves, and are difficult to keep in stock.
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At the moment, the only two anyone shoulder consider an an Eee or an Aspire, and only with a 6 cell battery. Having such a small and long lasting computer has very much changed how I use a computer in my day to day life.
btw, check the Eee thread, it has turned into a netbook thread.
Well ... I don't think they are a fad myself, however some folks think they are too unwieldy to be useful (hard to type on, not powerful enough for anything but basic applications, etc).
Personally I tried out the Aspire One at a Best Buy yesterday and felt I could type on it fine. The screen was abit small, but for what I need it for it's perfect. I am being tempted though by the more expensive MSI Wind with it's larger LCD.
I'll definately check out the Eee thread.
Given time with the Dual Core Atoms that are coming out, better integrated graphics and improvements in SSD tech I can only see them getting better and better. (As long as the price stays low as well). I don't think I could see myself going for another laptop over 10" now, using a 15"+ laptop is fine at a desk, but after the 9" Acer they feel unwieldy!
I mean, if it can handle Eclipse and OpenOffice, what more do you really need? I mean, it's no CAD workstation, but still. The amount of computer that will run "anything but new games" is pretty much a fixed quantity.
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Definitely check out the Eee 1000H/A, same specs as the MSI Wind and a slightly different keyboard layout.
Really, all the 8.9 and 10" netbooks have the same stuff in them (Intel Atom 1.6, 1Gb of RAM, GMA950 graphics, etc.). The only differences are the outside casing, the battery size, and the keyboard layout. Exceptions to this are HP's Mininote and the Eee 1000HD, which have shitty Via C7-M and Celeron-D processors in them which should be avoided at all costs.
As a primary computer for people that don't want a lot of power, I can almost see it. I've been wondering if the missus would like one.
Also, I can see where the fad thing might come from. This modern resurgence (Toshiba Libretto anyone?) of netbooks only started a year ago. That's when Asus announced the 700. In that time a good half dozen manufacturers have rushed the market with very similar hardware. It basically comes down to what do you want it to look/feel like? Okay pick this one. It doesn't matter.
There's no clear market leader, the closest is Asus but they don't do nearly enough advertising for the average American to know their name. It all could technically vanish as fast as it appeared if the sales weren't there but they are.
I have an iPod Touch, and a HTC Hermes running Winmo and while I love the pod you can't beat having a fully fledged computer, with an (almost) full size keyboard, XP/Office etcetc. The pod is a great music player/quick emailer/look something up on the net and all those things, but when it comes to doing some actual work I'll whip out the A1.
Yeah. I tried turning a high-end PDA into a secondary computer for a while.
You end up missing some WEIRD, basic shit, like goddamned flash. And a decent internet browser in general.
As for netbooks, they're definitely here to stay. However, I'm still waiting to see them to lead to people making more games designed to run on computers of low power like this, of the professional, non-flash-casual variety.
The way I see it the average consumer isn't seeing the difference between "Netbook" and "Laptop".
What most of my non techy friends see is "a laptop I can buy for under 400 dollars. Not only that it's smaller than all those other expensive one's out there!"
This is literally a conversation I had with a buddy of mine. Using the cell phone market as an example, the mass market has been trained to think that smaller, slicker, more portable, is almost always the way to go.
I think there are three big factors coming into play. The first that I mentioned (and I believe to the the biggest), is that the general public doesn't perceive or really understand the difference between the netbook and laptop catagories (in terms of power) ... what they see is a laptop that they can pick up for super cheap. I went looking around at netbooks two days ago. It was almost impossible to get a turn on the Acer Aspire One ... there was almost always somebody toying around on it, people marvelling at how small it was while still being a "full featured laptop" (their words not mine).
The second factor is portability - netbooks are small enough that it's feasible to carry around with you everywhere you go ... not just on a business trip.
The third factor I believe to be one of fashion/style. Netbooks are a relatively new thing. When you pull one of these out there are still ALOT of people that have never seen a "laptop" that small before. Everyone wants to know "what is that?, Wow is that a laptop!" This kind of plays into the whole first factor of people not really seeing a difference in catagories between laptop and netbook ... what they see is a sleek looking laptop that's smaller and more portable than anything they have ever seen before.
The big laptop manufacturers are in abit of a quandry. While they are all jumping into the netbook market, I believe that some of them are very worried about what this might do to their higher priced laptop sales. Look at Dell's first offering ... in my opinion the Mini 9 is purposely gimped (lack of HDD space, crappy battery) ... give your sub 400 dollar netbook too many features and many customers won't bother buying your more expensive full priced laptop. In the past if you wanted a portable computer you HAD to buy a laptop ... there really wasn't any choice. I have a feeling though, for the vast majority out there, netbooks are EXACTLY what they are looking for ... the perfect combination of price and portability.
It's going to be interesting to see how the netbook market develops and how it affects the much higher priced laptop market.
edit:
Also regarding Game support for netbooks it appears that there will be lots coming ... I stumbled across this article here -- Gameloft Supports Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor Based MIDs and Netbooks
An iPod Touch doesn't even compare, really.
the popular choice in netbooks seems to be the Eee 901, 1000H, any Aspire Once with a 6 cell battery, or the MSI wind.
