Netbooks

[sirpaul484]

     So, I was walking in my local OfficeMax, looking for wireless ethernet adapters (mine decided to not use the wireless functionality for some reason, rendering it a standard 10/100 router), when I caught my eye on their selection of portable computers.  Most were your standard laptops, but one stood out, like the tiny puppy in the corner of the pet shop.  It was a very nice looking Netbook, the Acer AspireOne.  I recently looked up these machines, and was rather impressed at what they had, but the only color scheme that I would have wanted to pick up was the blue one.  Now, take three guesses as to which color they had at the store... I feel like I'm weak, but I had to pick it up, especially since it was on sale for $300 after tax.

     I'm quite impressed at all the features it has.  First of all, the processor is more than enough for everything which I want to do with it, which is mostly browse the web and play old games via emulation/dosbox.  Secondly, the monitor is outstanding.  My old laptop's screen had such a low refresh rate that it was impossible to do anything aside from work on text documents and maybe, MAYBE play Minesweeper.  This one does not have much noticeable blurring, and every bit of text is easy to read, down to the tiniest font size.  According to most websites, the average netbook's keyboard is horrible, with badly placed keys and an overall mushy feeling.  Not so with this one.  The keys all are comfortable, and the layout is almost identical to my old laptop's.  It has more than enough RAM (1 gigabyte), and it has a sizeable 120 gig hard drive.  Battery life is quite good, giving me 3 hours on its 3-cell lithium ion battery.  I might upgrade soon, but not right now.  The only downsides are the touch pad (I despise them, this one especially) and the speakers are very low quality, making everything sound tinny and distant.  Fortunately, that's what the USB port and headphone jack are for.  This one actually comes with a small mouse, but it had a few issues, and was quickly replaced by a cheap laptop mouse I got at said OfficeMax.

     All in all, I love this netbook, and I take it just about everywhere I go.  It has everything I want, nothing I don't want, and it has a ton of great features.  So, what about you guys? Do you like netbooks? Why or why not?

[jdiwnab]

I have an Asus EEEpc 701, which is a 9" netbook with a 7" screen. It has decent battery life and limited storage. The two main issues I have with it is the small screen and having only 4GB to store things. This has been mostly remedied with newer netbooks. The 901 is still 9", with a full 9" screen, much more storage and such, as well as better battery life. For me, my eee does not replace a full size laptop or a desktop. I Like it for it's portability, but what makes it portable also means it is not effective for more intensive things that I do with my computers. The major issue is the screen size. 9-10" might be enough for you, but I like my screens between 12" and 15". 7" makes it mostly an awesome movie player and for going on the road. Taking notes on light days for classes, as well. But not for development and research online. So, in other words, your millage may vary, but don't expect it to replace other computers.

[Andrew Armstrong]

I'm not a fan of most netbooks - low battery life (so what's the point?) keyboard and bad touchpads usually, just in the ones I've used. Then again, some people love them, so who am I to care?

I have ordered a Pandora though - retro emulation, good battery life and things like touch screen/dpad make it for me (you have to buy SD cards for the systems storage though). I would at least recommend looking at battery life over everything else - the machines might be classed as ultra-portable, but if they can't last one train journey, or an airplane ride, why bother?

[sirpaul484]

     Well, as for the battery life, the three hour life is better than my Toshiba's 90 minute battery life (If I'm lucky).  Plus, if I want even longer battery life, I can easily get a 9-cell battery.  It may jut out of the system a bit, but I'd get at least 8 hours of battery life.  As for the keyboard, it's about as good as the aformentioned Toshiba laptop.  The only real issue is the arrow keys are a little on the small side.  The touchpad is a non-issue, since I use a real mouse.
     As you said, some people love them, some people hate them.  I like mine because I can easily slip it into my old laptop case, as well as the accessories.  Even with the mouse, AC adaptor, and a nice joystick (I gotta have my Atari games on-the-go  ), It's still much lighter than just my old one by itself.

[Moondog]

I'm kind of late chiming into this post, but I owned me 701 eee for nearly two years and still get regular use from it.  I use a 4GB sdhc card for storage needs, however I use it more for surfing while on the go.  Being one of the first models out in this market, it has it's quirks (lack of storage, smaller screen and keyboard) and I've been considering upgrading to something along the lines to an Aspire One or Dell Mini with a larger screen and imporved keyboard.

