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What's The Perfect Balance For a Budget Laptop?
cheapbob writes "Recently HP officially unveiled a budget ultraportable laptop aimed to compete with the likes of Asus Eee PC. According to Compal, one of Dell's assemblers, Dell is also going to enter the budget ultra-portable market soon. All of these devices lack many of the features associated with larger-sized laptops, such as optical drives and large amounts of storage space, yet demand for them is very high. Initial reviews of these devices unsurprisingly expose them to be underpowered and lacklustre. What's the appeal? What do you think is the perfect balance of features and price point for a budget laptop?"
$100 and it's its own Internet infrastructure.
That is perfect.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
I commute two hours each way, by train bus and subway. Those of us who spend hours in transit every day can't even understand why someone would need to ask the question about what the appeal is.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the appeal to me is that the machines can do enough- and they do it for an affordable price. That's the key. It was not long ago - and still is the case - that anything this small and underpowered cost a lot.
The HP review says it does fine doing the basics - that's all most people need. For people who are on the move a lot, lugging around a full size laptop gets really old. People want to connect to the internet anywhere, but they don't want to carry a boat anchor to do it. These umpcs may be small but they are a lot bigger than many phones that would by the way, cost more. So there is the sweet spot. Price and size.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
PowerBook G3 Pismo. Still the best balance of ergonomics, battery life, and performance.
Too bad it can't run Leopard.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Small is neat, I suppose, but not something I really care about.
My criteria is pretty much (1) As much power as possible under (2) a reasonable price. All other things being equal, I'll probably select a smaller laptop, but I would gladly sacrifice a couple pounds for a larger HD, a DVD-Rom, expandability, or a full assortment of ports.
I know some people do care, but for me thickness has about as much bearing on my choice as the thing's color.
There's a market for light and cheap. To high income people, $400-$500 is practically disposable. You can spend that much on an iPod touch. It's not a big deal to break it or lose it because it's not expensive.
If all you want is email or web access, a cheap ultra portable like an ASUS eee is a perfect match.
Comparing these devices to full sized laptops misses the point.
The OLPC, if marketed better, might make a perfect video phone. Many of these other smaller machines are REAL CLOSE to the features required for a portable carry anywhere video phone.
Isn't that what we REALLY want?
Finally, if it's cheap enough to not really force a user to chose between owning a portable and owning a desktop (or better equipped portable) and instead they can have both, then you sir have a cash machine!
Initial reviews of these devices unsurprisingly expose them to be underpowered and lacklustre.
I am not the type that needs to do big Excel Solver sheets or Matlab simulations while on the go. Why carry more than twice the weight for what amounts to a bigger power draw and little marginal value? A computer that consistently hits 40% CPU utilization (fairly high for a desktop) is a computer that is still idle 60% of the time, and that's what my Eee PC is right now.
Gimme lightweight any day; if I need CD-ROM data or more CPU performance, I'll wait until I get to either home or work to do the big grinding.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Buy a refurbished machine from Dell's outlet store :-)
Seriously, the most important thing I've always found when buying a laptop (or any machine) is not to skimp on memory. Unless you're buying a portable gaming rig, processor power isn't really that critical and your typical bundled graphics device is sufficient to handle any kind of desktop (okay, maybe not Aero...)
Came across these guys recently:
http://minipc.aopen.com/Global/spec.htm
Nice looking device. My main reservation about the Asus eee PCs is the screensize - my days of squinting at tiny screens are long gone.
I have not used the optical drive in my laptop for years. I use jump drives and back up to other hard drives (much better ease of use and archival storage). I use USB thumb drives to move data. DVDs and CDs are dead media soon to go the way of the floppy.
My favorite laptop of the past was a Sharp UM32. It had a compact flash slot for moving data and no optical drive. It was thin and light and was more than powerful enough for portable use.
I like small for laptop. Portability and weight are important, blazing speed is not. I use a laptop to browse the web, check email, and to check out my photos as I take them. I edit them on my high-powered desktop at home.
My mom had one of these orange screened Compaq monsters.
Mom had a drapery business then. She'd drag me off to client's houses and talk window dressings with them, and I'd hide in the corner with this portable 386 and play games on it's orange screen. mmm reader rabbit.
oh you mean a modern day computer? I don't know. I have this 10 pound dell from work and love the 1920x1200 pixel display. 2 hour battery is enough for most purposes but when I travel I'll bring 2-4, depending on the location.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
I'd say that most modern pc's are excessively overpowered; I have been happy with my past 2 machines being in the 1Ghz range of CPU speed, and didn't have a problem with doing the typical things I'd be doing when portable. The only thing I notice is the time it takes to start and shutdown, and battery life.
Mostly when portable I'm doing basic word processing to leverage time that would otherwise be wasted; like airline travel. Without a desk I'm not going to be doing high end graphic work (trackpads aren't precise enough) and I'm not a big gamer. Light, powerful *enough* and inexpensive will do nicely.
It should be able to handle running 3D games at low resolutions... 1024x768, say, or a widescreen version of that. It shouldn't be able to handle Crisis at 1900x1200 without a flicker, but at least let me putter about on World of Warcraft and Sims 2 without feeling like I'm working on something from five years ago.
Beyond that... storage isn't an issue if you've got memsticks or cards. Give it wireless, a decent CPU, and a gig or two of RAM (one if Linux/XP, two if Vista) and WiFi and I'd be happy. And, for the love of god, don't let it burn my lap...
Those smallish ones are fine, but not paying what they are asking when you can get a full size normal budget laptop for the same scratch $400-500. $100-200 tops right now would be my budget.
Anyway, that's my price point for getting a toy-ish low featured laptop, although they are featured-enough, solid state drive is fine, lowerpowered CPU is fine, just not be skimpy with the RAM, at least a gig or two.. The original OLPC hundred buck idea would be nice then.
So, you richer guys, get crackin and buy a zillion of them for what they are asking now, so the price can drop some more..heh.
Macbook air low end is what? $1799?
The low end on this HP is under $500. I'd say if it takes me an extra hour to get Suse tweaked just right on this box then my time is worth over $1300 an hour.
Even with extra ram, a hard drive and suse - I'm still going to come in a thousand or more under the comparable apple.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The a Linux, ability to watch decent video playback and web browsing are what I require. I have really been giving the eee a good look.
I bought a suplused HP Jornada 720 for $100. A very usable ultra portable except The OS cannot be upgraded, so one is stuck with Windows CE 3.01, no way of transferring files off the machine except by sneakernetting the memory card, and a browser than can't do SSL2, Javascript, Java, iFrames, PNG's ... But for plain web pages it's outstanding.
It cost $900 when it came out in the late 90s, they could probably make it for less than $500 today.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?cc=us&product=61677
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I think you're asking the wrong question. Budget, Ultra-portable, Powerful - you can have any 2 out of 3.
If the question is truly about Budget and "powerful enough", obviously the thing won't be ultraportable. You can get a reasonable machine (~5 lbs, 14" screen, low-end Core Duo or Turion based) for about $500, or even lower if you look for sales or rebates.
You can then add a cheap or free office suite (e.g. OpenOffice), Firefox, etc., and you're ready to go.
ONE hour to tweak a Linux distro as tight as MacOSX? Your time is worth much, much more than $1300 an hour. Your time could make SuSE replace Apple. Yeah, 15% market share in a year, that's how much for the Messiah who figured out how to configure the distro Just Right?
That everything works? I mean EVERYTHING. Temperature sensors and webcam and all... No, you lie. No one can do that. In under a year? No, you said under one hour. YEAH RIGHT.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Were talking budget. not ultra portable. the comparison point is therefore a macbook not an air.
good luck with your Suse system when you need to run MS Office for compatibility reasons, or Photoshop or basically any app found in the bussiness world.
If you are a student, then yeah, time have no value, to use suse.
I use Linux too. But I use it on my servers and the laptops that have to work with servers. but I don't use it on my bussiness or personal laptops.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Or the most common answers:
4)Apple overcharges for mediocre hardware
5)You realize that Mac OS is the worst GUI of the past decade. Really I have to go all the way back to CDE to find a windowing environment I think is worse.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
<Anecdote>
Back in 2000, I got a new work laptop: a Toshiba portege 3440... seemed a bit too small at first and seemingly underpowered, but to be honest, it was quite adequate for taking notes, hacking my Perl, Java & SQL (didn't use the monster-ish Eclipse back then), and when needed, VNC into my desktop to run my batch queries and compiliations. It could also play Starcraft and Counterstrike fine (with an external mouse). I really miss that laptop.. it had no floppy, cdrom or even parallel/serial ports (the port replicator was needed for those).
</Anecdote>
I really miss that 'top, even with my macbook, it's heavier, and has a superdrive that I've used like twice in the year I've owned the thing.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I don't need it to be powerful or have great performance to do these things. These reviewers are using the wrong scale to review these types of laptops. They might as well give an economy car bad reviews because it can't beat a Ferrari on the straight away. You review a tool on the basis of how well it does the job it is designed for, not how well it matches up against something entirely different.
No we're talking ultra portable and budget. The HP 2133 is lighter than the air - and so my point stands.
I wouldn't want to work with office or photoshop on an air or the 2133 - that is not the point. I want something that size to be mobile. Suse is great for browsing, email, and if I needed to I could even handle office docs sufficiently.
I don't work in the business world - I work in the tech world and there isn't really anything I can't do, that I need to do, with a linux box.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
To run guiding software, charting programs and remote exposure controls. Much less cumbersome and more battery friendly than my old Dell C400.
In my experience, if youre not using a mac either...
need some decent software?
I have a mac and it's neat for web browsing. But sometimes you just need a decent editor, and a decent file browser that can actually connect to SSH sites instead of doing a WTF at the existence of non-apple protocols.
Or maybe you just want a consistent user interface for your programs, e.g. not having zombie menus not attached to any window, or not having the close-window shortcut close an entire application.
Maybe you just want the programs to run properly, e.g. without all the ugly-as-hell bitmap fonts you get when trying to run anything on macOSX (e.g. inkscape, gnucash)
Cheap, small, with features that make sense. This implies:
1. Reasonable battery life (2-3 hrs is probably OK)
2. Don't need CD/DVD
3. Personally, I'd drop audio if it would save a bit of cash/space. Probably too many people want to play mp3s on it for this to be a sensible option, though.
