The Netbook Thread

[Zoot]

Thanks, video playback isn't really going to be an issue. She just needs something for web and word really, I was going to buy one from the PCWorld down the road, I presume they'll only have 1gb models though. Have you found the 2GB upgrade makes a big difference performance wise?

I haven't yet done it because of the difficulties described above (although I will). It can't help but make a difference, but as described previously, I have had absolutely no difficulties at all other than video playback. It really is a very nice machine.

[Tred]

In the end, have paid 20 quid more and got an HP Minnote instead. Very nice machine, but am struggling with the querks of Win7 Starter...

[Firefox]

Another sighting of a SuperARM-based Pegatron smartbook, but still no word on when and where we can actually buy them.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/11/23 ... smartbook/

[HGFB]

I put Win 7 on my 1gig EeePC 1000H today. Smooth as silk. Everything worked out of the box apart from the blue function buttons (Still working on that one) and Aero works great. I was very pleasantly surprised.

[Firefox]

Lenovo are going to launch their Snapdragon-based Skylight smartbook this April, apparently.

http://www.liliputing.com/2010/01/lenov ... ttery.html
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/05/leno ... tbook-com/

Very thin and light, decent rez of 1280x720, appears to be fanless (yes!) and 10 hours runtime on one charge.

The keyboard looks good, though I hope you can swap Fn and Ctrl in software like you can on recent Thinkpads...

[Firefox]

Skylight demo, including Firefox 3.6:


Very disappointing that the rep says that the software will be completely locked down, and you don't even get Open Office or anything like that. Nice hardware, meh software.

[zip accident]

It ain't a netbook, but this is looking good to me, especially if they manage to deliver it at that dollar price without the usual one dollar = one pound nonsense.

[wanye]

i got a dell mini 10v the other week from the dell outlet for £120, and it is FANTASTIC!

spent a fair while fiddling with the OSes, but finally managed to get OSX 10.6 running on it very nicely indeed!

all the hardware seems to be detected (although the built in mic may not work, i still need to test that)

its only got an 8gb SSD in it, so this caused me no end of problems getting osx onto it (snow leopard refused, so i tried leopard, and had no end of problems with it due to it not being able to open DMG files, and there wasnt enough space free to update to 10.5.6 (or newer), which would have fixed the issues.

i ended up installing snow leopard onto an external usb drive, where it is running reet nicely! now i need to find me a nice big, cheap SSD to replace the 8gb one, so i can run OSX on it permanently without having to have the external drive plugged in. i currently have ubuntu 9.10 netbook remix on the ssd as the primary OS (anyone got any better suggestions, not liking it as much as i thought i would, even though ive been running ubuntu on my desktop for years now) - i'm thinking maybe tinyXP, win7 or some other linux (moblin maybe?)

[WiteWulf]

I played with Moblin for a while. Very pretty, fast and slick but limited, It's basically Intel's take on ChromeOS. You can quite happily boot it off a USB stick so it's well worth giving it a try.

[wanye]

just downloading chrome os, dell have released a dell-specific build of it

http://linux.dell.com/files/cto/

[gumboot]

So there seem to be x86-based netbooks and non-x86-based netbooks. Aside from the obvious "can't run Windows", do the non-x86 units have other advantages in things like battery life?

[Firefox]

Battery life is the main one - you can make a system that runs for ten hours on a three-cell battery, or you can make a system that runs for the normal three-ish hours on a teensy battery (which makes the system smaller and cheaper).

Because they run cool, you don't need a heatsink and fan, which makes the unit silent, lighter, slimmer, and cheaper.

I'm getting quite cheesed off now - lots of companies have been showing prototypes of superARM-based laptops that do 1080p movie playback, run for ten hours on a single charge, and are razor-thin for more than a year now, but I still can't buy one.

[piku]

just downloading chrome os, dell have released a dell-specific build of it

http://linux.dell.com/files/cto/

Try Jolicloud ( http://www.jolicloud.com/ ). I installed it on my netbook as a random test and haven't removed it since. The only things my netbook ever runs are Chrome and a terminal for SSH. I've still got Windows on there too - the installer can resize the Windows partition for you.

[gumboot]

I'm getting quite cheesed off now - lots of companies have been showing prototypes of superARM-based laptops that do 1080p movie playback, run for ten hours on a single charge, and are razor-thin for more than a year now, but I still can't buy one.

That's the cost of going non-x86. You lose access to fully-developed consumer operating systems. You can't very well go selling the product if you don't have an OS that allows the customer to reproduce what they saw demonstrated to them.

Lately I'm hearing lots and lots about high-performance technical demos for embedded systems, and how none of them are able to get a decent proportion of that performance from inside of an operating system.

[Firefox]

That's the cost of going non-x86. You lose access to fully-developed consumer operating systems. You can't very well go selling the product if you don't have an OS that allows the customer to reproduce what they saw demonstrated to them.

Lately I'm hearing lots and lots about high-performance technical demos for embedded systems, and how none of them are able to get a decent proportion of that performance from inside of an operating system.

They've generally been demoed running Ubuntu (or some other Linux distribution) or Android.