"I doubt it if even so much as one percent of all people here ever buy anything after they decide they like it."
I actually know a few people who do (including myself), when they have cash to spare - at least when it comes to music. People with low income like us students aren't going to be buying a DVD of every movie we want to see, but 99ct for a song or 7-10 Euros for an album that we can stream online is quite acceptable.
I bought my netbook(s) as a secondary machine, but lately my desktop only gets turned on when I need a DVD drive or access to backups that're on its hard drives. There's not much that an N270 can't do for the average user when it's hooked up to a nice TFT...
So you can walk into Best Buy or some other place where a typical non-techie would buy a computer, pick a machine plastered with Vista-Ready and Genuine Vista Ultra Premium Edition stickers, and tell the salesperson you want it for $100 cheaper and with Ubuntu preinstalled?
Do you really think that people who buy computers at these places actually *know* that they're paying for the software? Nope, they're thinking that OS's are free anyway when they buy a new PC... Now where's your incentive for a free Open Source operating system?
Linux netbooks DO provide this incentive to a certain extent (at least here in Germany you can usually compare the Windows version with the Linux version of the same netbook side by side in a store), but most computers available at an actual brick and mortar store probably won't offer these possibilities, and the crippled features on these Linux netbooks are pretty much a deal-killer. My favorite example: My Toshiba NB100 came with Ubuntu, and the WiFi didn't work... What the hell am I supposed to do with a netbook that doesn't have working WiFi?
"I'm relatively technically minded, and I can't stand using Windows on a day-to-day basis. The plural of anecdote is not data."
Just how many non-techies do you know who run Linux?;)
"Don't change the goalposts. The thing is, on Linux netbooks, Linux is already set up. This is not the same as downloading an ISO and going though the hassle of getting it running."
Apparently you haven't played with any of the broken Linux distributions on a lot of the netbooks. On my Toshiba NB100R the WiFi just didn't work on the stock Ubuntu (think it was 7.x) install. Neither did suspend...
Not to mention that netbooks are available in their respective Linux flavor in just about every online store over here... or at least they were a few weeks ago when I bought mine.:)
"'d love a little linux netbook, and it would have all the functionality I'd need for that. But my eyes are going to shit as I get older, and I know the screen would be too small."
So buy a 10" model with 1024x600 resolution. The text is actually bigger than on my 24" 1920x1200 TFT...
The screen is small, yes. But the resolution is also low, which compensates for that pretty well...
That's just it though - I didn't buy netbooks thinking "Hey, finally I can browse the web on the go!", but rather "Hey, finally an Ultraportable that I can actually afford!".
I sold my last 15.4" laptop about a year ago and have been laptop-free since. The damned thing was just too heavy and clunky to use for pretty much anything...
Now, with a netbook, all my (mobile) needs are satisfied. It's tiny, it runs for 6 hours without a charge, and will run anything I need to do while on the go (from Photoshop to Visual Studio to Project64)...
Sure, netbooks started out as machines that could barely browse the web, but that's definitely _not_ the way they're perceived these days.
Don't forget the people who already have a Windows license - I bought a Linux netbook because I have more than enough MSDNAA XP licenses laying around anyway...
I don't think that a lot of the people in the Netbook target audience (Youtube, E-Mail and Web browsers) are technically-minded enough to spend time getting a Linux setup up and running when they're coming from Windows... Hell, I'm relatively technically minded and I can't stand using Linux on a day-to-day basiss.
Pretty much sums up everything pretty well. I've got Windows CE on my phone, and I don't think I could stand using it to actually _work_ (or browse the web or watch videos or anything else that's halfway productive). It barely handles my contacts and calendar junk without crashing...
I thought the handset was pretty rough around the edges - too much wasted front-side real estate (what's with the weird rounded shape?), pretty shabby performance (and 0 reliability) with the stock OS (wait a sec - that describes my WM6.1 phone pretty well too:D) and even worse stability with other OS's...
Who cares that it'll run a full-blown Linux desktop if I can't use it to make phone calls and write SMS properly...?
Very likely - the last flight I was on that had wifi (and a standard 220V power socket under every seat, which was _awesome_) was an Etihad flight, and that cost me 10 Euros for half an hour... the pricing is insane. $10 for a flight is pretty awesome, but I have a hard time believing it...
Sounds about right. Pay for it, and you get a product that's guaranteed to work.
I suppose you won't get all the Labs updates right away if you do that though... I'm perfectly fine with regular Gmail (although WM6.1 pisses me off with its inability to handle IMAP properly)...
Are you saying you don't have to deal with a CLI in Ubuntu? Are you kidding me? I actually removed 7.xx after about half an hour of trying to get my multi-monitor setup working (which takes about 3 minutes in XP Pro or even *gasp* Vista). sudo gedit whaaaa? All I want is a dialog box to select resolutions, refresh rates and orientation (fine, Ubuntu has one, but it doesn't fricken work)... what's so hard about that?