4. Relatively slow processor is OK.
5. Screen should be color, but doesn't need to be wide-angle, especially fast or have top-of-the-line color.
6. Touch-screen. Adds to the cost, but makes sense for an ultraportable. I suspect an ultraportable tablet is the ideal for a "small laptop".
7. Wireless (duh!) and wired networking. USB host (cameras/ipods/whatever)
8. Don't need video out, or a dock.
9. A5 sized (the smallest you can go and still have a barely-tolerable keyboard) Going Mac Air-thin isn't necessary, but getting down to 1" would be good.
Do you need compatibility with MS office? IF so then you will need Windows and MS Office unfortuntately.
I know I will probably get modded down as a troll for not advocating openoffice and linux, but I am going to say its not fully compatible and writer is nearly useless for my papers in the apa format required for college. Excel compatibility is my concern too and I need the real version of MS office.
If you want cheap and do not need compatibility there are alternatives like the Asus notebooks and OLPC's. However hybrid and solid state drives are expensive still. If you wait when there are sales or use teh internet you can find overstocked notebooks for hundreds off.
I bought my Toshiba Satellite for $650 on sale. If I became more patient I could have received the notebook from the net for $499 as it became overstocked by some of the retailers.
Also ask bestbuy or officemax if you can buy the display of a discontinued notebook. They will usually knock off another %15 of the onsale price.
http://saveie6.com/
I just bought a Toshiba A210, it's not small but at $700 it is cheap considering it comes with an AMD dual-core cpu, 2GB ram, 160GB hd, and a really nice 15.4" screen. It runs gutsy and xp on a dual-boot quite well. and there is enough juice to run a centos guest under vmware under xp. I'd rather have a complete feature set including the dvd burner and yes, the 56K modem which I use at the cottage.
I don't want one. What I want is one of those mini-tablet/large-PDA thingies Bill Gates showed us a couple of years ago. You know, the ones with no keyboard, a 7" touch screen with handwriting recognition, etc. Oh, sure, they're available, but I think $500 is a reasonable price, not the $1500 the makers are charging.
I think the biggest appeal of these "budget" laptops is just that -- the price fits most people's budgets.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
2x usb2.0 ports, check.
The ability to power an external HDD. Check.
Space inside for HSDPA and Bluetooth. Check.
Upgradeable storage. Check. Although with the Eee it looks limited to ultra low profile gear like flash. The CF-M34 will take CFIDE so if you want solid state, they're up to 64GB by now I think.
TOUCH SCREEN. Eee PC doesn't have this. Panasonic Toughbook CF-M34 has this, but only one USB port and that's 1.1. It does have Cardbus so nothing a PCMCIA adapter won't fix - though that will require a twintail cable to power the drive.
Military-spec rugged. Eee PC doesn't meet this criterion. Toughbook CF-M34 does with flying colours.
Battery life - this is always a doozy. The Eee PC runs from a 22W power brick the size of a bar of soap. The CF-M34 runs on a 50W PSU. It might run on a lower rating if it was run on solid state storage, in which case a good few days on a car battery. Mine runs on a 10 amp marine gel battery and gets two days continuous with a 30GB 470mA Hitachi drive. Plenty for what I use it for (GPS via Cardbus CF adapter/GPS receiver).
Speed is not an issue. You're not playing games on an ultraportable. You don't NEED 2GB of RAM. 512MB is PLENTY for most anything a swanky folding PDA is capable of. Storage might be an issue if you're playing music or videos on it, but there again I'm not into watching video on a postage stamp. I want half a wall (wonder how far they're at with built-in projectors...?)
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The best "laptop" I've ever used was the Radioshack M100. Could take notes ALL DAY (maybe even all week). Upload the notes, and continue. The size of a clipboard, and a reasonable keyboard (for typing).
Now? *If* it plays movies (DVD, or other), it should be able to play at least 2 full movies (at least 4 hour battery life, although the M100 lasted 20 to 40 hours!). I should be able to pull it out and type on it (capture notes) without waiting minutes for it to "boot". It should be dead quiet for use in meetings. It should be (almost) indestructible. It should offer telnet/ssh connectivity (bonus if it supports X). It should be able to use standard batteries of some kind (AA?), or a common DC input (12V? 6V? but with a wide tolerance). It should support USB ports for additional storage. It should have integrated WIFI and RJ45 network plug. It should NOT be larger than 8.5x11x1. The keyboard should have full (typist) travel.
Does this product exist? I don't know. My current laptop (Thinkpad T43) occasionally goes "super loud" (its fan kicks in), and even blows papers off of my desk. It is too warm to use comfortably on my lap. The battery only lasts 1.5 hours (not quite a movie). The keyboard doesn't have enough travel, but it does run Linux (and therefore telnet, ssh and X). It also takes up to a minute to wake up sometimes. I use it, but I am sure not happy with it.
I don't think my "ideal" laptop exists yet -- but I have to look into the new ultra-small units (not for the size; I think that the keyboards will be too small). I am also very interested in the Apple Air.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Lightweight would be nice, but that costs a fortune. A long battery life (3+ hours, 5 more likely) would be great. Something that you could lug into a college class, and take notes on while on battery power FOR THE WHOLE DAY (3 or so classes) would be idea.
I keep laughing when I see these $400-$500 that are marketed as "budget". A year ago, Wally world had a low end laptop for sale at $300 on clearance, as it was the last one, but I am still kicking myself for not getting it, as I haven't seen anything available for anywhere close to that price (sorry a 2G Eee PC for $299 doesn't count, as they are near impossible without a soldering iron).
I want to run XP and play some of my old games (Ultima, Monkey Island, Civ 3 anyone) when I am air port, road trip, or mobile, and want to goof off instead of being productive. Just my $.02
They are a PDA with an easy-to-type-on keyboard.
Email? Check.
Surf Web? Check.
Can type on it? Check.
Cheap? Check.
There you go.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I'll bet Jobs & Co. are willing to spend the $100 million on gobs of prototypes and the extensive innovation that will do a breakout on screen and data input.
To date, what I see looks a bit recycled.
I think the Tobshiba line of computers will give you the most value.
Also, check Consumer Reports. They still list Apple as the best when it comes to service but they're not the best value.
posting as AC because I'm about to get killed by the fanbois with the mod points.
Personally, I don't need an optical drive. USB thumb drives work fine. Give me an ethernet port, 802.11g, decent size hard drive, decent graphics, usb, bluetooth, comfy keyboard and a detachable mouse that stores in the laptop.
~smith55js
In my experience, if you're posting on internet forums about how everyone should be using your favourite operating system you're a platform snob, even if you claim you're not.
The only criteria anyone should care about is whether M$ will allow its manufacturer to sell XP on it.
It will be three years before enough laptop hardware to run Vi$ta 'quickly' will cost less than $1500. I would urge all the OEMs to push that definition as hard as they can.
A used ibm x30 is 200 dollars with a 60gb hd 512ram and 1.2 ghz chip. 3lbs and an 1inch thick. In another year it will be 100 dollars. Why bother with a new computer if all you want to do with it is travel, net, and type?
I need portable email and web on a device with more real estate than my cell phone. Not sure why people would be puzzled by this. "Portable" is the operative word here, not speed. If my IBM 240X thinkpad were still working, (small, light, no CD drive) I'd still be using it today, despite it's "lackluster" Pentium II processor. These days, you can't buy a processor too slow to adequately surf the web, so whatever is the lowest power chip out there would be fine for this application.
Here's my list:
I want cellphone-like battery time, cellphone-like bootup speeds, and smartphone-like cost (low hundreds) but with a real keyboard and a screen larger than 240X320. I want real wifi, *not* some co-dependent device that has to be paired with some cell phone that I'd never purchase on it's own merits.
Add the ability to read the memory chip out of my camera, allow me rudimentary touch-up and publish on the web, and let the device sync with my smartphone, and I could leave my big honkin' laptop at home entirely. None of these features require blazing hot performance.
Seriously, do most people really need four gigahertz quad processors with eight gigs of ram in a laptop they actually intend to carry around with them? Or do they just *think* they do?
The other day a friend asked my advice on a new computer for his daughter. The old desktop was painfully obsolete, and daughter wanted a laptop. I told him, keep an eye open for sales, and buy the cheapest laptop you can find, because anything you can buy new today will be an order of magnitude more than she actually needs. Oh, and request Windows XP rather than Vista.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They are basic, note-taking, doc-writing, email-sending, web-surfing, e-book-reading, port-able, wire-less, hand-held AKA lap-top devices that don't cost much. Perfect for the coffee table to look up imdb ratings in front of the TV or to check the weather radar/forecast before heading out in the morning.
Couldn't fit-in any more hyphens.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
constantly computers are getting faster thanks to Moore's law, while most of the activities we need to perform with a portable PC remain the same. Check E-Mail, examine a presentation before delivering it, modify a document, browse the web to settle a bar bet, none of these tasks require a PC beyond the cheapest one can buy pre-assembled from the computer store anymore. As such, the focus drifts away from more horsepower under the hood and towards less burden on the user. Only a few years ago, if a busy professional needed a computer to accomplish these tasks, they would likely be toting around a bag as big as their briefcase filled with a large laptop and associated kit; a significant encumberment. Hauling a bag like this through the airport was a pain, but a necessary evil. The alternative was to tote around an itty-bitty PDA with a thumboard one could type on at roughly half the speed of smell, resulting in a computer that was portable, but not functional. With smaller and less power hungry components capable of handling the simple day to day tasks of a mobile professional without being a totally alien and cumbersome device as compared to a desktop PC, and prices falling out of the 2000 dollar range, UMPCs got two major legs up towards being a viable solution as compared to their predecessors. These devices are meant to be more like the original concept behind a PDA, an always available tool used in conjunction with a desktop PC, not as a replacement for it. When the UMPCs are considered more in the aforementioned role than as a sole computer, and with a price point in the ballpark of feasibility for that application, UMPC will gain an increasing foothold in the market among the userbase that demands computing agility over pure power.