But it's not a real computer; you still have all the limitations of that phone: it won't install the same applications you're used to using; it's tied to a specific provider and a specific operating system, etc.
If I've got to carry around a netbook-sized device anyway, it might as well be a real computer.
Yea, this guy's been whoring around this thing on a few threads now, a couple of them look like straight advertisements. Just tune it out.
I mean, I wouldn't, because data plans are expensive, but still. It's possible.
It may have started a year ago in the West. In Asia subnotebooks have been going pretty solid for a while now. The Sony VAIO Picturebook and Toshiba Liretto L back in 2001/02 were basically the same size as the Eee 1000x, and lighter. Granted, the Picturebook cost ~7x then what an Eee does now, but this is more like a post-tablet/UMPC resurgence than a fad.
You're dumb. Look at how many posts I have. Look at how long I've been on PA (2000, I think). There are three goddamn threads in which this is very relevant, though this thread here technically isn't one of them, considering it shouldn't fucking exist. Couple that with the fact that there's a very low overlap between those who would read the cell phone thread and those who would read the Eee thread, and it makes sense for it to be posted twice. Did you even check the thing out, are you just assuming that because I mentioned it more than once that it's worthless?
You can, but this costs zero dollars for data usage (if you have it on your phone), as it beams it via bluetooth or usb and makes the device a 'dock' for your phone. This turns your phone into what most people assume a netbook can be used for -- taking notes, emailing, reading webpages (though we all know that netbooks are well beyond that stage at this point).
That's basically it. The Eee, and anything else with an Atom or Via, are well beyond the simpler stage of "hurr take notes and email" that people seem to expect from small, inexpensive computers. I would much rather have an N10 than almost anything on the market right now, but I can't swing myself to spend 600 bones on something that's going to be obsolete soon, particularly with as tight as my budget is. I truthfully would rather not spend $200 right now either.
I do think it's a pretty sweet device, but that's because I have an htc touch, and I can't stand doing any long term typing on a touch-screen keyboard. But I don't know if you read the link or my post based on what you're saying. It isn't a computer. It isn't tied to any service provider. It's tied to an OS, windows mobile, which is one of three mainstream options for smartphones in the united states, and probably the most prevalent (most WM phones are available for a pretty low price) [I guess they're working on getting it to work with blackberries at the moment, but it's not known when that will happen]. A large fraction of people with those have internet access on their phone. Also, it doesn't involve installing applications at all. It's just a dock for your phone so that you have a full keyboard and large screen. They claim it has "no cpu", though I don't really know how that's possible.
It's tied to your phone, which is tied to a service provider. You can only run software on it that will run on your smartphone. And it's about the size of an Eee 901 anyway.
So you can either pair your data-plan smartphone to this device with Bluetooth, or you can pair your data-plan smartphone to an Eee with Bluetooth.
Or just cut out the middleman and get a 3G card.
Given the amount and diversity of programs I can install on a real computer vs. those I can install on a cellphone, it's not really comparable.
(and don't link to the thing in four different threads, seriously.)
If you have a smartphone, or any cellphone really, you will probably have it with you all the time. It doesn't make it a non-issue, but I'll explain why it's important that it doesn't have an OS below.
You cannot tether with most smartphone plans. I bring this up because I sell cellular phones. When you add tethering, it's at least 15 dollars with most carriers, if the plan even allows it at all (most do not). If they catch you doing it via a hack, you can have your service terminated for breaching agreement, or you can be charged literally thousands of dollars for the data transfer that wasn't part of your plan. I'm not exaggerating on that number.
For most carriers, the average rate of a 5 gig plan (amount of data transfer per month) is $60. The next plan down is usually 50 - 250 megs for $50 dollars. Typical smartphone internet plans run 30 or below and are either 'unlimited' (~5 gigs, but they'll let you go over once in a while), or a bit less. If you already have the internet on your smartphone, which is often the case, why should you pay extra? Yes, aircards are fantastic devices, but not everyone wants to/can afford to spend that much money.
The reason that this works is because (from what I understand) it's just your phone accessing the data through all of the normal ports and programs, and displayed on the device.
If you want a netbook for emailing, using office, or internet browsing, and you have a smartphone, it's pretty worthwhile. If you don't meet those criteria, it isn't worth it. The internet anywhere thing is what matters to me, and this will do anything other than video very nicely. It isn't a mini-laptop, it's a netbook in the way the original linux Eee was, though much more gimped. *EDIT* If you're familiar with the windows mobile operating system though, you'll know that there a quite a lot of programs designed/ported for it. It has a hugely active dev. base.
Three. And I gave a good reason for the other two. This thread has no purpose existing, all of the questions and discussion belong in the Eee thread, which should be renamed the netbook thread anyway.
I was going to make a post as to why I think this device is a bad idea, but this pretty much sums it up.
Anyone remember the Palm Folieo? Same thing, but everyone figured out that it was so bad that they killed the device before it even came out, and this was even before netbooks existed.
I'd love to hear some impressions once it actually comes out, see if it works like a nice netbook/gaming machine.
They look pretty interesting, but they seem to almost explicitly designed for "Homebrew". I'll be a lot more interested in it if the keyboard is changed or a good version of Linux gets put on it.
Yeah, the Pandora's in a slightly different category. It kicks ass, but it's a different category.