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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 listed top 10 are hardly all "netbooks". Acer Aspire One is the best of the bunch IMO; and the fact that you can customize (even Mac OS X ?) to your heart's content, gets added brownie points. Most popular Linux OS can be easily installed on the aspire one if Linpus doesn't cut it for you. Here is a list of "hacks" (whatever you wanna call it) http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2008/09/27/30-cool-acer-aspire-one-hacks/
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.
FWIW, the rankings are based on click counts to the reviews of laptops on the site mentioned in the OP. It has nothing to do with actual sales.
I've always been a fan of the "subnotebook." I had the first model of the Toshiba Libretto, the size of VHS cassette, circa 1998. The odd person would laugh at its size, but meanwhile I was using it at restaurants, comfortably on a plane while eating a meal, and so forth.
(One time on a plane the stewardess pointed at my lap and said, "wow, that's the smallest one of those I've ever seen!" Man, did she ever turn red when she realized how that sounded. I held up the laptop to make it quite clear what she was referring to :S)
When Toshiba announced a new version of the Libretto, I jumped on buying one. Updated specs, wifi, bluetooth, 2ghz, yadda, yadda, yadda. I even bought the three year SystemGuard with it; even if a drink spilled on it, they would cover me.
Unfortuantely, I had a few hardware problems with it, post warrantee, but within the 3-year system guard. I had it to two different service depots, where it sat for months. When I got it back, nothing was done to it. Dropped it off again. The bluetooth and wifi weren't working. The DVD dock never did work right. I wrote a frustrated noted to the President of Toshiba Canada, and have been playing phone tag with someone ever since, trying to get this damn laptop working again. It's a good chunk of a year I've been without it.
I see these EEE PC's kicking around for a few hundred dollars. I could have bought a few of them, with what I spent on the Libretto (and not been without a tiny laptop for months). The System Guard warrantee alone would have paid for one. If I can't get half decent service on a more expensive "subnotebook," which I mainly use for wireless web access, email, word processing, and other lightweight tasks, I might as well pick up cheap and semi-disposable netbooks.
Toshiba, if you're listening, I would love to regain my trust and dedication to your brand; when I had a big company, we bought dozens of your laptops, but I don't think I'd ever touch them again, after this terrible service experience...
If I don't get some resolution before my System Guard is up this December, I'll likely just dispose of the Libretto on eBay, and pick up an EEE PC. A sad demise for a rather pioneering legacy by Toshiba. If the EEE PC dies outside the warrantee period, I'll just grab another one, or whatever else has come out since. It really is becoming a commodity item, which I welcome.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
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 ....
I wonder what flash advertising is doing for battery life. I'd like to view a site through a notebook portal to address these 'battery life' concerns, to stop all of the moving pictures. While they are at it, web developers could put all of the text on the same page (like Tom's Hardware, not that I've been there in years...), also to extend 'battery life'.
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
> My main worry about these netbooks is video decoding
Video decoding is fairly easy... it's ENCODING that really sucks down the CPU cycles. Old computers didn't have problems decoding video in realtime because they were too slow... they choked because they didn't have enough RAM to keep everything related to the video buffered in physical RAM, and keep it there while doing other background tasks. The moment you start getting page faults and swapping things out to hard drive, all bets are off... even with a dual-core CPU.
I just bought a MSI Wind a few days ago (with second SoDIMM for 2 gigs total). It's surprisingly fast, even for things like Netbeans and Visual Studio. The key? Lots and lots of RAM. Avoid swapping, and everything else falls into place... even with a "slow" CPU. A Vista/XP/Linux-with-Compiz notebook with 2 gigs, 5400RPM hard drive, and a 500MHz Pentium III will probably provide better real-world performance than a "modern" budget notebook with 512mb, ~2GHz Celeron M, and 4200RPM hard drive because the "faster" new one will run out of RAM almost immediately and be shackled to its slow hard drive, while the "slower" old one will chug along nicely because it doesn't have to keep violently lurching back and forth as it swaps things between physical ram and the hard drive.
Asus eeepc1000. I'm using the one with the hard drive. It's a solidly built machine with a 10" screen and a battery life which is about double that of the nearest competitor. They're going for $460 on some order sites.
If you can live with a slightly smaller screen and if battery life isn't terribly important, then the Aspire One looks like a pretty great deal with a lot of happy users and an 8Gb SSD.
I find writing on the eee1000H really easy. Nice, big keyboard, and a decent screen size. If the machine were any bigger and it wouldn't be comfortable or easy to use, any smaller, it would feel limiting. (I've owned a couple of other small machines over the years, and I find a good screen size is vital for comfort in writing; I don't know how it is for coding, but I find I need to see more than just the immediate line of text I'm working on to write effectively. SSD seems like a good idea, but the laptop hard drive in the Asus works just fine. A friend of mine dropped one while it was playing a video and it didn't skip a beat. --Though I don't know if that would be such a good idea if it was trying to write at the time, but then I don't drop my hardware.
-FL
Intel keeps saying that it's Atom processors aren't heavy duty, but I think that's marketing spin to avoid taking the bottom out of the market for the more profit-laden processors.
I recently compared the Eee PC to my laptop. The Eee PC was able to calculate prime numbers at about 90% of the rate of my existing three-year old laptop. So, on a processor-to-processor comparison, they are about even. But the Eee PC also has three years of better hard drive, bus, and memory technology, and I expect it to fully whoop my laptop there.
Basically, I view these netbooks as having the same power as a 2-3 year old average laptop, but in a smaller form factor.
Use a presenter and don't look at your computer's screen at all! When I give presentations I use a computer pointing and laser pointer device (presenter) which allows me to control my computer while looking at the audience or the wall. I can move the mouse pointer, go down or up a page, etc. In fact I have four such presenters.
I just bought an Acer Aspire One after the eee I wanted was pretty much out of stock everywhere. While the Linpus apps are mostly rubbish compared to the EEE's Xandros, the machine is well built and does what it says on the tin (albeit with rubbish batterylife). I bought it to replace my destroyed Macbook, and I have to admit that I don't particularly miss it. FB
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.