A usb/firewire external is in no way a replacement for an internal drive, unless it's part of a laptop dock.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
*cough* Please. Maybe the few simple web 2.0 apps in the world, but the majority of applications are not simply and cleanly built. Have you tried running a powerpoint-like application via Web2.0? Native apps run MUCH cleaner. I need more cpu power to run a few 2.0 apps simultaneously than most native apps, thanks to the hoops they have to run through as a client-server application. Add in a few Flash anythings and now my system is crawling.
I've been messing about with a 4G EEE which cost a bit under $400. The thing is, full size laptops with optical drives and 1024x768 screens start at $550 so I don't ultimately find the EEE very interesting at the moment. What I WOULD find interesting is a machine at $200 or less with a 2G EEE's level of capability. Basically, give me the keyboard, trackpad, ability to surf web, play movies, play audio, and open documents over a network. If I want anything more then I'll pay more.
The EEE started great but they are moving in the direction of blinging them out more. I suppose this is to make them XP or even Vista capable. Again, that is what full size laptops are for. Give me a cheap Internet/Media/Document access machine and volume price it so that I can splatter classrooms with them.
I don't want to spend $2000 and lug a ton of stuff to do email when traveling, but the treo is just too small for the job. Give me the minimum size and price to type on and wifi to connect. A matching screen for a keyboard big enough to type on is enough to read email and do basic surfing, and should be inexpensive enough to be affordable to boot.
The Dell Vostro 1000 is about the same price as the EeePC, yet there's no comparison in terms of features - the Vostro is actually a usable modern laptop, the EeePC are specs from a couple years ago. I don't see why you would buy a crappy small laptop when you can get a fairly decent one for the same price.
...it is how you use it.
When traveling, I have a regular laptop. I don't want to lug around a "mini" laptop in addition to my normal one. If I need to do real work, and there is space, I'll pull out the normal laptop.
What I want is something that allows me to check e-mail; browse the web for travel itineraries, stocks, sports and weather; has instant on; access to all my contacts by syncing with my phone or main desktop; and, in a pinch, ssh, VNC or remote desktop.
And make it fit in my pocket.
All this is why I use a Nokia N810 internet tablet. The only thing it is missing is proper MS Exchange connectivity. Well, the ability to review MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint would be nice as well but for me it isn't critical. If I need to do that I prefer to have a full-size screen.
The Nokia I can just pull out of my pocket, check e-mail, weather and airline delays and be done in a few seconds. No need to deal with booting or restoring from sleep a laptop, much less trying to manage something that large while standing in line for coffee or boarding.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It looks like machines in that range are going to catch on. It's a good time to be looking at major open source projects and de-bloating them. Things like browser pre-fetch and page image cacheing, which never did that much for performance but bloated memory use, should go. Make sure that installs don't leave unused junk behind.
Sounds like a nice little device. Oooh, how about if it can play movies, youtube, and make phone calls?
We're slowly approaching the point where we can't reasonably waste any more cycles on basic tasks and call it "clean implementation" or "advanced under-the-hood features". We may have stopped optimizing software. We may have stopped using ASM and dirty hacks in favor of embedded python interpreter engines and memory-managed objects. But the truth is even with all that nifty stuff, you don't need very much computing power or memory to do certain tasks. Why Microsoft has churned out so many Office suites is truly interesting. Most people use a tiny subset of the features therein, and you'd be hard pressed to find people who are forced to use the newest and latest versions of Word because the, say, 97 version lacks the functionality they need. This group would, I assume, be so very small, that designing a software product the size of Office for them alone wouldn't get even close to returning the investment. Note I'm not talking about an office version that implements the new open document standard. But people are slowly catching up, and while our bleeding edge pimped workstations/home PCs have the power of a small supercomputer, we realize we don't really need a 9800GX2 just to place a bid on ebay and that for the majority of things you can do on a PC a low-end machine will suffice. The other things, such as playing 3d games, designing graphics or hosting a MySQL server are, out of physical size, dimension and user experience reasons, impractical to do on a laptop anyway. I'm pretty certain that even once this fad will be over, there will still be a huge number of people who'll be using ultraportable budget laptops, just because PDAs and cell phones suck at being real computers.
4 hours a day travelling? Perhaps telecommuting makes your time in the office less effective, but I doubt it. Even if you did, you could just use one or two of those commute hours to compensate.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
$309 (including shipping) for a mint-condition Thinkpad R40 from Ebay. Original IBM unit, not a Lenovo.
Works for me.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Although I'm from Latin America and we are cheap bastards, price is really THE issue all around the world.
I have some friends that have bougth for U$S:350 dual-core, 1GB RAM, DVD-RW laptops, but only in sales and refurbished. For a non USA citizen, you will always pay full list price, though, the Asus EEE is the cheapest laptop available.
Also size mothers. If you are not able to take always with you, it is of not point. Asus EEE is cheap AND ligth. A big difference with Sony TZ, which is ligth and EXPENSIVE.
All other functionality (DVD, etc) you can wait until you get home to use it, but an usable keyboard is for more important. That's why my friends that have heir iPhone laso have their EEE, typing on iPhone or BlackBerry is soooo slow. And you can't manage attachments.
That's why I think OLPC XO is a really bad idea. It took more than three years to get the product out, at twice the U$S:100 original price, and only in bulk orders... When they could have gone to Palm, and get the Zire21 at U$S:100 reatail. In bulk orders for U$S:100 they could get the keyboard and even could get Palm to develop some WiFi adapter. Even without WiFi, Palms already have IR. So the OLPC would have only to develop the software on top of the Zire21, instead of trying to re invent the wheel...
Lightweight, cheap, more resistent to crashes (in the case of a flash based laptop), almost disposable (so the lost is not so much if it crashes or is robbed), good enough for 90% of what people do. Nothing else.
I considered getting an EEE PC, but it would not do what I wanted. Ended up buying a regular Ubuntu-loaded laptop for the same price (give or take a few $). For me the deal breaker was the lack of storage for app development, oh and screen size.
Everyone has different criteria.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Whenever this discussion comes up, it's hard not to mention the nokia internet tablets - the N800 runs about $200, does many of the things the EEE pc does, and fits in your pocket. (No manpurse needed)
I think $200-300 is the upper price range for a pocketable device, and $300-400 for a mini-laptop. Anything beyond that and you may as well be getting a full-fledged laptop.
Honestly, the size of the tiny laptops is kind of puzzling to me - you can't carry it in a pocket, so you will obviously be carrying a bag/backpack, so why not just a 12"-13" laptop for a bit more?
That is a good option if $200 or $300 dollars is a lot of money to someone. If it's not - then spending a few more hundred for something with more storage, ram and new components may be worthwhile.
Solid state parts can last a long time but even they eventually do fail.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Down at the bottom it said the thing was going to cost £299. According to google, UK£ 299 = 588.3423 US$. I don't know about you, but for $580 close to $600, I'd want a laptop with near a full sized keyboard. I've gotten to the point where I don't really care about anything else.
;)
I got sick of small keypads back in high school programming TI-8x series cals. Small keyboards sicken me.
Actually, I don't care because it's gotten to the point where the "low end" comes with a DVD burner/wifi 802.xx with atleast 15"+. I'll let others worry about battery life and options glore. My 8 year old girl has been bugging me for a laptop. I'm holding out until the price drops low enough that I can buy two laptops for around $500. It's only a matter of time.
The first two posts are about Sub $300 laptops... NO thank you
1st, determine the needs of the laptop. Is it going to control the nav system on your sailboat? Your going to need a lot more than a standard $500 besbuy BS.
If you mean, what is the best price performance ratio I have found for laptops, I would it's around 1100, here is how...
Start w/ laptops that have a min of 2G ram and then go for the best Proc/HDD/Videocard combo you can obtain for your special needs, with $1100.
$900 if your on an outlet site like Dell.com/outlet.
If you look really hard, you might be able to pull all that for ~800 but is it worth the extra 200 in time?
not I...
I have a lot of clients come to me and ask what laptop should they buy for $xxx. I allways tell them that they aren't financially ready for a laptop if they can't afford one that they can grow into. That and at $500 the laptop now becomes disposable, and it will be because it won't keep pace as you start to use more applications on it, or you'll say it's just $x00 and not treat it the same as you would a real computing investment.
Though, they do hold their value slightly longer than a PC, but performance is increasing rapidly, and if you want one to perform as good as your desktop, you really need to get over the 1K mark.
What do most of my clients do? I point the lesser off guys towards outlet sites, and the better guys to Toshiba, NEC, and the like.
And don't forget the cost of an extra battery, lugage, etc..
The battery can make this sweet by being able to quickly hibernate, swap batts, then resume to the work you were doing!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
(I imagine many of you don't. But then the first machine I programmed for money used vacuum tubes for the DIODES.)
... One breaks? Chuck it and get another.
The same sorts of questions were being asked then. What could you possibly DO with a little home computer? They were SO underpowered compared with a mainframe.
The question was related to another one that had been asked before: "How many of these first IBM machines will we be able to sell?" "Well, 10 of them would do more arithmetic than all the accountants in the world..."
Surprise: When the price gets low enough there's a LOT of stuff you can do that you couldn't afford to do before.
So it's got a lot less processor and memory than the current top-of-the-line laptop? That puts it far ahead of the laptops - and desktops - of just a few years back. And it would run RINGS around the first Unix machine I bought for my personal use, back in the '70s. A couple megabyte or RAM? 80 Megs of hard drive? Floppies for backup? I still found PLENTY of stuff to do with it. Enough to justify the several thousands of dollars it cost - back when two hundred bux were worth about what a thousand is now.
Bring the price down to a hundred or two, for a small, light box with enough memory and processor to drive a decent display, audio, enough battery to keep it alive for a few hours, USB (or other) interface for external memory sticks / drives / cameras, and internal modem and wireless. Then you've got the bulk of what I need at a throwaway price.
