The Netbook Thread

[VNVObit]

Ubuntu Eee goes gold for those that are interested..

while eebuntu is one release candidate 1

also talking about implementing the eeebuntu moblin

[Kemper_Boyd]

Another review, I think they like it.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks ... Edition/p1

[ElfQrin]

while eebuntu is one release candidate 1

I'd prefer a keeebuntu...

[Kronos]

Another review, I think they like it.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks ... Edition/p1

How can they say Asus invented that form factor/market sector. The Libretto and C1 VAIO Picture books are old as the hills and were both developed quite late into Centrino/Crusoe CPU age. And there was even a slightly bigger VAIO with a 4:3 screen above the C1-VE even in the Pentium II Mobile days (I had one and they are beautiful machines)

Sure they were expensive but then at the time the Libretto/Picturebook came out there was none of this disposable £300 laptop malarky like today anyway, and even a piece of shit PackardBell was 600+ so it comes down to economies of scale too. Price wise given the performance difference £300 is a lot for that kind of reduced processing power in comparison to a full sized Core2Duo wondakind you can pick up for the same price, so nothing new, just well marketed IMO.

[Kemper_Boyd]

Small, fast enough and cheap. That's what makes them 'new'. Previously small either meant
slow or expensive. Nobody is saying that small PC portables are a new idea, forget the Libretto
the Atari Portfolio is nearly 20 years old.

If you don't care about the size of the machine of course you'd buy a laptop. But some people
are willing to trade some performance for a much smaller computer. Also the Asus Eee 901
is not the cheapest Atom based netbook, Acer say they will sell their cheapest model for £199,
and Dell may even beat that.

For most people a netbook won't be their only computer, it'll be the one they chuck in their
bag when they get fed up with lugging those cheap Core 2 Duo laptops around that you keep
banging on about.

[HGFB]

But some people
are willing to trade some performance for a much smaller computer.

That's me. I don't need a fantastically high powered laptop and my number 1 requirement is small. My Eee 900 does the job perfectly.

[Dio]

Except for Dwarf Fortress, of course.

[HGFB]

Yeah but if something has to give then sadly the really badly written DF gets the boot.

[RedOktober]

They're not all that cheap for a good one though, are they?

Couple of hundred quid more and you can walk off with a full laptop.

[matt303]

They're not all that cheap for a good one though, are they?

Couple of hundred quid more and you can walk off with a full laptop.

Well considering you can buy a cheap full size laptop for £299 it's less than that but the point is these things are really small and light, for what I use my 12 inch Powerbook for if it went pop the PC900 would currently be at the top of the list as a replacement.

[RedOktober]

Is it possible to use normal backup software to clone the 'drive' and write it back in working order?

[Kronos]

Small, fast enough and cheap. That's what makes them 'new'. Previously small either meant
slow or expensive. Nobody is saying that small PC portables are a new idea, forget the Libretto
the Atari Portfolio is nearly 20 years old.

If you don't care about the size of the machine of course you'd buy a laptop. But some people
are willing to trade some performance for a much smaller computer. Also the Asus Eee 901
is not the cheapest Atom based netbook, Acer say they will sell their cheapest model for £199,
and Dell may even beat that.

For most people a netbook won't be their only computer, it'll be the one they chuck in their
bag when they get fed up with lugging those cheap Core 2 Duo laptops around that you keep
banging on about.

Have to disagree, cheap and fast enough is a relative term that changes over time as I said.

The Libretto 110CT was a fully featured laptop, it could do anything any other MMX Pentium based laptop on the market could do and had dedicated 2.5MB graphics chipset and sound, the only difference being it was the size of a VHS cassette. It had a TFT screen when half the laptops at the time still had DSTN screens, So to compare it to the Atari Portfolio isn't really correct.

Performance wise it was pretty much the same as a Toshiba Tecra 550CDT and only restrited to 32mb RAM less maximum than said Tecra. Price wise aswell, in 1998 a 550CDT would have cost you a smidgen under $4000 so cheap is a relative term for the time, but the libretto wasn't twice the price or half the perfomance, just damned small but perfectly formed. Libretto which was launched just 6 months after its larger brother the Tecra 550CDT in 1998, it was similar in performance and technology (same graphics/sound chipsets and CPU type and included TFT screen technology with digital backlight power control too!) and they also used the most advanced 2.5" ultra slimline and lower power hard drives available at the time.

So to summarise ASUS haven't done anything new, they have just re-opened a market that Toshiba defined in the mid 90s onwards (that they then lost interest in) at a price comparable to a full sized laptop with no loss of features. And Sony blatantly copied Toshiba's idea too with the C1 series of VAIOs.

I haven't forgotten that there will be upto 33% cheaper machines than the 900 eee PC @ £300+ but £250 will easily buy you a Vostro Core2Duo Dell laptop inc delivery which is more than 12% faster than the 900 eee PC or any other Atom based UMPC. The 900 is only 'cheap' because ALL notebooks are cheap and disposable nowadays, nothing specifically to do with ASUS or anyone else. Nice for what it is but it isn't revolutionary, it's evolutionary thanks to the ever decreasing cost of technology and the will to use it in a smaller package.

[HGFB]

Did you actually take in anything that Kemper said in the slightest?

[Kronos]

Did you actually take in anything that Kemper said in the slightest?

Yes, perhaps if you had read the whole Libretto 110CT<--->Tecra 550CDT pretty much the same technology for the same price point 10 years ago you would have known that?

[HGFB]

Kemper told you why people buy these things and you're still posting about 14 inch Dells. What on earth are you gibbering on about? Does it matter if some other company did something similar umpteen years ago? Asus are doing it now and selling so many almost every major manufacturer wants to get in on the act. What's the problem?