Comments on: State of the netbook nation

By: vba database

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By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:12:58 +0000

I take your point about the Toshiba’s battery life, and have bought a Samsung NC10 instead. It’s presently on its way to me, but I have every hope of using it before Christmas.

Chris

By: Gerald McMullon

Gerald McMullon — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:05:08 +0000

I have used Sony Picturebooks, particularly whilst traveling on the train to work. Checking e-mails and writing VBA code on a 1024×480 screen is not easy. I now use a version with 1280×768 screen which is about the minimum I can work with now having got used to 1600×1200 and 1920×1200 screens.

All portable devices are a compromise and it does depend upon what you are wanting to use them for to determine if they are fit for purpose or not. Besides the netbook devices a number of low energy machines also running versions of Linux are being heavily publicised in the wake of the netbooks.

Each Netbook manufacturer supplies a different version of Linux and even with a range of bundled applications it is difficult to know whether they are able to do even basic Internet browsing. Some sites require Flash or video codecs that are not supported or playback is not adequate on the netbook, even with 1.6GHz Atom processors.

For students the keyboard and screen size, of Netbooks, comes at the cost of weight and limited battery life over devices like the Nokia N800 and 810 internet tablet which also have 800×480 screens. For PowerPoint presentations, word documents and business applications you need more compatibly than Open Office provides.

The more expensive Netbooks offer Windows XP and hard drives. These are indistinguishable, to the consumer, from lower end notebooks.

Between high spec mobile phones like the iphone and Nokia N95/96, pocketable devices like the Internet tablet N800 and the low end notebook the only thing going for the Linux netbook is price. Without cheap access on the move to the internet, an internet only device with such limited screen size is only going to disappoint.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 01:17:37 +0000

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By: Nodders

Nodders — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:32:08 +0000

george bush – not sure there is no identified purpose. My girlfriend wants one as it is inexpensive way to do a bit of work or browse the internet while I’m playing away at games on our main desktop. Equally I see plenty of people on the commuter trains with them, presumably again because of cost, and also because they are a lot easier to handle and operate than regular laptops in confined environments due to their smaller size. One thing that does concern me though it the creeping price. For us, their cheapness was the big selling point. The fact that prices are creeping ever and ever up now means that even now I am looking heavily at the lower end of the laptop market.

By: Tim Danton

Tim Danton — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:13:48 +0000

@Mark “Leverage” is one of those terms that’s been bandied about by marketing people in tech companies for many, many years. It’s so annoying I wrote about it in a column last year:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/columns/174381/prolog.html

The one to look out for this year is “experience”. Microsoft is particularly keen for things to be experiences.

By: george bush

george bush — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:30:08 +0000

It’s indicative of our failing society that you’re falling over yourselves to purchase an item such as a netbook because you’ve been told it’s cool, but that it’s only after you’ve bought it that you realise you need to fabricate a purpose for having it. It’s almost as bad as buying a new car every three years because there’s a new model available.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:21:05 +0000

“We [still] have to see for ourselves how consumers are going to leverage the features of a netbook” – “Asus stepped further up [the notebook vendor rankings] to 4th place shipping over 2 million units this quarter, leveraging from the unabated success of the Eee PC product range.”
Is TO LEVERAGE the latest business buzzword that sounds good and has no particular meaning?

By: Tim Danton

Tim Danton — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:45:14 +0000

That’s an interesting point – that to look around and you’ll find countless uses of netbooks. It’s reminiscent of PCs in the early days, when manufacturers thought they would be just a business tool – and now they’re being used in a stunning variety of ways that no-one could have predicted.

Fascinating to see what you’d want to use a netbook for as well, although you may be disappointed by the Toshiba’s battery life. The Dell gets just under four hours in our tests, and I don’t expect the NB100 to last any more than the 3hrs 30mins Toshiba claims.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:34:47 +0000

I’m certainly looking to buy a netbook, to supplement my PC & laptop, but for a variety of other reasons:
1) To replace my obsolete Dell Axim by providing a very portable copy of Outlook, Money etc on a larger version of a PDA (effectively getting back to the Psion 5 I used to use for this purpose).
2) To provide back up storage and viewing facilities for pictures from my digital cameras, both on holiday and when out on assignments.
3) To provide portable access to my GSAK database of geocaches when out hunting.

If the manufacturers look around they will found countless other uses for netbooks, besides their student uses and web access uses!

I’d like a Dell Mini with better battery life and more storage – guess it’s being called a Toshiba NB100!