Are netbooks really “better with Windows”?

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Asus – the company that started the netbook phenomenon with the Linux-based Eee PC 701 – has apparently decided that the open-source OS isn’t so spiffing after all.

The company has teamed up with Microsoft to create the rather prosaic It’s Better With Windows website.

“Windows helps you quickly and easily get online and connect to your devices and services – without dealing with an unfamiliar environment or major compatibility issues,” the site proclaims. It then shows a series of videos, with Eee PC-wielding people going about their lives in blissful harmony.

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Eee PC versus the world!

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Is the Eee PC brand the fastest growing in the world right now? When it first appeared at Computex in June 2007 it was intriguing, a new, outlandish idea that we genuinely didn’t think would catch on. Low-power internet-only machines for £100? Pah! It’ll never work!

When I had my first hands-on at IDF that September I was impressed, saying “the Eee PC could be a huge success in schools, particularly in emerging markets abroad.” If they’re totally honest, I reckon that’s what Asus thought at the time, too – I find it hard to believe anyone really predicted how big the lightweight laptop would become. 

Alright, Asus didn’t quite manage to hit that stunning price, but the Eee still struck an unexpected chord with consumers, growing in that short time from a newsworthy novelty, into an early-adopter fad, and onto a social phenomenon. Just count how many you see on the train each morning. (more…)

Just in: Samsung NC10 netbook

Friday, October 31st, 2008

UPDATE: Read the full Samsung NC10 review here.

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It’s the one we’ve been waiting for, and now it’s arrived – rather unhelpfully, late on a Friday afternoon. The Samsung NC10 is the one we all think will challenge the Eee PC for the netbook crown, and from first impressions we remain convinced.

It’s the first netbook we’ve seen that actually looks like a laptop. It has much in common with Samsung’s larger portable models, and the manufacturer has been sure to spend a little time on the styling. Where the brilliant Eee PC 1000H looks like, well, a my-first-laptop, and the MSI Wind is curvy but feels like a toy, the NC10 has the silver trim and little style touches that make it feel like a polished, fully-fledged laptop.

The keyboard is every bit as comfortable as the Eee, and the screen looks like every other small TFT we’ve seen in the netbook range. If we have a complaint it’s that the touchpad is on the small side, and all too easy to slide off without realising. The joint mouse buttons aren’t ideal either. But we like what we see so far, and with battery life rumoured to be as impressive as the Eee, we look forward to benchmarking it thoroughly.

UPDATE: Read the full Samsung NC10 review here.

First look: Hands on with Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

The Inspiron Mini 9 is Dell’s long-awaited contender to the Netbook throne. With Asus’ ever-expanding range of Eees; MSI’s Wind and its several clones – take a bow Advent and Medion – and seemingly every manufacturer under the sun trying to get a piece of the Netbook action, Dell is the one name that has been conspicuous by its absence.

Now, finally, in the luxurious splendour of Monte-Carlo’s Fairmont Hotel, we’ve managed to get our grubby mitts on the Mini 9 itself.

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Travelling with Eees

Monday, September 15th, 2008

When I went backpacking around the world way back in the dark ages of, er, 2004, we did things properly. I packed a bag with the cheapest clothes I owned, a pair of hiking boots, plenty of Immodium and a Lonely Planet. I opened a few extra credit card accounts for good measure, said a not particularly teary goodbye to my loved ones and buggered off for the forseeable future. Just me and the world. (And, I was soon to discover, half the population of Ireland.)

I checked in with home maybe once every few weeks, just to assure my family I hadn’t been caught drug running/beheaded by rebels/drunk into an early grave by the Irish, but the internet was the last thing on my mind for 99% of the time.

However, over the course of the last couple of weeks in the hostels of Rio, I was amazed to discover that many of today’s backpackers have no intention of leaving the real world of home behind. (more…)

I ♥ MIDs (and so do you)

Friday, August 29th, 2008

I admit, I was among the first to scoff.

When Intel declared, a year or so back, that the next big thing in technology would be mobile internet devices – or “MIDs”, as they’ve inevitably become known – I wasn’t having any of it.

I mean, I already have a phone for on-the-go communications and web browsing. And I already have a laptop for running “proper” applications. I simply didn’t see what I could do with a MID that I couldn’t already do – better – with my existing devices.

And it seemed Intel didn’t really know either. The MID homepage they put up was packed with buzzwords but distinctly light on killer reasons for choosing a MID over an existing device. MIDs didn’t look like an imminent revolution, more like a marketing concept that accidentally got made. They certainly didn’t look ready to go up against the likes of the iPhone and the Eee PC. (more…)

Just in: Acer Aspire One

Friday, June 13th, 2008

Mini-notebooks, it seems, come to the PC Pro Labs in twos. Hot on the heels of the Asus Eee PC 901 earlier today, we now have one of Acer’s lovely little Aspire One laptops to paw over, and so far we like what we’ve seen.

Straight away it feels sturdier than the Eee, more like a real laptop in its build quality. The curvy lid has a smooth sheen and uses a slightly different type of hinge – set back like a VAIO to make for a thinner lid. The 8.9in 1,024 x 600 screen matches the Asus, yet the more grown-up styling moves it away from that laptop’s my-first-PC feel.

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Just in: Asus Eee PC 901 (with added Atom)

Friday, June 13th, 2008

Here it is, the Eee PC 901. A minor refresh from the Eee PC 900, but a vital one – this is the first laptop to arrive in the PC Pro Labs with one of Intel’s Atom processors.

It uses the 1.6GHz Atom N270, with its 512KB L2 cache and 533MHz front side bus. Whether this will prove to be faster than the previous 900MHz Celeron remains to be seen; from our tests with the desktop Atom 230, we reckon it’ll prove to be similar, or perhaps slightly slower.

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Just in: Asus Nova Lite

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

No, it’s not the desktop version of the Eee PC, not yet anyway, but this little system is about as close as Asus has yet come to putting out a true low-cost mini-PC.

Called the Nova Lite PX24, it takes the design first used in the original Nova P20, and strips it down to a much more affordable level.

Cramming in a 160GB hard disk, DVD writer, 2GB of RAM and even an ATI RV620 graphics card – complete with HDMI and DVI ports – we were expecting a price higher than the provisional SRP of £300 inc VAT. An Asus rep also hinted that there may be an even cheaper version on the way, with an 80GB hard disk and with integrated graphics.

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Is laptop design set in stone?

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

You’ve probably seen the advert: a town wrapped in white paper, a “blank canvas” on which we can start afresh, create from scratch. The perfectly reasonable question, “why do we keep following the same old design rules?”. The answer (probably), “because your bendy green parking meter takes up twice the pavement space of existng, perfectly functional parking meters”.

Then after all that build up – what will Ford’s totally original, designed from a blank canvas, revolutionary car look like, oh the suspense! – they bring out the Kuga. And it looks like… a car. Oh.

It got me thinking, we all know what a laptop looks like, but is the current design the definitive one? With the arrival of the Eee we saw a whole new category of laptop, but the design was still pretty much as expected. Keyboard, mouse buttons, lid: check. There must be at least one other design that makes enough sense to make it to mass market.

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