Well, I've traveled with my x40 on *many* long and short haul flights, and I've found it small enough that the extra cost and vastly diminished performance more than make up for the slightly larger size. My point wasn't that netbooks have no purpose, it was that, they are overpriced when other options are considered. In other words, the x40 does represent a compromise on the "get the smallest possible computer" front, but makes up for it with greater CPU power, more ram, better screen and better keyboard.
If your use calls for the the smallest unit at any cost then that's where our use cases differ.
Our use cases also differ in that OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox and my coding text editor are not accelerated by a 64 bit OS. If your netbook use involves apps that benefit from 64bit then again, that's a difference in our uses.
As I said earlier, the X40 I suggest competes against current netbooks, not your contrived imaginary UtopiaBook.
Netbooks will never be as powerful as full sized laptops, there will always be a relative difference.
Until technology gets to the point where netbooks can replace laptops fully in the way laptops can replaced desktops today, netbooks will never be a full computing solution.
As for the 64 bit comment, I disagree. There is no software on the market, barring scientific software and some heavy duty multimedia transcoding stuff that uses 64bit for any real advantage, and if you're doing either of those things on your netbook then, well, you're smoking crack. Perhaps in a few years, but not today.
I still don't understand your point here. The article says "Netbooks FTW". I said "Second hand X40s are the smarter choice". You said "My imaginary device is better than both!".
I am a frequent traveler. I use my ThinkPad X40 for when I'm on flights, going to conferences etc, and my ThinkPad T61p for heavy lifting such as long coding sessions, graphics work etc.
Extended battery life for long flights.
My X40 gives 4 - 5 hours on a charge.
Swappable battery for long flights.
Check.
Don't care about weight.
Check, hence I travel with two laptops, one in my carry on (X40) and the workhorse in check baggage. I'm a pro at packing my stuff around the laptop, 10 long haul flights and no damage to it yet. Helped also by the fact that ThinkPad's are built like tanks.
Don't care about thickness except as it affects height.
The X40 is no MacBook Air, but were I spending that budget I'd get a X300.
Total height when open should be at least 1.5 inches shorter than a Macbook.
No idea how big a MacBook is, but the X40 is pretty small so I doubt it'll not meet this.
EIther FireWire 400 with power or a built-in CompactFlash-compatible reader---the USB readers suck in my experience and I like to be able to back up photos while on the go.
Hey, I thought we were talking netbooks here? The X40 doesn't have firewire, but since when is that a concern on a small and light aircraft companion? For reading CF cards, get a $5 card reader, they're diminuitive these days, and weigt in at about 20g. The X40 has a built in SD/MMC reader, the T61p can also do the MemoryStick range IIRC.
Sufficient external port power to drive an external laptop HD (again, ideally, through FireWire).
You're having a different discussion here. No netbook will do this.
ExpressCard port for when I need a port that it doesn't provide.
Dude. NETBOOKS.
Two USB ports.
Check.
Wired ethernet. Too many hotels I've stayed in recently don't have wireless or charge extra for it.
Check. Both ThinkPads have RJ45 ethernet and RJ12 modems built in.
Low thermal output. I want to use this on my lap comfortably.
Check, the X40 runs quite cool, and is dead silent.
Must support at least 2GB of RAM.
NETBOOKS! But yes, it does. What are you doing that requires >2gb of ram that also doesn't thrash the battery life?
Must not have soldered RAM on the motherboard. I've had lots of trouble with motherboard RAM going bad, so I like my RAM replaceable, thanks.
Dunno about this one,
64-bit-capable Atom CPU for maximum viability.
Stop smoking crack.
Mac OS X support.
I said stop it with the crack already. MacBook Air is your only option for a small netbook here, and I think everyone agrees at this stage that the MBA is a product birthed from pure stupidity.
Your wants are not met by the current crop of products. You seem to want desktop performance in a netbook size unit, with the full flotilla of ports and no compromise in battery life when doing heavy duty work. Even if I were willing to pay big dollars for a netbook, which by definition is a *secondary* machine, there is no product that solves the absurd mix of wants in your list.
The X40 is a good tradeoff given the niche that the netbook is supposed to fill. When you're asking for does not exist, and if it did, I doubt it'd be anywhere NEAR the price range we're talking about here with netbooks.