Trust me, things like this are definitely easier on a Mac (and Windows:D)...
Desktop keyboards are no problem at all, IMO. My good old Logitech Media Keyboard Elite ($25 or so back a few years ago) has halfway decent tactile feedback and I can type pretty fast on it. Model M style clickety keyboards don't help me much in that area...
But have you seen the keyboards they put on netbooks/laptops lately? Holy shite, these things are horrible. Right now I'm typing this on an Eee PC 1000H, and the tactile feedback is horrible... not to mention the need to enable filterkeys just to get rid of the magic "two-letters-from-one-keypress" syndrome...
Give me a tiny screen with low resolution, give me the crappiest integrated graphics money can buy, give me a sound card that has a signal to noise ratio of approximately -5dB and a kick in the ass while you're at it - just don't give me a keyboard that fricken types on its own...
Having experienced both the German and US versions (as well as the excellent system in New Zealand), I've got to say that I prefer the American version to the German one.
The German school system is about school, and nothing else. If you want to join a sports team, look elsewhere. If you're looking for extracurricular activities of any kind, look elsewhere.
If I'd needed to get a new membership at a new sports club every time I wanted to try out a new sport (which is currently the case here in Germany) instead of just putting my name on a signup sheet and showing up after school, I'm guessing I would've spent a lot less time playing sports...
Are you telling me that 10+ down and 1+ mbit up aren't enough for a bit of VPN and video streaming? Sure, I can't stream a BD-ROM with my pipe, but pretty much anything else is no problem;)
Pretty much - BT is the only thing that actually uses my 16mbits of downstream.
Screw faster connections for home users, how about having a minimum sustainable speed requirement for commercial web server connections? What use is a faster connection at home if the *insertURLhere* server only gives me 5% of what my brand spanking new fiber optic soundwave ultra-awesome connection has to offer?
I've gotta agree. My bluetooth keyboard just sits in the desk drawer all year because it's such a pain in the ass to put it and the phone on a desk and then start typing - looks weird, the phone's always flat on the table unless you prop it up with some weird stand (even more to carry - so you might as well carry a small laptop anyway) or a makeshift solution where the phone will keep falling over...
Note taking during meetings/lectures is easier with a laptop. The only issue here is battery life, but with netbooks hitting 9+ hours, it's an easily (and not _that_ expensively) solvable one.
Anyone want to buy an Ubiquio foldable bluetooth keyboard? Used for like... a whole 3 days?:P
Maybe they're just banking on the fact that most people concerned about audio quality will want a decent pair of headphones wired directly to the jack (probably with a portable amp). I know I don't want A2DP for my day-to-day listening - it's just too fiddly, both in terms of fidelity and skipping... the SE bluetooth headset (HBV 200 something) I tried went back after 3 days because it didn't play nice with any of my source equipment (PCs, laptops, V600i, K610i, HTC Prophet), producing a lot of skips and extra noise. Maybe the DACs on that thing were just crappy, but hey, that thing cost over $100 - do I really have to shell out $200+ just to get a proper interface that I can plug my headphones into?
Not to mention it's another device to charge, and it only saves me about 30cm of wire:P
So does this work with laptop keyboards as well? Is there also a ground cable here that acts as an antenna? For that matter, is the internal connection PS2? Most laptop touchpads still seem to be PS2...
You obviously haven't played online much. The important thing here is latency, not throughput. Any latency under 80ms is more than playable, and a 768k DSL line is more than capable of that. Hell, with fastpath I used to hit ~30ms on a 1M line.
Just use a server that's in the same country instead of halfway around the world.
Actually, I run Visual Studio on my EeePC 1000H without a hitch. Sure, the projects I'm working on aren't as vast as real world applications (I'm mainly just doing uni assignments), but compiling isn't all too slow compared to my desktop. So no complaints here...
Hmmm, doesn't anyone use desktops any more? Desktop workstation + Netbook + Smartphone is working pretty well for me. Then again, I don't have to do any serious photoshop or cubase work when I'm on the go... but again, who wants to do that with a trackpad/clit mouse anyway?
I dunno what everyone else is doing, but a decent desktop setup that's easily upgradable is definitely the way to go for power-heavy tasks, and netbooks are great for the average user on the go. What'm I gonna do with a $2000 laptop (That was pretty much the price range I was doomed to before netbooks came out - mainly because of form factor issues) that'll finish encoding a video file 3 seconds faster than a netbook? Is it going to give me twice as much battery life? Is it going to help me surf the net faster? Type faster? Nope...
All the $2000 laptop will do is weigh me down with another kilo or two of unneeded weight.
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"I doubt it if even so much as one percent of all people here ever buy anything after they decide they like it."