I'd buy one for me, one for the wife, one for each nephew (if they don't have it already), put one in the vacation house to monitor the cameras and phone home in case of trouble, one for the townhouse to phone the vacation house when we're there ditto, one in the camping trailer, one on the boat, a spare in the trunk,
As for the vendors: Fast nickels are better than slow dimes. Get the price point down far enough and you sell SO many of 'em that you more than make it up on volume.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Well, when student loans barely cover tuition, and I need a computer to take to class - these laptops are the key. I love to play games and all, but the games I **love** are older, they run fine on these lower spec'd laptops.
The selling point? They don't break the bank, and when I've already got a desktop, why do I need an equivalently powered laptop just to take notes and get lecture material online?
The perfect balance for a budget laptop definitely is a large budget.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
If all you are concerned about is cost dell offers refurbished and lease returns for as low as 385+. These are full featured laptops 1.6+mhz processors 512+ MB ram 80+G hard drives etc. So why pay 100+ more for a feature less laptop?
It would seam to me the advantage would have to be battery life and size. When I saw cost of 500 I thought they must be joking. Dell, gateway and most other major manufacturers of laptops and PC equipment companies have at least 1 or 2 models of laptops that sell in this price range.
For some reason this rage of paying more for less machine just feels like someone bottling my tap water calling it Naive and charging me 10x as much for it.
PDAs/Mobiles are too small to browse the web decently and don't have a decent input device - a keyboard. Normal laptops are too big to carry round with you everywhere.
These new gen small notebooks are the perfect size, plenty small enough to carry round but big enough to be able to display web pages properly and maintain a proper keyboard.
I'm not sure why anyone would say they're underpowered or lacklustre though, unless you're expecting to play Crysis on it then the spec is just find, people have been happily creating spreadsheets, presentations, word documents, doing e-mail, browsing the web ever since the 486 era. You're not going to be playing the latest and greatest games on them it's silly to think so, we don't have the tech. to put that much power in such a small size at a reasonable price point but if you want to use it to do every day stuff you do on a computer I'd argue it's better than a laptop and better than a PDA because it has the advantages of both without the disadvantages (well except proper laptops have better specs, but gaming laptops are so big and bulk they may as well be in the desktop category anyway!).
The new sub-notebooks fill a niche that was filled then emptied again over the past decade or so. I found an old 486 laptop at work not so long ago that funnily enough whilst fatter than the new gen notebooks wasn't really much deeper or wider. Similarly Apple did away with their nice small notebooks and upped the size an inch or so when they went Intel - I'm not sure what the Air was all about either, it's just as wide and deep but extremely thin, to me thinness really doesn't solve anything and just makes me worry I'll snap it or something!
Question for the slashdot masses: What I really would like for a portable laptop is a serial port (for console connections to devices). Do any of these portables actually have such a thing? I'm not too keen on the USB to serial adapters...
The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I've had a nice 15.4" HP laptop before. It stayed at home on my desk because it was bulky to carry anywhere and fragile-feeling. My Eee is so small and light that I'm not afraid I will drop it nor am I afraid to drop it. Light weight and small size is nice. I carry my Eee everywhere.
I am running an nLited version of XP SP3 on mine because I just want it to work and I don't want to spend hours in terminal to make Linux do the same things the Windows software I already have. The only thing I can't get it to do that I wish it would? Run the old Tony Hawk games. The system specs are more than enough but the game doesn't like the bastard resolution.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
I was recently on the market for a budget laptop, and was surprised by what was out there. I wasn't looking at subnotes, or super-cheap, or anything of the sort. But what amazed me was how I was able to find so many laptops with 802.11n, gigabit wired networking, ExpressCard, DVD burners, 2-3 gigabytes of RAM and sizeable SATA hard drives for under $800. But!
Almost NONE of these had Bluetooth.
What the hell?
I wound up with a Toshiba U305 which wasn't bad, 250 gigs of HD, 2G RAM, 1.67Ghz dual-core CPU, about 3-4 hours of battery life - but I was stuck with Vista, no bluetooth, and 100Mbit wired networking.
13 days later I soaked the 15% return charge at Best Buy and got... yeah, a Macbook.
Aside from tepid video performance and a small hard drive, and lacking the still-mostly-useless to me ExpressCard slot, it's been great.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
The trouble is... Small laptops are perfect.
If you've got more than one computer in the house, or at work, sooner or later, you're probably going to keep your files on one machine and network it (maybe you have a nice NAS box like me), or use a USB HDD.
I've got: an EeePC, 12.1" laptop (Firewire DVD-RW), main desktop.
I haven't used a DVD drives in any of my machines in over a year... Software comes from the web sites of the companies that make it, music comes from iTunes, DVDs play through my TV, games come from Steam, data is exchanged with e-mail, shares and SFTP servers.
I play games on my desktop, and the other machines surf, make presentations, watch internet video (the eeePC is very capable), write e-mail and documents, and do coding.
What else do I need to do on a laptop that a modern network-connected machine can't do? I don't need FPS games on it, and the rest is fine...
Network connectivity also makes large HDDs pretty redundant, too.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/latit_x1?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh
Latitude X1, which was pretty portable to begin with. Not quite to the "subnotebook" or "ultraportable" crowd, it was missing an optical drive and had a 12.1" screen. Sorta like a hybrid between the Eee and a standard Laptop.
Most PC Users have a hard time understanding the ultra-light category.
Having tried to sell the ultra-light product lines for several years, the most often responses I got contained:
"The screen is too small"
"The hard drive is too small"
"There's no optical drive"
"You mean I can't connect it to my obsolete HP Laser printer via parallel?" (this one always blew my mind)
The sad thing is I would always ask a series of questions to determine if the user was the right type of person to use an ultra-light. Though the form varied, these are the general ideas.
"Do you carry the unit with you a lot?"
"Are your primary tasks word processing, web browsing, email, (and later) Internet applications?"
"Will you be away from a wall outlet for more then 3.5 hours?"
"Is everything you will use the unit for either on the web or on the unit?"
And surprisingly they would answer every question right for the ultra-light category, but couldn't wrap their heads around the idea of ultra light. I would explain to them I've been using ultra-light technologies for years (and paid through the nose for them) and they couldn't grasp the idea that it's possible to use a computer for every day tasks that isn't the equivalent of their desktop pc. I would explain to them that not having an optical drive is a good thing (less chance of failure, less weight, less power consumption), that small hard drive space means important things have to be backed up or kept at home, that the difference 1 pound of wieght makes after 2 hours of carrying the damn thing around is a noticeable difference, but all of these points just zoomed past them when the wall was at "So it's not as powerful as my desktop"
I think the majority of laptop users don't know how to use a laptop, or what a laptop really should be. They assume that portable technology should do everything a desktop can, when everything they actually use their desktop for can be done on the portable product. Many laptop users don't even understand the convenience of portable technology because they've never thought of the laptop as more then just a smaller desktop, carrying it from place to place, setting it on a desk and plugging it in.
What was really interesting though is once the tablet component was brought into play the shift in interpretation of what a laptop is really changed, and the person started thinking of the laptop in the portable sense again. Strange as it may sound, as soon as a user understood what tablet technology was it put the whole experience in context, and then they considered the ultra-light category.
My point, changing the mindset is the most important thing.
That being said, I would rather have a macbook air then the eepc, or any other competitive product to date, as the 2 days I used an air didn't leave me with a feeling that I was running on an inferior product, where as the day I spent with an eepc was just a world of frustration. Ultra-portable doesn't have to mean ultra-small, IBM had it right w/ the X series (and even the T series to a limited extent), Apple had it right w/ the 12" powerbook, and now the macbook air.
Gee, and the internet is based on defense research. Also, understanding is based on education - stay in school CSMatt.
...even though I know it's currently over-priced. But after my dis-adventure on my last travel across Europe, I came back home with a BURNING desire for a light laptop that has the tools I need. The Eee PC has everything I need, and is very light. It fits the bill to a T and so...
It's now here, next to me. So nice to be able to carry it literally everywhere (if I want to), so nice the quiet (SSD) and the 3+ hours of battery life. And the fact that Linux works on it out of the box (Xandros) is a huge plus.
The funny thing is, many Eee PC users are trying and even succeeding to install Vista on it! What's their motto? "Why have something working well, when I can completely subvert the purpose of it and make it work like a pyle of shit."?
Of course, I could have bought a full laptop for the price - that's the comment I read very often - but I don't need a laptop that'll be 3 times heavier, with noisy HDD and power-hungry CPU. There's very little that all that weight and power consumption REALLY buys me. I do my gaming at home at my desktop.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The Asus EEE in book has a Killer Combination of features I've last seen about 13 years ago with the Highscreen "DOS 5.0 / Works 5.0 on ROM" Pocket PC (which basically was a cheap rebranding of an earlyer expensive Sharp Pocket PC). These features are:
+ Small.
+ Durable.
+ Full PC - runs all PC stuff I need.
+ Sacrafices Optical for durability, size and price == good move - I don't want to watch DVDs on a small thing like that anyway. I *do* however, want to use OpenOffice in a pinch.
+ No extra custom gadget connectivity stuff needed. Supports all standard ports out of the box. Means: Ready for universal flexible use. Cheap.
+ No obscure custom purpose 'Pocket OS'. Linux beats Palm OS any time of the day.
+ Linux preinstalled, Debian Variant being a big bonus. I'm a programmer and an IT pro. I want to use a Computer, not a pimped out virii-ridden slowpocking typewriter that needs DirectX to render it's desktop.
Now only if I could get one. These things are hard to come by right now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The biggest problem in portable systems that aren't designed to replace a desktop is that they couldn't replace one if they -had- to. And honestly, when I've carried a laptop around with me for any length of time and serious usage, it's gone and replaced my primary desktop for everything except gaming. For people like your typical Slashdot reader, unless we get something that's at least on par with a low-end but functional desktop, we're probably going to be too frustrated by a limited budget laptop.
I have a Macbook, and I love it. But if I wanted something on a budget that was going to be my utility system for lugging around and doing office-type tasks, the last thing I'd want to use is a full-blown desktop OS. There really needs to be a new kind of system designed for portable machines that's designed for ease of use, low power consumption, and high grades of flexibility without needing to wade through a typical desktop interface.