Been running now for a month or so, no worries. Feel free to check back with me if you like, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing. I'm new to mail server admin, not server admin.
The ironic thing is that Chavez is actually a good leader and a very intelligent person, while the western media does its best to make him look foolish. Bush has the mental capacity of a ball peen hammer, but the western media does its best to make him look smart.
Because if you can get Windows to work on constrained hardwre like a netbook, then you can make anything work on anything. If you have the skills to make Windows work on a netbook, I bet you can install Solaris on a pair of scissors.
* Full size keyboard vs eeePC's absurdly unsable plastic thing. * Very good screen quality vs eeePC's wristwatch reject. * Over 4h battery time running Xubuntu (I timed this with average use, this is *not* with the notebook sitting idle). * Not much bigger than the eeePC, and still very light at 1.2kg. * Super durable vs eeePC's plastic trashy case. * Half the price of an eeePC.
I wish people would cut out this rubbish Netbook phase. Netbooks, at the moment, are overpriced reject hardware.
Until a netbook is at least as powerful as a 3 year old laptop, has usable input/output peripherals and is durable enough to take anywhere (after all, that's the point of the size, right?) then netbooks will be in my mind a total waste of time and money.
Have you really paid attention? CD sales are way down, far more than online sales are up.
Could that possibly be because the last 3-5 years have seen huge drops in consumer spending overall? Correlation is not causation.
Copying 100GB of a well sorted collection of pretty much all famous bands in recent history is just absurd convienience. Did you hear Apple dropped their biggest iPod model because even the packrats didn't need more space? It's not a problem. Not in terms of bandwidth, storage or anything. I think we're very soon going to break all those bounds on information, it's only a matter of how much information we need, we can organize and we can process. Our digital tools will in practise be infinite, the human mind not.
Believe you me, the government, it's various agencies and the big boys from the provate sector will find new ways to sort, catalog and search larger volumes of information, right after they find new ways to gather larger volumes of information about you.
If you consider clearing cookies and basic privacy to be tinfoil type material, then may I have your email address? My ideas will intrigue you and I think you would like to subscribe to my newsletter.
I'm increasingly starting to think that Slashdot editors are being underhandedly paid by Google to subtly ridicule anti-Google articles or sentiments. The wording of this summary makes it pretty blatantly obvious that the editor wants to make people who are suspicious of Google appear "fanatical", implying all the baggage that that word carries with it these days.
How is it fanatical to not want to send your data to a private corporation? Would it be fanatical if that corporation was Microsoft, Sony or Universal Studios?
I clear my cookies regularly. What Slashdot calls fanatical I call routine. So I guess that makes me a fanatic.
I've had the same ISP handled email address for about 12 years now. It's not that my time is worthless, but that the massive advantages that running my own mail server bring outweigh the investment. So I spent a week learning about mail server admin. It's a week that will now pay off for another 12 years or more.
I chose Aox over Dovecot because the idea of storing mail in a DB appeals to me. Furthermore, Aox easily does strong encryption, enforced TLS auth, SMTP submission, message parsing and sanitation to rfc 2822. Also, user management is a dream.
Having mail in a DB means there are lots of other funky things that can be done to extend functionality later on, should I desire.
Finally, installing and configuring Dovecot properly is not easy, whereas Aox is so easy a sysadmin newbie can do it.
Damn straight my mileage varies. My mail server is hosted in a data center and has RAID1 over 4 drives. I pay for it by hosting email for a few organizations and charging them nominal fees just to pay for the colo fees.
True, but I find that Debian + Postfix + Archiveopteryx is a solid enough platform that maintenance is infrequent and easy. If you can dedicate one machine to it and don't do anything else on that machine to break your mail setup, it's even more solid. None of the packages i listed above are anything less than rock solid.
Also, setting up my own mail server means I can have as many addresses as I want, such as a dedicated one for mailing lists which I can subscribe to as many as I want without fear of running out of space, and then use IMAP to provide perfect sync between as many PCs as I want.
No commercial company can offer even close to the flexibility you get running your own, so in my books, it's worth it.