I actually know a few people who do (including myself), when they have cash to spare - at least when it comes to music. People with low income like us students aren't going to be buying a DVD of every movie we want to see, but 99ct for a song or 7-10 Euros for an album that we can stream online is quite acceptable.
I bought my netbook(s) as a secondary machine, but lately my desktop only gets turned on when I need a DVD drive or access to backups that're on its hard drives. There's not much that an N270 can't do for the average user when it's hooked up to a nice TFT...
So you can walk into Best Buy or some other place where a typical non-techie would buy a computer, pick a machine plastered with Vista-Ready and Genuine Vista Ultra Premium Edition stickers, and tell the salesperson you want it for $100 cheaper and with Ubuntu preinstalled?
Do you really think that people who buy computers at these places actually *know* that they're paying for the software? Nope, they're thinking that OS's are free anyway when they buy a new PC... Now where's your incentive for a free Open Source operating system?
Linux netbooks DO provide this incentive to a certain extent (at least here in Germany you can usually compare the Windows version with the Linux version of the same netbook side by side in a store), but most computers available at an actual brick and mortar store probably won't offer these possibilities, and the crippled features on these Linux netbooks are pretty much a deal-killer. My favorite example: My Toshiba NB100 came with Ubuntu, and the WiFi didn't work... What the hell am I supposed to do with a netbook that doesn't have working WiFi?
"I'm relatively technically minded, and I can't stand using Windows on a day-to-day basis. The plural of anecdote is not data."
Just how many non-techies do you know who run Linux? ;)
"Don't change the goalposts. The thing is, on Linux netbooks, Linux is already set up. This is not the same as downloading an ISO and going though the hassle of getting it running."
Apparently you haven't played with any of the broken Linux distributions on a lot of the netbooks. On my Toshiba NB100R the WiFi just didn't work on the stock Ubuntu (think it was 7.x) install. Neither did suspend...
Not to mention that netbooks are available in their respective Linux flavor in just about every online store over here... or at least they were a few weeks ago when I bought mine. :)
"'d love a little linux netbook, and it would have all the functionality I'd need for that. But my eyes are going to shit as I get older, and I know the screen would be too small."
So buy a 10" model with 1024x600 resolution. The text is actually bigger than on my 24" 1920x1200 TFT...
The screen is small, yes. But the resolution is also low, which compensates for that pretty well...
That's just it though - I didn't buy netbooks thinking "Hey, finally I can browse the web on the go!", but rather "Hey, finally an Ultraportable that I can actually afford!".
I sold my last 15.4" laptop about a year ago and have been laptop-free since. The damned thing was just too heavy and clunky to use for pretty much anything...
Now, with a netbook, all my (mobile) needs are satisfied. It's tiny, it runs for 6 hours without a charge, and will run anything I need to do while on the go (from Photoshop to Visual Studio to Project64)...
Sure, netbooks started out as machines that could barely browse the web, but that's definitely _not_ the way they're perceived these days.
Don't forget the people who already have a Windows license - I bought a Linux netbook because I have more than enough MSDNAA XP licenses laying around anyway...
I don't think that a lot of the people in the Netbook target audience (Youtube, E-Mail and Web browsers) are technically-minded enough to spend time getting a Linux setup up and running when they're coming from Windows... Hell, I'm relatively technically minded and I can't stand using Linux on a day-to-day basiss.
Pretty much sums up everything pretty well. I've got Windows CE on my phone, and I don't think I could stand using it to actually _work_ (or browse the web or watch videos or anything else that's halfway productive). It barely handles my contacts and calendar junk without crashing...
I thought the handset was pretty rough around the edges - too much wasted front-side real estate (what's with the weird rounded shape?), pretty shabby performance (and 0 reliability) with the stock OS (wait a sec - that describes my WM6.1 phone pretty well too :D) and even worse stability with other OS's...
Who cares that it'll run a full-blown Linux desktop if I can't use it to make phone calls and write SMS properly...?
Very likely - the last flight I was on that had wifi (and a standard 220V power socket under every seat, which was _awesome_) was an Etihad flight, and that cost me 10 Euros for half an hour... the pricing is insane. $10 for a flight is pretty awesome, but I have a hard time believing it...
Sounds about right. Pay for it, and you get a product that's guaranteed to work.
I suppose you won't get all the Labs updates right away if you do that though... I'm perfectly fine with regular Gmail (although WM6.1 pisses me off with its inability to handle IMAP properly)...
It's even worse if you open the executable on a network share via WiFi... :(
Are you saying you don't have to deal with a CLI in Ubuntu? Are you kidding me? I actually removed 7.xx after about half an hour of trying to get my multi-monitor setup working (which takes about 3 minutes in XP Pro or even *gasp* Vista). sudo gedit whaaaa? All I want is a dialog box to select resolutions, refresh rates and orientation (fine, Ubuntu has one, but it doesn't fricken work)... what's so hard about that?