[orsty3001]

I've worked on a lot of these units and a few of them seemed alright but the other day I worked on an Acer that ran gOS. Someone had damaged the OS to the point where it needed to be reloaded so I plugged an external dvd drive and used the disc that came with the unit to reload it. That disc didn't work. It would hang half into the installation. So I downloaded it from their website because the OS is free. It looks like some kind of Debian off shoot. The unit took over night to install. Started it a 4pm, left at 5pm. Walked into work at 9am and it was still installing. This is a 600mb OS also. I found the screen difficult to read even when I got the resolution set to it's proper setting. I thought it was just too small and too lacking in features for my tastes. I think this unit was given to these people by their cellphone company.

Another unit this guy had was dead. He dropped something on it and killed it. He told me his wife had been writing every day on it about their son that had died a few months ago. I open this thing up expecting some type of removable drive and there wasn't any. The 16gb of storage was built into the motherboard. So was the ram and cpu. I had no way of interfacing with that "hard drive".

I'm not going to say these units are completely useless. I could see if you traveled and just checked your email or something it would be better than lugging around a bigger laptop but anything else. I'd have to pass.

[sirpaul484]

I still use mine for mobile word processing (although OpenOffice.Org seems buggy on it for some reason), and web browsing.  I recently got an external DVD-ROM drive for it, and I used it to install linux on it.  Oddly, though, I expected Linux to run a bit faster on the netbook, but I notice quite the opposite, even when I traded out Fedora for a distribution that is more optimized for lower-powered computers.  I can only run Firefox, a simple text editor, and a few small games.  It also isn't very comfortable when using it on your lap.  I pretty much have to either use a lapdesk, or carefully prop it on my knee.  Needless to say, the love affair's over, and I am considering getting a "real" laptop when I get the money.

[Moondog]

Mine shipped with Xandros 4 and a custom desktop menu program by Asus, but since then I moved to a distro called Easy Peasy.  It's built off of Ubuntu, so there's no shortage of applications,  I was able to install it from a usb stick.  The nice thing I found about storing all my data on an sdhc card is that if I want to play with another distro, I don't lose any data.

[sirpaul484]

The distro of Linux I put on mine is called Crunchbang.  It's the same distribution I have on my secondary PC.  It's very nice and minimalistic, running off OpenBox, and not KDE or Gnome.. Almost too minimalistic, though.. Hard to really put programs in to run them quickly unless you know what you're doing.

[Moondog]

Easy Peasy uses the Ubuntu Netbook Remix gui, which reminds me of the menus I normally see on other portable devices.

[RedWolf]

So are netbooks worth it or not? I find myself wanting one, and yet feel that maybe they'll be too small to be comfortable to use.

I'd want one with a) a great keyboard, b) great battery life, and c) a great screen.

Anyone know of one like that?

Benj

[orsty3001]

So are netbooks worth it or not? I find myself wanting one, and yet feel that maybe they'll be too small to be comfortable to use.

I'd want one with a) a great keyboard, b) great battery life, and c) a great screen.

Anyone know of one like that?

Benj

Today I'm working on a Macbook pro with a 13 inch screen. A little bigger than a netbook but it's still smaller than your average laptop. It kind of looks funny sitting next to this HP with a 18.5 inch screen. This thing has been through hell and back. It's all aluminum and each corner looks like it's been in a accident. The lady dropped it on a cement floor and broke the screen. Just popped a new screen in it today and it booted strait up. She said she hasn't turned it on in a little over a year and it's got a full charge. Unit says it's got 6 hours and 44 mins left on the battery. Any other laptop here won't last longer than 2 hours on the battery. Keyboard is just as easy to type on as any other normal laptop. Screen looks better than anything I've got on the bench. It's brighter and crisper than anything else we got sitting around right now. This is compaired to a lot of Sonys, HP's and Dells.

This macbook is serious stuff. The only gripe I have with Apple other than the requirement to wear a turtle neck while owning one, is the cost.