I recently set up my own mail server. It's easier than you think (well it was easier than I though it was going to be) and you can have your own domain permanently and sure that it'll never be yanked out from under you. I wrote a full guide on setting up the mail server using Debian and the outstanding mail server package Archiveopteryx. You can read it here:
Slashdot Mirror
s/diminished/improved
I re-wrote that sentence and got confused with how it was being worded.
(Replying anon to not further dilute my karma)
Well, I've traveled with my x40 on *many* long and short haul flights, and I've found it small enough that the extra cost and vastly diminished performance more than make up for the slightly larger size. My point wasn't that netbooks have no purpose, it was that, they are overpriced when other options are considered. In other words, the x40 does represent a compromise on the "get the smallest possible computer" front, but makes up for it with greater CPU power, more ram, better screen and better keyboard.
If your use calls for the the smallest unit at any cost then that's where our use cases differ.
Our use cases also differ in that OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox and my coding text editor are not accelerated by a 64 bit OS. If your netbook use involves apps that benefit from 64bit then again, that's a difference in our uses.
As I said earlier, the X40 I suggest competes against current netbooks, not your contrived imaginary UtopiaBook.
Netbooks will never be as powerful as full sized laptops, there will always be a relative difference.
Until technology gets to the point where netbooks can replace laptops fully in the way laptops can replaced desktops today, netbooks will never be a full computing solution.
As for the 64 bit comment, I disagree. There is no software on the market, barring scientific software and some heavy duty multimedia transcoding stuff that uses 64bit for any real advantage, and if you're doing either of those things on your netbook then, well, you're smoking crack. Perhaps in a few years, but not today.
I still don't understand your point here. The article says "Netbooks FTW". I said "Second hand X40s are the smarter choice". You said "My imaginary device is better than both!".
I am a frequent traveler. I use my ThinkPad X40 for when I'm on flights, going to conferences etc, and my ThinkPad T61p for heavy lifting such as long coding sessions, graphics work etc.
My X40 gives 4 - 5 hours on a charge.
Check.
Check, hence I travel with two laptops, one in my carry on (X40) and the workhorse in check baggage. I'm a pro at packing my stuff around the laptop, 10 long haul flights and no damage to it yet. Helped also by the fact that ThinkPad's are built like tanks.
The X40 is no MacBook Air, but were I spending that budget I'd get a X300.
No idea how big a MacBook is, but the X40 is pretty small so I doubt it'll not meet this.
Hey, I thought we were talking netbooks here? The X40 doesn't have firewire, but since when is that a concern on a small and light aircraft companion? For reading CF cards, get a $5 card reader, they're diminuitive these days, and weigt in at about 20g. The X40 has a built in SD/MMC reader, the T61p can also do the MemoryStick range IIRC.
You're having a different discussion here. No netbook will do this.
Dude. NETBOOKS.
Check.
Check. Both ThinkPads have RJ45 ethernet and RJ12 modems built in.
Check, the X40 runs quite cool, and is dead silent.
NETBOOKS! But yes, it does. What are you doing that requires >2gb of ram that also doesn't thrash the battery life?
Dunno about this one,
Stop smoking crack.
I said stop it with the crack already. MacBook Air is your only option for a small netbook here, and I think everyone agrees at this stage that the MBA is a product birthed from pure stupidity.
Your wants are not met by the current crop of products. You seem to want desktop performance in a netbook size unit, with the full flotilla of ports and no compromise in battery life when doing heavy duty work. Even if I were willing to pay big dollars for a netbook, which by definition is a *secondary* machine, there is no product that solves the absurd mix of wants in your list.
The X40 is a good tradeoff given the niche that the netbook is supposed to fill. When you're asking for does not exist, and if it did, I doubt it'd be anywhere NEAR the price range we're talking about here with netbooks.
No it'd go something like this:
BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Been running now for a month or so, no worries. Feel free to check back with me if you like, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing. I'm new to mail server admin, not server admin.
The ironic thing is that Chavez is actually a good leader and a very intelligent person, while the western media does its best to make him look foolish. Bush has the mental capacity of a ball peen hammer, but the western media does its best to make him look smart.
Because if you can get Windows to work on constrained hardwre like a netbook, then you can make anything work on anything. If you have the skills to make Windows work on a netbook, I bet you can install Solaris on a pair of scissors.