If I were designing a new OS for one of these systems, I'd want something that handled software installation and deletion similarly to OS X. You drag a file into Applications or wherever, and it runs when you click it. I would want accessory and connectivity options designed along the lines of a
PDA - illustrative graphical things you toggle on and off with virtual switches. I'd want a heavily customized and graphically streamlined version of Open Office to handle documents. A modified version of Firefox made to work within the context of a special application control bar similar to a combination of the OS X task bar and the Windows tray.
Linux is just not a good platform for something like this as it currently stands. I for one never want to worry about whether or not my glibc is the right fucking version before I install software. (It's been a while since I used a mainstream distro for longer than a few days) And I know that if I don't want to know it, my mom sure the hell wouldn't when she saw a neat new gadget to install on her email device.
Insofar as hardware goes, I think Intel has the right processor coming out with Atom. If a system like I just described was written from the ground up, a gigabyte of RAM should be plenty - but go for two so you can use one as a disk cache for even more speed improvement. Again, a custom OS and streamlined applications could be easily done within a few gigabytes of hard drive. And there's no reason an 8G internal flash source wouldn't work with an option to slot in another 8 or so with the latest flash technologies for media storage and application space.
Dual-core CPU's wouldn't necessarily be needed if you're not loading up a monster desktop OS. Just take a look at what Nokia has managed with the N8XX line, which for all its faults is still a damn nice little piece of hardware. It runs Linux, so packaging is a clusterfuck, and at least the N770 takes a while to boot - then runs slowly - but those can be overcome with RAM upgrades.
I rant too much.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
People don't really *need* all the power of the latest and greatest device, so why pay a premium for it?
Especially as things move more and more 'online'... Your pc becomes more and more of a 'terminal' then anything else.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
8.9" screen @ 1024x600 Asus eeepc 900 size/shape chassis in metal Via Isaiah CPU nVidia low power 8200 chipset 2GB DDR2 800 16GB Flash Storage Express card slot SDHC slot Wifi + Ethernet Bluetooth 3x USB 3 hour runtime Opensuse with KDE 4.1
About a year ago I needed a lappie and was low on cash. I found an Acer 3680 "Best Buy special" for $400. This is a standard 15.4" screen-size laptop BUT they put a 14.1" in to save a bit of money. It's still 1280x800 and very readable. Other specs:
* About 6lbs.
* Celeron 1.6 single-core with a 533 memory bus.
* 512megs RAM, 80gig SATA, DVD-read, CD-R/RW.
* Intel 945 video.
* PCMCIA slot.
* Atheros WiFi.
This is about the same horsepower as the recent crop of "ultra-lights", with more disk space of course.
I dropped an extra gig in it for cheap and nuked Vista Home Basic immediately for Ubuntu. I'm typing this on it now, with Ubuntu Gutsy. I have full Compiz support although the limited graphics speed seems to limit the "cube" to a two-sided plane (two desktops) with full speed. I also have VirtualBox and Windows XP running perfectly.
I even run whole-disk encryption with TrueCrypt with no noticeable speed penalty.
It's been dropped twice and survived a water-glass spill that nuked the WiFi card but that was a $20 fix. It's been carried *daily*, used hard and runs like a champ still.
This low-budget critter is enough to make anybody re-think the need for anything more potent, if you're running Linux.
I mention all this to establish what performance baseline is really needed today.
I wouldn't trade this critter for anything physically smaller, but then again I'm a big guy and am not bothered by running a sizeable "messenger bag" style laptop case.
Finally, thumbs up to Acer for offering a cheap, tough and useful as hell little critter.
Thumbs down to Micro$loth for fostering a crapware OS on them...
Upgrading the Eee PC involves a $30 purchase (2GB SO-DIMM) and 45 seconds of work.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Put the center of mass nearest the center of the laptop!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I bought one of the first EEEs that came to Germany. The device is pretty underpowered (but good enough to watch movies on BTW), and your performance per dollar price is worse than other low budget PCs. But just spend ONE DAY walking around with your $400 laptop with DVD burner etc etc, and one day with your EEE. You will see why there are people that want one, even for 350 euro (yes, euro). Today I had to carry the company "laptop" around and my back still hurts. When I take my EEE to work it's like taking a small bottle of water extra with me, I don't even notice it. The weight of the power adapter is also a lot less, that adds up too.
If you ever are planning to buy a laptop to commute or carry, you should not only look at price per performance, but also price per gram.
Another reason for me to pay a relatively high price for the EEE was that there was a well-thought-true debian-based linux preinstalled on it. I know Xandros is known for doing some pretty anti-open-source things in the past, but man, they got this xandros for eee just right. The default layout does it for me 80% of the time, for the rest I open a terminal and use vi or whatever I installed with apt-get. Because of the delivery problems, Amazon offered some linux-preinstalled Acer to all germans that preordered an EEE. With 15 inch screen, more RAM, DVD burner etc etc. For about the same price. I and many others just ignored it and thought "they don't get it", and waited further for the eee to come. Never regretted it, I use my EEE daily and as a main pc even, damn it's fine :p
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
In a word (or 2) I'd say the perfect balance is battery life. Though this completely ignores the "ultra portable" part, but if you go for battery life it also gets you a not overpowered CPU too. I find high power CPU to be a double whammy wrt battery life. A) the CPU consumes more power and B) the fan runs more often and hence consumes more power. So... if you go for battery life ALONE you'll also get a mid-range CPU with a reasonable fan activation cycle.
Playing with one at the Apple Store doesn't count. And most of the "tech world" people I know can get by with a 486 until it comes to gaming; processing text does not take too many cycles.
The air is not a macbook pro, but it does fine with office (BTW I own and use both, along with a bunch with MacPros, high-end Windows and linux boxes, so I know the relative performance). It is small enough not be a drag, but large enough to be useful. The Air even does OK with PS as long as you are not pushing on the memory too hard, but I work with RAW images from a Canon 40D without issue. It is sluggish with a large aperture library, but that is HD read speed more than CPU. Fortunately, I make enough that I can base my decision on what I want, and of the 10 computers I use regularly, my Air is getting more play than the rest.
As a non sequitur raw support sucks in Linux. I just tried to use a linux laptop as a photo processor on vacation, and I will never do that again.
All the power and quality without the problem of questionable manufacturing(yes, that means you, Asus). Another thing of note is that you have a standard screen size and easy maintenance (for the rare times needed).
If you're bent on having it thin, there still are plenty of X series out there.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I know Slashdot just recently went to AJAX for the comments, but check your processor usage sometime on a really heavy Web 2.0 app. I know killing the Flash ads helps, but web surfing on a PIII class CPU ain't what it used to be.
to RFC 1149.
Imagine the car situation: you review Corvettes and Jaguars, and then you have to review a tiny urban car. You have to adopt a whole new set of expectations. The reviewers have not seen this breed of machine before. I think we should pay attention to reviews from people who don't work with high-end gaming machines and server hardware.
Personally, I picked up an off-lease tablet from eBay... paid about $300, and then picked up the $50 one year warranty... Not too bad. P3 1300, 14" screen, 30Gb drive, and 512Mb ram... Runs all my office and development apps fairly well. I can get pretty much anything done that I need to. Who needs to buy a "new" item, when we can recycle an older one that works just fine?
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
I happen to have a Dell XPS M1210. It is a 12" wide-screen laptop that weighs around 4.5 lbs. It is a power horse. It is a Duo Core2, 1.8Ghz system with 2G ram, Nvidia Nforce 7400, 120G hard drive. It doesn't replace my desktop, but it could easily enough. It only cost around $1600 a year ago.
So yes, its small, light and powerful. It wasn't exactly cheap, but it really wasn't expensive either. It has been a very wonderful laptop for windows XP as well as Linux. I have had no real issues with it.
So there are small, light, powerful systems around, if you dont mind paying more then a grand for a laptop. It is a much cheaper alternative to the Sony Viaos for the same usage.
The first thing I ask my clients:
What are you trying to accomplish?
Simple enough.
As any accountant would tell you, the balance for a budget should be zero...
Generally, there are two devices I need. Firstly, is a portable workstation. Good for taking notes, light coding, and capable of performing any PC task, even if slightly slowly. I don't mind a little extra weight on this, and I want a good screen and a good keyboard. It has to be comfortable to work on. To be honest, it doesn't even need a working battery.
Secondly, is a portable surfing device. If it can play music, open PDFs, and read ebooks, so much the better. Right now, I'm using my Nintendo DS for this. It does two of the above, and also makes a good travel alarm clock. In the future, I'm looking to switch to an iPod Touch style device. It can be slightly uncomfortable to work with, and slow to react, as long as it is rugged and portable, and has good battery life.
Right now I am typing this on my Asus EEE while "dropping the kids off". Enough said...
CPU horsepower is "good enough", and has been for some time - once they became up to playing and storing fullscreen video, there was really nowhere more to go (of course you'll always have video games willing to suck up everything you throw at them, and there are probably specialist areas that need more power - but for the average home user, that's it). Really, you don't need any more than what these devices are packing. So people look for other points of appeal.
I am trolling
1. Under 2 lbs of weight (HP's is too heavy)
2. 10.4" screen (or bigger) with WXGA
3. Tablet
4. Core2 duo or better
5. 6 Hours of battery or more (see pt. 1)
6. Durable
I'd pay upwards of $5000 for such a device.
"in a blisterpack hanging near the checkout"
That's the Casio brand in a nutshell.
Funny, I sold an almost-identical Toshiba and used the cash to buy an Eee, because the Toshiba was weighing down my bag too much and I wanted the $100 net I made off the deal.
I think other companies saw Apple's "success" - which really was just recovering their old high-end market from years of market share loss - and thought higher-end was better. That's why we've got novices using Core 2 Duos and idling them outside of e-mail, word processing and some WoW. Laptops and desktops with specs from two or three years ago can do those things just as well.
Now, people are figuring it out. The success of that $400 Best Buy special led to the success of the $300 Eee, which will lead to more and more $300 devices.
I had hoped Apple had learned that lesson with the mini, but Apple's market doesn't want the mini. It's a gateway drug for the brand being phased out by the Apple TV. Thanks to that, we likely won't ever see a budget laptop from Apple, which probably won't put out a significant computing device for less than $400 for the rest of its existence.
