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"Netbooks" Move Up In Notebook Rankings
Ian Lamont writes "For the first time, a list of popular notebook reviews shows three 'netbooks' in the top 10. The netbooks use Intel's Atom processor. Notebookreview.com's editor says there has never been more than one netbook in its monthly ratings. The reason for the netbooks' sudden popularity no doubt relates to the price and basic functionality, but there's a catch. Despite calling Atom a 'high-performance' chip, Intel cautions people not to confuse netbooks with notebooks, as netbooks will be unable to take on video editing or other processor-intensive tasks. This leads to the question of how netbooks will be able to handle demanding Web apps — or whether Web apps will have to be slimmed down to accommodate millions of netbook owners."
This is sort of like comparing these netbooks to that Apple sub-notebook that has only one USB port and a power port, no other externally accessible I/O devices. Except that these netbooks are affordable and that Apple thing is, well, for yuppies to show off at the cafe.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
We can only hope that the popularity of netbooks will slim down web apps and speed up JavaScript implementations. There's so much bloat that some websites feel slow (after fully loading of course) on my Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM. That's just unacceptable and we can all reap the benefits if netbooks lower the performance expectations of web developers. Nowadays hardware is cheaper than good development, but a little extra development can go a long way.
The problem isn't if Netbooks can handle web apps, it is the question of if they are usable on a tiny screen. For example, Google maps, though "usable" usually requires me to zoom out a bit on Firefox 3, go to fullscreen mode, and hide the sidebar in order for me to use it on my EEE (701, 4G Surf running eeeXubuntu).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
is the 1024x600 resolution of these netbooks. A lot of website and webapps are designed for a minimum of 1024x768. Those missing pixels do make a difference ....
If your modern web apps can't run on a 1.6Ghz dual core or hyperthreaded CPU. then I think I'll blame the web apps and not the CPU. Does the Internet have to be this hard? What sort of supercomputer tasks does it take to render an interactive webpage?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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The real advantage to these netbooks is travelling around with them to give talks. You know, on those projectors they have everywhere.
The ones that
DISPLAY XGA NATIVELY.
I'm sorry, I get a little emotional. To have the perfect solution for travelling and giving talks, but then have to resort to moving the mouse on the WVGA screen so I can see what the audience is seeing at the bottom of my slide.
If a web app demands significant performance from your local processor, comparable to video editing, then it sure as hell is unlikely to be portable and cross-platform. It's got no business being deployed at all.