Spoken like a true foreigner.
Ultimate netbook: Second hand IBM ThinkPad X40.
* Full size keyboard vs eeePC's absurdly unsable plastic thing.
* Very good screen quality vs eeePC's wristwatch reject.
* Over 4h battery time running Xubuntu (I timed this with average use, this is *not* with the notebook sitting idle).
* Not much bigger than the eeePC, and still very light at 1.2kg.
* Super durable vs eeePC's plastic trashy case.
* Half the price of an eeePC.
I wish people would cut out this rubbish Netbook phase. Netbooks, at the moment, are overpriced reject hardware.
Until a netbook is at least as powerful as a 3 year old laptop, has usable input/output peripherals and is durable enough to take anywhere (after all, that's the point of the size, right?) then netbooks will be in my mind a total waste of time and money.
Pfft. Pussies. Back when I was a kid we got shot by missiles all the time. Both ways.
Or and I mixing memes up?
I think what we're hearing from him is a muffled cry for help that goes something like this:
"Help! I don't understand proportionality or the Internet!"
Yes you do. It's represented in all its life-sized glory by all the periods at the ends of sentences.
If they make it illegal, and any suspicious activity will just get a visit from the Black Suits.
Nobody transfers 1gb of encrypted data to and from their netbanking site.
Could that possibly be because the last 3-5 years have seen huge drops in consumer spending overall? Correlation is not causation.
Believe you me, the government, it's various agencies and the big boys from the provate sector will find new ways to sort, catalog and search larger volumes of information, right after they find new ways to gather larger volumes of information about you.
If you consider clearing cookies and basic privacy to be tinfoil type material, then may I have your email address? My ideas will intrigue you and I think you would like to subscribe to my newsletter.
Since companies like Google started using open source and dumped all their absurd management terms into our lexicon.
I'm increasingly starting to think that Slashdot editors are being underhandedly paid by Google to subtly ridicule anti-Google articles or sentiments. The wording of this summary makes it pretty blatantly obvious that the editor wants to make people who are suspicious of Google appear "fanatical", implying all the baggage that that word carries with it these days.
How is it fanatical to not want to send your data to a private corporation? Would it be fanatical if that corporation was Microsoft, Sony or Universal Studios?
I clear my cookies regularly. What Slashdot calls fanatical I call routine. So I guess that makes me a fanatic.
Slashdot, vous échouez Unicode.
I've had the same ISP handled email address for about 12 years now. It's not that my time is worthless, but that the massive advantages that running my own mail server bring outweigh the investment. So I spent a week learning about mail server admin. It's a week that will now pay off for another 12 years or more.
I chose Aox over Dovecot because the idea of storing mail in a DB appeals to me. Furthermore, Aox easily does strong encryption, enforced TLS auth, SMTP submission, message parsing and sanitation to rfc 2822. Also, user management is a dream.
Having mail in a DB means there are lots of other funky things that can be done to extend functionality later on, should I desire.
Finally, installing and configuring Dovecot properly is not easy, whereas Aox is so easy a sysadmin newbie can do it.
Damn straight my mileage varies. My mail server is hosted in a data center and has RAID1 over 4 drives. I pay for it by hosting email for a few organizations and charging them nominal fees just to pay for the colo fees.
True, but I find that Debian + Postfix + Archiveopteryx is a solid enough platform that maintenance is infrequent and easy. If you can dedicate one machine to it and don't do anything else on that machine to break your mail setup, it's even more solid. None of the packages i listed above are anything less than rock solid.
Also, setting up my own mail server means I can have as many addresses as I want, such as a dedicated one for mailing lists which I can subscribe to as many as I want without fear of running out of space, and then use IMAP to provide perfect sync between as many PCs as I want.
No commercial company can offer even close to the flexibility you get running your own, so in my books, it's worth it.
I recently set up my own mail server. It's easier than you think (well it was easier than I though it was going to be) and you can have your own domain permanently and sure that it'll never be yanked out from under you. I wrote a full guide on setting up the mail server using Debian and the outstanding mail server package Archiveopteryx. You can read it here:
http://www.mrnaz.com/?s=publish-blog&entryid=197
I'd love to help you but there's no space in the garage for a Taepodong 2 launch assembly :(