Just so we're clear. It's small and it's cheap-ish. But I would NOT consider a $700 laptop to be budget considering you're only getting $289 - $319 worth of desktop performance out of it. You're still essentially paying a horrendous premium for portability.
For a budget laptop, I think to the PowerBook Duo 230 that I bought used back in 1997. Running a 33 MHz Motorola 68030, it was "way underpowered" compared to my PowerMac 8600/250 desktop, but it ran the exact same version of MS Office, allowing me to have a cheap laptop on a student budget that complimented the desktop that my parents so generously bought me.
Low cost (paid $350 at the time), small size, light weight, great battery life, and running the exact same version of the programs I intended to run on it as what I ran on my desktop, with more than acceptable performance. Admittedly, it helped that the previous owner had stuffed 12 MB of RAM into the thing, back when many of my college classmates had 8 MB in their desktops. No, this wasn't my PageMaker and Photoshop machine. With a grayscale monitor, Photoshop would have been a waste of time, but that wasn't the reason I bought the machine.
Since it was networked to my desktop when at home, it didn't need any external drives (I installed MacOS 7.6.1 on it over an AppleTalk network), so to save money, I didn't buy the floppy drive or the dock, which the previous owner ended up selling separately.
>Budget, Ultra-portable, Powerful - you can have any 2 out of 3.
My budget is UNLIMITED.
In your face, stupid axiom!
It's not just cost - it's cost and size. Until very recently, anything this size with the capabilities of the eee pc or the hp 2133 was very, very expensive. They've finally gotten to a price point that makes sense. So no - I'm not only concerned about price. But price is important.
The original post that sparked this thread implied that a comparable mac could be had for a couple hundred more - but that's not true. The comparable mac costs almost 3 times as much. So if one would like an ultra portable machine, they can now get one for what seems to me a very reasonable price.
Yes a much larger and heavier machine could be had for the same price, but that doesn't take into account the full picture.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I have full Compiz support although the limited graphics speed seems to limit the "cube" to a two-sided plane (two desktops) with full speed.
I think you just need to add more workspaces.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
XO laptop with Ubuntu ended up pretty good for a general-purpose mobile use: http://abelits.livejournal.com/37973.html
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well if you take the M$ viewpoint of "Mainframe on your desk" then yes it is relatively underpowered. You don't have a single system that can do everything you ever, maybe, might, possibly, want to do. BUT! if you look at it from the viewpoint of Unix where you have many systems doing what they do well. It's a great box. Note: This is not an OS issue but rather a design viewpoint.
... I read my e-mail at about the same speed. Granted it dowloads faster on the laptop. (seconds of difference) but it reads at the same speed.
One of the things I've noticed. On my n800 from Nokia (ARM 400mhz) and my laptop (2.xghz Pentium duo)
Depsite that fact that Doom has been ported to the n800 I wouldn't even for a moment consider it for gaming, photo editing, large number crunching etc. The lightweight boxes are only underpowered if they can't do what they are designed to do. If they can, then they aren't underpowered.
Basically the companies have been creating "Everything Everyone might need" boxes and the consumer is opting for "Everthing I need" boxes instead or, in addition, to to all in ones.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Mac OSX is perfectly tweaked to its laptops, ofcourse (Mac OSX is a beautifully programmed system - i want an iMac really bad). But for $1799 lowest end Macbook air (as awesome as they are), i would rather something like my EEE which was $450AU ($420US), with eeeXubuntu, which yes hard to believe worked perfectly after install - with one simple tweak for the webcam.
I think thats a fair trade off, and for those who are new to Linux, you learn abit in the process. I think your spiel about installing SuSE is abit over the top, but why would you use SuSE anyway, there are many better distros out there, and i assume that when the new HP comes out a similar thing will happen in which people tweak a distro that is best suited for its specs so as all the things you mentioned do work without tweaking (as happened with the EEE)
Someone else mentioned previously the small screen size on the EEE is a problem. While not huge, it does the job - especially if you view web pages in full screen mode. I typed this post on my EEE, and had no probs with it.
"Who the hell are you to tell anybody else what their priorities should be?"
Who the hell are you to tell somebody what the hell they should tell somebody?
"Spending four hours a day in transit is only a waste of time if it deprives one of the opportunity do things one would otherwise be doing."
Like... living? Dude, you only do this if you have a child to support and they'll starve unless they do this. Besides, who the hell are you to tell anybody about what opportunities this poor schmuck had. And anyway, he's a lonely geek with no life. I don't care, because by working 8 hours and commuting 4, that's half the day. No way he gets laid, unless it's another lonely geek and in which case, he can't breed (you need girl, silly).
In summary, your defense of a pathetic life style leads me to ask you who the hell you think you are to encourage young boys to ride the train endlessly with a PC, not reading or talking to the girls. And who the hell and I to ask you who the hell you are to ask somebody who the hell they are to judge. I am not. And I certainly hope you aren't either.
Gotta agree with commenter; if I can get a full featured laptop from Dell for $600, why is a much less capable machine only $100 cheaper? Asus seems to have gotten the price point right, $300 is more on target (and I can't wait until the OLPC starts the race toward the bottom). The previous poster's blisterpack laptop will be the death knell of the printed text book (and my 7th grade daughter's 35lb backpack).
That's the whole point right there. 6lb is a LOT more than 2lbs. 6lbs, you might just leave your messenger bag in the car sometimes because you just don't wanna sling it
2lbs, you'd barely notice it.
The perfect thin one with an absolutely stunningly big hard drive is here.
Image the look on some passengers faces when using this on a plane?
http://saveie6.com/
I'm sure it's a great machine, but are you seriously calling it durable based on the fact that you're able to subject the machine to daily carrying and use without destroying it in just one year?
Seriously, have standards dropped that far?
(From someone who carries his laptop daily, and replaces machines about once every three years--typically not because of breakage)
The main thing I imagine will be difficult to do with these ultra portables is to get a good screen and keyboard. Sound will not be a major issue because you will probably want to use headphones when you are on the move anyway ( as to avoid annoying your surroundings and block out external noise ), but typing on a ultra small keyboard can be frustrating, and a lot of people have trouble reading on a small screen, especially outdoors in strong sunlight.
My guess is that these devices will eventually do away with the touch pad in order to increase space available for the keyboard and perhaps use a tablet-pen or touch screen instead. Reflexive display technology would probably be necessary to make the screen more readable outdoors. Another interesting possibility could be to turn every key on the keyboard in a touch pad, allowing you to use the keyboard itself as a touch pad by sliding your fingers gently over it, without applying enough pressure to push the keys.
For me I see ultra-portable, low power consumption, low cost and almost disposable as being ideal candidates for a mobile dumb terminal.
Seriously, for a home user unless you're gaming or video editing how many computers do you need? For most the answer is one with enough grunt to run a virtual machine for each user. From there is just a question of connecting people to it.
My wife does photo editing with some pretty big images, while at the same time I'm a developer with a VM running MySQL, MS-SQL, IIS and Apache. We each connect to our dedicated VM using RDP on a laptop networked with wifi and if I'm going to sit in one place for more than 30 minutes I plug in a 22" external monitor, USB mouse/keyboard and the laptop just sits next to me. I must admit my wife grumbles a little about the refresh rates, but mostly its quicker than using a medium to high end laptop that would cost quite a bit more.
I don't know about other countries but the price of HSDPA in Australia is actually becoming affordable, with telcos like Three ahref=http://www.three.com.au/rel=url2html-4832http://www.three.com.au/> offering 2GB of data for $29/month. Plug that into a eeePC and SSH tunnel or VPN to your home server (Linux for me) and hey preso, you've now got the performance of your desktop with all the redundancy and backups that you should have at home.
While I'm on my high horse I should also mention the green benefits of extending the life of old laptops using this setup...
The problem here is that you are asking about 'budget laptops' without first determining the USER's needs. Why should all inexpensive laptops have the same goal? Do all inexpensive cars have the same target audience? OF COURSE NOT! I have two laptops for different uses; one is a relatively inexpensive Acer desktop replacement with DVDRW drive, large HD, and 2gb RAM. A very nice, if heavy machine with a lot of power. The second is an Asus eeepc 4gb that is small enough and light enough to take with me whenever I leave the house. In the four months that I've had it, I have wondered many times what I would do without it. It has served me well on a two week personal trip and enabled me to do the little bit of work that came up in the middle, keep in touch with my family and friends, all without being a drain on my luggage allowance or arm! I DON'T EXPECT IT to replace it's big brother; they serve different purposes. The question you should be asking is 'What do I need a laptop to do?'. And that assumes you have first asked yourself if you need a lappy or another type of computer. BTW, determining user requirements BEFORE system design is a major part of what I do for a living.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
I would like to see some actual numbers here and not just marketing hype.
In the last five years, how many budget PCs touted on Slashdot have been left behind as roadkill - or simply faded out of sight? WalMart has tried a dozen variations on this theme and none has gone the distance.
In hard times, the poor aren't buying laptops at any price.
Those with a little more to spend tend to step up to something better. The market for the budget system is perhaps more typically the free-spending Geek looking for a new high-tech toy.
Hmmm, the evolution of "compact-tops" is indeed interesting. I want to see if HP and Dell can really compete in this market. I'm a fan of the Asus machines, but that's just because they run Ubuntu, not Windows. I like the look of the HP machine but don't really like the side mouse buttons.
Core2duo?
... I have internet, e-mail, office, some compilers... and 8 colors!
what do you need that for? do you want to play crysis en-route? solve instances of NP-Complete problems?
I have a laptop for working - it has 120MHz, 16MB SD-RAM, 500MB Harddisc, running damn small linux
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
And that's not even counting the fact that your free *nix of choice is far more customizable than OS X, and better geared towards low-end hardware, to boot.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I'd love to get my hands on a Poqet PC. Ran MS-DOS from a little flash card, had a small but apparently surprisingly usable keyboard, and the machine would run for a couple dozen hours on some AAs. Small enough to fit in a purse or small bag, too. I don't know about all of Slashdot, but there are a lot of us who would love to toy around with a computer like that, running Linux in textmode only; you could still do basic document creation and web/e-mail/IM functions. and even programming. Just give it a faster processor, an SD card slot, and WiFi.
