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11.6" Netbooks Face Off
Dr. Damage writes "Netbooks have grown from tiny curiosities with 7" screens into surprisingly well-rounded little computers. The latest step is 11.6" displays with 1366x768 resolution and near-full-sized keyboards. Two such systems are available now for under $400 at US retailers: the Aspire One at Walmart and the Gateway LT3103 at Best Buy. The Gateway packs an Athlon 64 processor and Radeon graphics. The Tech Report bought them both and has compared them head to head in some depth, choosing a clear winner between the two." Like most such in-depth reviews, this one is spread across 10 pages.
soon we'll be marvelling at the 15" netbooks with core 2 duos!!!
I can't wait!
then we'll see the introduction of some amazingly tiny 7" microbook!!
I can't wait!
i guess it's the cheapskate route for people who really want a 13 inch macbook, but don't need bluetooth or wireless n.
i personally think it shouldn't be called a netbook if you really can't use it all day without carrying around a charger.
A device with a 9" screen and 8+ hours of battery life is a netbook. A device with a 12" screen and just 5 hours of battery life is a sub-notebook.
Or, you know, a notebook...
Bow-ties are cool.
I have an original eee 701 and I am very happy with it. It is about right size, has large enough keyboard to type short notes and so on. The only complaint really is that it is a bit on the thick side and the use time is slightly too short. I really like the use of a solid state disk and lack of windows too, not to mention the 199 euros I paid for it as new.
I am hoping that once the current crazyness of calling ever larger things netbooks is finally over someone will make something revolutionary.. whatever they call it then... something the size of eee PC, though hopefully by then they can make it thinner. I will likely personally need such in about 4-5 years or so.. hope they have again such on the market at that point instead of the current "netbooks"
One time a scientist friend of mine talked about a pet peeve of his regarding some academic papers: when the Abstract section reads like an advertisement for the paper, rather than a summary.
I wish kdawson had the same sensibilities.
It'll just drain his batteries faster...
Mind the frickin' laser...
The Gateway one "won" in the writer's estimate, due to a larger screen, faster CPU, better graphics.
Well that's effing retarded.
The entire -point- of netbooks is that they are small. The whole netbook industry seems to be grappling with its product identity, and reviewers aren't helping by routinely grading them on how close to a laptop they are.
Netbooks should be graded on size, favoring SMALL. Performance is important, but secondary to battery life. Items like durability, and comfort of the keyboard, position of the trackpad (or inclusion of a track point), operating system options, connectivity (usb/firewire/vga/dvi/etc), dvdrw internal or external, ram, flash, hard drive, etc should all factor in.
Selecting for "Largest screen and hard drive" however is demented. I can buy a Toshiba at Bestbuy for 299$ with a 15.4" screen and a 160GB hd. If I wanted a large screen I wouldn't buy a netbook. For $50 more I can make that a 300+ GB Hd.
What then? the best netbook on the market is ... not a netbook!?
When that happens something's wrong with your selection criteria.
Netbook is a computer optimized for getting on the net while mobile. Small size (for mobility) and low power (for longer battery).
If you have an optical drive, a large screen, or a fast (power-slurping) processor, you're not using a netbook. You're using a laptop.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Yeah, have to agree here, once you clear a 10" screen imho, it isn't a netbook any longer. Also, if the battery life isn't at least 4hrs, it shouldn't be praised either. I got a netbook because it was small and portable, and I didn't need to be tethered to a wall after two hours of use. I did bump my ram to 2gb, and my hdd to 500gb, and in win7 with the hardware changes I went from about 5.5hrs of typical use to about 4.5... most of that is likely the change in hard drive. Still, my phone's (rooted G1) wifi tethering runs down the phone's battery in less time than my netbook lasts anyway.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The entire -point- of netbooks is that they are small.
Let's be honest- whether or not it counts as an "official" characteristic of a netbook- the other thing associated with them, and as much a raison d'etre for their initial popularity as the size, was the fact that they were *cheap*.
Now that they're pretty much touching the lower-end "ordinary" laptops in both size and price, I'd question whether such machines are actually "netbooks" in the sense that people first associated with the name 18+ months ago. The term has pretty much been massaged out of any meaningful existence by marketers.
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And I want a pony.
You're not looking for a netbook. You're also not getting all of those features in the same system.