Trust me, things like this are definitely easier on a Mac (and Windows :D)...
Desktop keyboards are no problem at all, IMO. My good old Logitech Media Keyboard Elite ($25 or so back a few years ago) has halfway decent tactile feedback and I can type pretty fast on it. Model M style clickety keyboards don't help me much in that area...
But have you seen the keyboards they put on netbooks/laptops lately? Holy shite, these things are horrible. Right now I'm typing this on an Eee PC 1000H, and the tactile feedback is horrible... not to mention the need to enable filterkeys just to get rid of the magic "two-letters-from-one-keypress" syndrome...
Give me a tiny screen with low resolution, give me the crappiest integrated graphics money can buy, give me a sound card that has a signal to noise ratio of approximately -5dB and a kick in the ass while you're at it - just don't give me a keyboard that fricken types on its own...
Having experienced both the German and US versions (as well as the excellent system in New Zealand), I've got to say that I prefer the American version to the German one.
The German school system is about school, and nothing else. If you want to join a sports team, look elsewhere. If you're looking for extracurricular activities of any kind, look elsewhere.
If I'd needed to get a new membership at a new sports club every time I wanted to try out a new sport (which is currently the case here in Germany) instead of just putting my name on a signup sheet and showing up after school, I'm guessing I would've spent a lot less time playing sports...
Are you telling me that 10+ down and 1+ mbit up aren't enough for a bit of VPN and video streaming? Sure, I can't stream a BD-ROM with my pipe, but pretty much anything else is no problem ;)
Pretty much - BT is the only thing that actually uses my 16mbits of downstream.
Screw faster connections for home users, how about having a minimum sustainable speed requirement for commercial web server connections? What use is a faster connection at home if the *insertURLhere* server only gives me 5% of what my brand spanking new fiber optic soundwave ultra-awesome connection has to offer?
Turning off Slashdot 2.0 seems to help... The Classic discussion system flies...
I've gotta agree. My bluetooth keyboard just sits in the desk drawer all year because it's such a pain in the ass to put it and the phone on a desk and then start typing - looks weird, the phone's always flat on the table unless you prop it up with some weird stand (even more to carry - so you might as well carry a small laptop anyway) or a makeshift solution where the phone will keep falling over...
Note taking during meetings/lectures is easier with a laptop. The only issue here is battery life, but with netbooks hitting 9+ hours, it's an easily (and not _that_ expensively) solvable one.
Anyone want to buy an Ubiquio foldable bluetooth keyboard? Used for like... a whole 3 days? :P
Maybe they're just banking on the fact that most people concerned about audio quality will want a decent pair of headphones wired directly to the jack (probably with a portable amp). I know I don't want A2DP for my day-to-day listening - it's just too fiddly, both in terms of fidelity and skipping... the SE bluetooth headset (HBV 200 something) I tried went back after 3 days because it didn't play nice with any of my source equipment (PCs, laptops, V600i, K610i, HTC Prophet), producing a lot of skips and extra noise. Maybe the DACs on that thing were just crappy, but hey, that thing cost over $100 - do I really have to shell out $200+ just to get a proper interface that I can plug my headphones into?
Not to mention it's another device to charge, and it only saves me about 30cm of wire :P
So does this work with laptop keyboards as well? Is there also a ground cable here that acts as an antenna? For that matter, is the internal connection PS2? Most laptop touchpads still seem to be PS2...
You obviously haven't played online much. The important thing here is latency, not throughput. Any latency under 80ms is more than playable, and a 768k DSL line is more than capable of that. Hell, with fastpath I used to hit ~30ms on a 1M line.
Just use a server that's in the same country instead of halfway around the world.
Actually, I run Visual Studio on my EeePC 1000H without a hitch. Sure, the projects I'm working on aren't as vast as real world applications (I'm mainly just doing uni assignments), but compiling isn't all too slow compared to my desktop. So no complaints here...
Hmmm, doesn't anyone use desktops any more? Desktop workstation + Netbook + Smartphone is working pretty well for me. Then again, I don't have to do any serious photoshop or cubase work when I'm on the go... but again, who wants to do that with a trackpad/clit mouse anyway?
I dunno what everyone else is doing, but a decent desktop setup that's easily upgradable is definitely the way to go for power-heavy tasks, and netbooks are great for the average user on the go. What'm I gonna do with a $2000 laptop (That was pretty much the price range I was doomed to before netbooks came out - mainly because of form factor issues) that'll finish encoding a video file 3 seconds faster than a netbook? Is it going to give me twice as much battery life? Is it going to help me surf the net faster? Type faster? Nope...
All the $2000 laptop will do is weigh me down with another kilo or two of unneeded weight.