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
A small formfactor laptop....ASUS EEPC. It has 3 USB ports, one extermanl video port, SD Card Slot, Video Camera, Mic, 4GB build in hard drive (Chip based), wireless and wired network capabilities. I added just for the hell of it a 2GB HDSD Card. What the unit currently runs with space to burn, and upgraded the unit to 2GB DDRII mem. There is no visible performance improvement between the original 512MB and 2GB Memory. On startup this little thing will runn circles around most Desktops, and most certainly around most Laptops. Software just runs fast and great. Add an LCD Screen, External HDD&DVD, Standard KB, mouse and you can have the best of both worlds, a laptop to go, and Worstation at home or at work. This system currently runs: Windows XP Home in it's entiredy (OEM), MS Office Professional 2003, AVG Antivirus, Skype, Firefox, Sahara (Full featured Movie), Photofiltre (Graphic Editor), Debut (Camera Recording Software), Ramdisk and 783 High Res Pictures (5.1MP) What is left: 712MB on SD Card for data 512MB on Built in 4GB HDD PC cost 499 AU Dollars not counting extra memory or HDSD Card. 16GB HDSD Cards however are available for this unit.
Which is frigging annoying and there's nothing more confusing --- well, except the way my attention (represented by the mouse pointer) and the keyboard focus can be on different windows.
Unfortunately even on Linux I have that problem, with Pidgin and Skype keeping running once I've closed the buddy list. More than once I've wanted to leave my computer on overnight and closed those windows, only to discover people showing "hey zsau, wossup?" at me the next morning. I might use Linux so I can care about the technical details I want to — but you should not assume you're so important that I should want to care about yours, too.
Look out!
The functionality I would like to have in such a gadget is: networking (cable and wireless), USB, Firefox (no email client - I do that at home or on the web), OpenOffice, a Chinese dictionary with radical lookup, a couple of games that don't require much graphics and a calendar with alarm functions. Many of these things are already on many mobiles, but that's another thing - I'd much rather have a simple, minimal phone and an ultra portable PC than a mobile that tries to everything poorly.
>>solve instances of NP-Complete problems
I am a scientist so I need this to run data analysis. I also need to be able to play several videos at once during presentations. This would be a machine I would take to conferences. It needs to be small and light so I can lug it around for 12 hours straight, fast as hell so I can work on it. But it can be expensive and need not have an optical drive or even a built-in keyboard.
I'm curious. What do you use your optical drive for? I rip CDs when I buy them. I install from CD on the very few occasions software comes on CD (increasingly rare). I backup to DVD-R from time to time.
But these are all infrequent jobs that can be done on a home machine, or with an external drive. No sense taking the drive everywhere just for these jobs.
I have had my Asus Eee for almost a week now, and it's already paid for itself. I develop web apps for a living, and do other web projects that might come my way now and again. Not too long ago, I upgraded my laptop to a Mac Book Pro. While, yes, it's a great laptop, it was soon obvious that it was not ideal to tote it around to different locations.
;-) )
Enter the Asus Eee.
After talking to one of my coder associates, and getting his input on the system, I went ahead and ordered the Asus Eee 8G. Even before booting it up for the first time, I upgraded the memory to 2 gigs. Just cuz.
After a couple days of twinking around with it, I settled on the EeeDora distro, primarily because it works with my EVDO card.
Now when I go places, I don't have to lug the mac book pro around with me. I just take the Asus Eee. (even though at BadAss Coffee the other morning, someone thought it was a Mac Air
My reasons for choosing it are simple: Ease of use, portability, connectivity. I don't need much more than an FTP client, SSH client, nice text editor, and the gimp. Everything else can wait until I get home.
I have found a little niche in the Asus Eee world, and put up a little blog about it here: http://eeegeek.wordpress.com/ . Give it a visit if you'd like to know a little more about the Asus Eee.
--- http://www.keything.com
In this interesting interview with ACM Queue, Mary Lou Jepsen (the founding Chief Technology Officer of One Laptop Per Child) notes that CPU power is not the key value proposition of an ultra-light PC, it's how fast one can turn the CPU on and off to conserve power.
The entire software application stack is moving to a rich-but-thin client architecture. Even with the puny CPU and RAM the OLPC XO affords, I can edit my documents, spreadsheets, and email on Google Apps, upload my comments to Slashdot, read e-books, listen to music, etc. I do need a PC with more horsepower for my thick-client apps. But for on-the-go, I'd rather save the weight and battery life.
Frankly, none of the UMPC darlings I've seen and used -- the Eee PC included -- is as functional as the OLPC XO. The dual screen makes it possible to go from the subway tunnel to direct sunlight without skipping a beat. Try that with any other laptop. The XO feels like the first truly portable, mobile PC.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Oh you would ask wouldn't you.
Something with say a 5 inch by 14 inch keyboard and maybe 8 by 14 flat screen.
Load it with A nice xml hyper editor like Zulu pad by tom gersig and a simple but competent dBase like Table Pro by ZG in Russia.
A flexible AC to DC and DC to DC power transfer unit built in so I could plug in to my truck, bike, trolling motor, and laundromat would be good.
Talking with my camera and GPS unit could fit in there as well. If it would run preloaded air photos or mapsheets with imagemapping notational capabilities the world would look rosy indeed.
Seems to me a 286 I had a lifetime ago would damn near work, but for the few graphics I would like.
NO Windows, NO Linux No internets.
So! For that I gife you one hunrud. Why not? Make from cheap surplus parts, in spare time, do good in the world, make yourself and someone else happy.
Maybe tomorrow you'll ask about a car I would like why don't you?
Seriously, why is it so hard to understand why they're popular? Until now there was no way to get all four of those factors in the same machine; you could get a cheap laptop that was big and heavy, or an ultralight laptop that cost $2000. Now you don't have to trade off between carry-ability and price.
Read my blog.
I bought the $400 Eee PC (Linux), upgraded the RAM to 1GB, and have a 4GB SDHC card, I have used it about three months I am well pleased and the reasons I am pleased may guide others in choosing if they want a small laptop. Here are my observations:
.mp3 player.
.ogg files on my stereo. The expansive screen (for an mp3/ogg player) is really nice. Of course, as it stands, it will play my collection off my wirelss LAN and file server but I am looking to reduce my power footprint and hate to keep the server running when a flash memory will do.
1. It is dependable - it boots quickly, runs the full duration of its battery life (2.5-3 Hrs), warns politely when battery is dying with time to recover, and charges up in a couple of hours, even from an inverter plugged in the lighter socket in my car. Quick charging is a real blessing. It draws 25 watts while running AND charging, less if just running!!! Amazing.
2. It is durable, small, and light- No drive means it is not fragile and I don't have to worry whether I will crash the drive. It is amazing how convenient it is to have on hand when needed. Going to a hotspot just means grabbing the little gadget and going in. Less than 1 Kg is hard to beat.
3. Screen is sharp and legible - Though I would like it somewhat bigger and with more resolution, the screen is amazingly sharp and pleasant to read from. Only drawback is that it shows fractional web pages but that is usually a minor problem. The size and form factor of the device make for a very nice "Belly Telly" for watching movies while reclining.
4. USB ports are very useful - I had to edit a resume while out of town, had no printer, went to Wally World and bought a $35 HP deskjet, plugged it in, and printed my resume. No muss, no fuss, no bother. It already had drivers for the printers so it just worked. NICE... 2.5" USB hard drives hold lots of movies for extended trips away from civiilization. USB DVD drive allows viewing DVDs.
5. Wireless has good sensitivity and is amazingly seamless. I go to a hotspot, turn it on, click a couple of times, and am online. No worries whether a windows trojan will be downloaded, and the wireless just works.
6. The screen makes a good bookreader for non DRM (the only kind of Ebooks I consider anyway) books. It is very legible, no fatigue from reading from it, and it has an OK bookreader provided.
7. Great way to download audiobooks from librivox.org or podiobooks.com and then listen to them or transfer them to an SD card for use in an
8. Audio system is credible and it plays most audio formats seamlessly. When SDHC cards grow in capacity, I have considered getting and dedicating one of these gadgets to playing my collection of
9. USB thumb drives are now available in 8+ GB capacity. I use one for temporary movie storage and put a movie or two on the thumb drive to watch and then delete. I just saw 16 GB USB drives so it looks like capacity will be little trouble with this device.
10. The keyboard is too small for long term heavy use but for editing a document and for navigating the Internet it is just fine. Of course, with USB one can plug in a bigger keyboard if needed, and even plug in a VGA display to have a full size machine.
11. Finally, Cost - $400 is a price point nobody else seems to take seriously. In the car market, people see a small car, built with precision and artistry, and decide to compete with a larger more expensive car. Ultimately you get to SUVs when it all plays out. The competitors for the Eee PC seem to be bigger, heavier, more expensive, and maybe marginally more functional but somehow people forgot the original idea.
BBedit? Hard to find better. Or vim, or emacs, or hell, pico if you're into that. As for a file browser, try bash (aka, the terminal). Does SSH just fine.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
I do a lot of long distance travel by motorcycle, both on and off road. In a typical year I'll log 12k on my bike, and be gone for weeks at a time. So somthing that weighs half as much as a traditional laptop, takes up less than half as much room, and is a little more rugged is a no-brainer. All I would need it to be able to do is check email, update my travel blog, download pictures from my camera and basic image editing. I'm currently waiting for the 901 to come out, as the 4/8Gs seem to waste a little too much potential screen space.
Laptop on your lap: The main portion of the heat generating elements is in the screen based area, so it is really possible to lay back and hold it on your lap. No "hot lap". It is also possible to set it down on a soft surface without building up heat in bad places. I am disabled so this is a big consideration. It actually hurts to have my vaio laptop on my lap for any length of time. Not so with the XO.
The XO is silent. The flash drive is great, this is really sweet in a portable, and useful in many circumstances. It is the laptop I envisioned when we first all started talking laptops. Its unobtrusive.