I used to really hate Apple because I thought it was for pretentious bastards who sit at coffee bars in turtle necks with their hipster beards. The glasses on their face is something the won in a who's less of a man contest with Lisa Lobe and anything you do with a computer has to be done in public so people can see your Apple logo and know you are better than they are while you write the next big novel or edit some sort of graphic art project for some company called "N".

But now I kind of like their products. After getting an iPhone and seeing more Macs come into work I really like the way they look and feel. If I ever get back to making the money I was before this session hit I'll get one.

Apple could rule the world if they would just drop the price and loose the snob factor. But then again don't we all want a little snob factor?


 

[sirpaul484]

By "great screen", do you mean large, high resolution, or crisp and easily visible display?

If all you really want to do with it is just browse the web, chat online, and do a bit of writing, then a netbook would be fine.  If you want to do anything more substantial, I'd say wait a few years before the Ion platform is more readily available on them.  My Aspire One has a nice, clear screen with no dead pixels, a pretty good, albeit slightly cramped, keyboard, and even though it has a 3-cell battery, I can easily go out and do some computer work for over three hours.

For vintage games, DOSBox works well.  At least, when I had XP on it.  I have yet to install it on Linux.  As for other emulators, they all seem to be a little jerky.  I only really tried Stella and ZSNES, though, so your actual mileage may vary.  One of the problems with DOSBox is that the arrow keys on the keyboard are rather small, so games which require it are a little uncomfortable to play on... All the other keys are pretty decent, so things like text editors and web browsers are fine.

In closing, if you don't mind the relatively small (1024 x 600 for mine) screen, lack of optical drive, and weak processor, you'll like a netbook.  If you absolutely need a big display, good graphics and processing capabilities, and optical drive, then I'd say shell out the extra $200-300 and get a real laptop.

[orsty3001]

The 13 inch mac book isn't netbook. It's a regular laptop with a DVD writer and a Dual Core processor.

Here's the specs on it,

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTAyNTQwMDc

It's resolution runs at 1280 x 800. That screen was just a very high quality screen. It looks much more crisp than any other screen on all the other laptops that I've seen come through our shop. It's got one of the best refresh rates also. It's very fluid looking when you pay attention to a video or a game. This Acer One I have in the shop right now doesn't look as good. Although it's screen isn't that bad. It's very usable unlike the Gateway Solo with the Pentium 60 this guy wanted Windows 7 installed on. These LCD screens have come a long way from what they used to be. This macbook automatically adjusted the screen's brightness with the light levels in the room. If you could feel it also it just felt like a better machine. It's the Cadillac of laptops   

I think the mac is a better choice for the person that travels a lot. It seems to have a better wifi radio than most laptops too. My friend has a 15 inch macbook pro and his always works in hotels where our stuff won't.

I know dosbox works on Mac too, dosbox seems to work on everything these days. I have it on my Wii at home. Mac isn't left out on the emulator scene either.

That near 7 hour battery life sells me too. I have family that lives in the UK and 7 hours of battery would be great on a plane or waiting in an airport.

Comparing that Mac book pro to any netbook is like comparing apples to oranges because of the price difference. I just know being technically inclined myself a computer like a netbook starts out as something simple to just use for this basic task. Then it ends up doing this and that and before you know it, it's not enough machine to do the job anymore.

After playing around with that Mac and these netbooks, I can't even think of owning a netbook if I had a choice taking into account that would meet my needs. Your needs may be different.

Sirpaul484, next time you see a macbook pro in a store somewhere. Check it out.

[Moondog]

If all you really want to do with it is just browse the web, chat online, and do a bit of writing, then a netbook would be fine.

That's what I wanted, and that's pretty much what I got.  I had a Toshiba Tecra P166 (there's one like it in the movie Iron Man, when Tony is working in the cave) that was given to me for free several years ago that was nice for surfing.  The only problem was the battery was shot, and a replacement battery was worth several times more than the laptop itself.  It had a 2gb hard drive, and I thought it would be perfect if I was able to replace it with a CF card and adapter, making it bounce-proof.  I hadn't figured out the replacement power issue yet, then soon enough, the Asus eee 701 came out.  It was at first hard to browse with an 800x480 display, but when Ubunutu eee / Easy Peasy distro came out, they resolved the browser sizing issues I was having.