The handle is good...all small laptops should have one. Especially if it facilitates using it as a reader the way the OLPC XO does. When I travel I just make sure that I have loaded up a few pdf or .txt books. The size of the laptop is about like a medium book and the handle makes it easy to maneuver. Having an e-reader and creation tools handy on it makes public transportation part of my workflow process. Plus I am learning small talk.
The screen in full sun is really truly readable: its very handy on the road and out and about in nature. It means that you do not have to sit in a cave. I have yet to mesh network with it because I live remotely. The only thing I would love added to the XO is a touch screen, and I think that over at Pixel Qi we will be seeing some inexpensive laptops leaning in that direction pretty soon.
I can live with a small HD. There is always a chance to add a cards, there are NAS, there are distributed apps and storage.
I can live without CD/DVD. I transfer most files over 54mbps wifi, and some of them with a pendrive.
Battery live may be important, but you can have a spare battery or even find a plug.
I can live with a low power CPU (like a VIA), since I can use light apps (and even distributed apps).
But keyboard size can't be upgrades. The only thing why I a not sure abut Asus EEEPC is keyboard size, I tried and I can't get used to.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
The first thing you need to do is to abandon the idea that ultraportables are the same as budget laptops. They are two different types of machines, with different goals and uses. Think of an ultraportable as more of a supercharged PDA. Bigger screen, keyboard, etc... In short, it has a small subset of a PC's functionality. A budget laptop is meant to have the main features as a regular laptop, just with decreased performance to help meet a lower price point. Their costs may be similar, but they are two different machines for two different markets.
couchslug your stupid word games you use to attempt to unbury your mistakes and lack of knowledge in this field won't cut it here at slashdot so give up. Your little play on words might fool some child but they don't adults, so stop behaving like the natural born douchebag you are.
I think this is what you're looking for.
I have an eeepc. It's sweet. It's like the laptop I've been looking for since 2001. I even sketched roughly the collection of ports, etc. I'm an Architect I dream with my pen.
...seriously you don't take those with you unless you're in sales or tech support & have NO other choice... ...& a car. It's about as portable as a tool box.
Things I never dreamed of in 2001? I had hoped for 128ram, 256rom. 4G? OMFG YES!!! WANT! At the time you needed some sort of military spec laptop to get that sort of stuff. They did NOT cost AU$500!
Things that could be better? I drew an 800x600 screen. Also a three hour battery life sucks.
These things are clearly being addressed for the next version though.
What would make me hunger for a peice of geek tech like that again? What do I seek now that the eeepc is realising my dreams?
I want an eeepc like device with an open OS (preferably readily Gentoo-able) that has a built in GSM/3G phone, that will connect to a stereo bluetooth headset, take calls & play music from a breifcase/backpack in a kind of 'standby' mode, perform the above functions for 24-48hrs without a recharge, recharge from a USB port/brick (ipod style), do USB host & device &/or run like a laptop for 8-12 hours without a recharge. solid state disk. This is my new dream laptop.
I also have a desktop. I don't want one of those pitiful attempts to replace a desktop, (doomed to failure), that is only portable on a car seat...
To people who think they should be no more than $100? Seriously. I spent about that on a cheap dinner & too many rounds of beer last night (Wed)
Asus gave me my dream geek toy. That's worth $500 to me. Maybe you aren't their target market. See if they'll sell you less than 1400 OLPCs (^-^)
thx e
Dur-a-ble. Repeat it like a mantra. No matter what else a laptop may or may not do, if it is not durable then it is not improving your budget.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
So CNet did a "review" of a laptop they've never seen and spent most of that review talking about how pretty the laptop is based on some artist renderings and touched up photography. High quality such as we've come to expect from CNet.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Hello anonymous APK!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Often sell two year old top-line models for under $500. I saw 2GB/200GB/DVD/wireless/home-Vista in this category in the past month. The higher end laptops double this amount and throw in a Nvidia-class card.
"Budget" means different things to different people.
:)
I was ecstatic to find a Dell Vostro deal a couple weeks ago where you could get an Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2.0Ghz CPU, 2GB RAM, 160GB 7200RPM disk, 15.4" glossy 1680x1050 display, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256MB, 8x DVD dual-layer burner, Intel 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR for around $1000 (USD).
That's a pretty decent machine, for a thousand dollars. It's not an XPS, or an uber-gaming rig, and it's way more than what you need to just browse the web and check your email. But for what I like to do (run virtual machine instances, test out apps, play some recent PC games) it's perfect.
If all you need is web and email access with document and spreadsheet software, the Asus EEE PC and (rapidly arriving) competitors is great. It's small, light, and good enough.
If you want to run memory- or disk- or video-intensive apps, obviously the EEE PC doesn't work for that.
All of us here on Slashdot need to remember that not everyone uses their PC in the same way.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Just enough CPU power for word processing and web browsing (of course tweaking the OS to optimize the CPU usage would help a lot, such as a customize Linux for the EEE). A lot of battery life (either increase battery size, or improve battery consumption). More screen space without increasing the laptop size. I wish a dual LCD monitor with 10' each. (7' or 9.8' are too small). The location of the second LCD should be located underneath the keyboard. And the regular LCD should be able to flip over like a tablet pc. Once it's flip backward. It can combine/joined the LCD screen with the screen that's underneath the keyboard and form a 12-14' LCD touch tablet screen (without keyboard). If it's not combined/joined, the dual screen will look like a book, for great ebook reading machine. Of course, you can always turn the screen back to the front and use it as a laptop with only 1 LCD turn on. That would be my perfect machine. 1Gb memory and a SDHC slot with a small but "fast" harddrive is all I needed. In conclusion: 1.5GHz CPU 1G RAM fast harddrive 7200RPM or SSD small enough to host OS and app SDHC for portable data dual small screen (possible touch screen, when it's used without keyboard) and should be able to combine to form 1 big screen. put as much battery life as my 3.5-4lb limit permitted. (don't mind if it make the machine a little heavier, but still 3.5-4lb.)
Unless his thinking is limited to 2-dimensional sca--
Is that you, Khan? KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I'm seriously considering the EEE PC with the 9" screen Asus is dangling in front of us. Why? Simple. I like to leave the house, but I want to be able to stay connected. I don't need to burn a CD/DVD, or compile 500000 lines of code, or play the latest PC game. I do need to surf the web, watch youtube, read email, look at maps, write notes, maintain todo lists, offload and view pics from my camera, and keep myself entertained in odd locations around the city. A totally reasonable goal for a nice, cheap, tote-able PC. Oh, and I like that it runs a real OS that can run legit apps so I am not tied into a specific vendor's idea of what my life should need.
Here's the use case: User takes device from bag, flips open lid, powers it on, uses it, powers it off, slams lid, throws it in bag, and walks off.
Please note the total absence of "fumbles for dongle" or "adjusts widget" type phrases.
Things the EEE needs:
Decent display: 9" of color at a 1024x600-ish resolution will work splendidly. That way I can actually view a website. Thank you. WTH were you thinking with that 800x400 stuff? Transfer those people to the "water soluable umbrella" team immediately.
Lots of space for pics, music and docs: Either make that main drive huge or (better yet) give me a convenient way to plug in about 60-100gb (or more) of auxillary storage. And put it inside the case for Pete's sake, not sticking out where it'll poke someone in the eye or require dongles, drives and widgets to pack. If I wanted to haul all of that junk I'd buy a 15" laptop for cheap. I can pick up a 16 GB SD card, so that helps, but my music library is over 20 GB today.
DVI or HDMI connector: Seriously, VGA folks? The only thing I have that still uses VGA is in the basement closet where it will remain until my wife finds it and makes me throw it out.
Infinite battery life: Solidstate for the win. Ideally it would last at least 8 hours if not just forever. But if not, then it needs a nice, pocketable power cable. No big brick that is half the size of the device.
USB x 3, headphone and mic jacks, SD card slot: Check, check, check. Good job.
Keep it small and light: Okay, more features contradict small size. I get that. But the EEE PC is about the right compromise size and weight now. If it gets any bigger I have no reason to compromise the features I can get on a laptop. If it gets smaller it will impede usability, so I have no reason to compromise the features I can get on a laptop.
Keep it cheap: I understand that more stuff = more $$$. But $500 is about perfect. Much more and it is more cost effective to go buy a laptop. Much less and you'll have to cut too many features and I'll go buy a laptop. For $500 I can feel comfortable tossing it in my backpack for a bike ride to the park.
Which is why the value is in the millions of man hours of work they put into those things, and not the things they started with.
I picked up a couple of used dell D400s for 250 bucks at University of Michigan Property Disposition. One Pentium M 1.8 and one Pentium M 1.7, both with a gig of ram, 30 gig hard drive firewire, less than 4 lbs and I set them up to dual boot XP pro, and Ubuntu. Call me satisfied for 250 and 220 a pop.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
No, right now with a "two pane" setup GLXGEARS reports 830fps. Go to a real four-pane cube and it drops to about 500ish.
:).
I'm not willing to give up that much re-draw speed as some DVDs get wonky
I think you missed the part about "dropped twice" :). From desktop to floor, once onto concrete, literally not a scratch after.
Yes, that plus daily carry for a $400 cheapo isn't half bad. I had a higher-end Fujitsu for a while that didn't do near as well.
I'm 6'4" and 280lbs.
:).
Trust me. I don't notice 6lbs
That said, I do understand the appeal of the littler guys. My main reason for writing was to note that the amount of CPU power the new low-end ultralights are offering makes for a very workable machine even with a modern Linux variant and full-tilt desktop (Gnome/Compiz).
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
Does anyone know of any non-apple laptops that can do this?
Who are you talking to here? I am an AC this is true, but I think you had best stop taking the drugs slug.
mod parent up. $175 tops would be my price for a web-surfing, uber-portable applicance machine, assuming it had a rock hard battery. Bring it.
That's not a budget laptop.
However, we all are waiting for the iTablet o Mac Tablet or whatever that the Air is not.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Well, buy any laptop with Intel CPU and graphics (it's budget, so forget about a real GPU) and install MacOSX Pirate Edition. There, solved.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.