A Democracy of Netbooks
codinghorror.com
codinghorror.com
In Europe, at least, smartphones are sold unlocked, and can be used with any WiFi-- so I don't really see in what sense they are "not free enough", or shackled to any corporation.
Hopefully Android will win and this won't be an issue, but for now it definitely is.
An example that has been beaten to death; Google Voice. On my open phone, I dial with the normal dialer and my call is connected via Google Voice. On the iPhone, that is not possible. You have to go to a web page, dial a number, and wait for Google to call you. Not a good "user experience".
A lot of people seem to act as though the iPhone is the second coming but it's not. The main reason the iPhone does better on the net seems to be more about the quality of the built-in browser than anything else.
For me "a netbook" it's something similar to a product really called Netbook, the Psion Teklogix's "Netbook Pro". It was a little laptop with touchscreen, flash storage, and an Xscale processor running Windows CE.
I used to work for a warehousing company, and warehouse managers loved it. They could browse the Intranet, run a TN5250 terminal, answer email, etc... at any point of the warehouse, carrying almost no weight and, the most important thing, with near zero waiting time. It just booted in seconds. It was outrageusly expensive, may be something like 2000eur.
I understand that's the device Google has envisioned for its Google OS (but much cheaper obviously). A non-x86 CPU, flash storage, may be a touchscreen... something just different from the laptop you would use to run Windows, not just smaller.
I agree. I'm surprised Jeff missed the obvious rhetorical reply: 'Netbooks aren't lame laptops; laptops are lame netbooks.'
(And then one would go on to enumerate the advantages of size, battery-life, etc. and give the little mini-history of computer trends.)
I think the reason is all the bundled trial software; they make enough money from the bundling to offset the Windows license and maybe even make a little profit. I think this, more than any pressure from Microsoft, cooperative marketing or lack of user demand is the reason PC manufacturers are reluctant to offer Linux and make it hard to find when they do.
As the owner of a nice beefy desktop, I find my eeepc to be delightful. Hour for hour, I probably even spend more time on it, but I never have to feel the frustration of not being able to do something, because I have my desktop machine.
I didn't even want a netbook, it was given to me as a gift from someone looking specifically to get me a completely superfluous technology item. I didn't think I'd use it since I have a really nice laptop. I have no complaints with the keyboard -- it's the lack of vertical pixels that is annoying.
I really couldn't be happier. I just never think about running out of power any more. And, I have a full dev box at my disposal that's lighter and smaller than most of the books I carry around with me to read.
I bought an eeepc. I spent a few weeks hackintoshing / writing drivers for it. That was fun, I guess. It runs sloooow as molasses though. I can see Steve's point.
Tried a few Linux distros... all were either too slow or not powerful enough. Maybe I should try Windows 7?
I don't know if I've just gotten addicted to my dual-core MBP or what. But the aggregate cost of waiting another second or so each page load makes me want to scream inside.
Oh, one last thing - Chrome is incredible! What a difference it makes - super fast, quick loading, no bloat. I loaded it at work on an older Win XP Pro unit and it made IE8 look so poorly executed. I've also used Chrome on our fleet of macs at home and am impressed with its speed.
eeebuntu + chrome is definitely the way to go.
My completely-non-tweaked Debian install boots in about 13 seconds. And this is with filesystem encryption that severely cripples my SSD. (The raw SSD can be read at about 100MB/s. The Atom can only un-blowfish at about 22MB/s or un-AES at 17MB/s. Ouch.)
It's an amazing machine. 11" screen. Dual Core. 3GB RAM. 300 GB HD. 8 hrs of battery life. Pretty good build quality. And I can really do my work on it. $550 shipped.
I really can't think of what Apple is going to deliver with their tablet that at twice the price and no keyboard is going to be any better than this machine.
Of course this is just two data points...
I have a 17" MBP right now, and while it is one awesome machine.. it's too damn big to haul with me all the time. I'm looking for something small that I can take to meetings or to the coffee shop if I just need to do some surfing/take notes/write a few emails.
And because of its size, I carry it around like a small notepad. I think this is why netbooks do deserve their own category: they have a different set of use behaviors associated with them than I have ever done with regular laptops.
I can have my basic Ubuntu configuration in that little beast -- it's powerful enough so that I don't have to make any trade-offs. I'll just install Ubuntu on it, remove some unused services, copy over my home directory from backups, and I'm done.
With that, I am able to surf the web pretty much like on a "real" computer but I can do that many times with a single charge and it'll last for days. I often take it with me for a weekend trip without the charger and it has more than enough juice to spend a few hours online.
Alternatively, I can fire up Emacs, Slime, JVM and Clojure and hack for five to six hours without charging. And that pretty much tops my priority list. What a little thing that is!
I am not sure how one Linux distro could be slower or less powerful than another. Same exact software, slightly different settings. (I use xmonad, which is going to feel fast on any hardware. GNOME/KDE/Win 7/OS X is going to feel slow on any hardware. It's designed to.)
I prefer to be at home with a 24" monitor and an 8-core processor with 6G of RAM, of course, but when you are stuck in the back of an airplane (which I am right now, incidentally; row 30, baby), nothing beats a netbook. When you are at your desk, nothing beats a desktop. (The laptop is truly a cumbersome device. It will never be as powerful as a desktop, but it needs a huge battery to last for more than 3 hours. And, a big screen would preclude opening it when you are stuck in economy class. Would not want.)
I don't care about the score, but I am interested in hearing the logic. Is someone mad that I think full-sized laptops are pointless?
If you want to fix your eeepc and you are willing to put money into it, I'd suggest replacing the hard-drive with either a decent SSD or a decent magnetic disk.
There are some interesting debates like cloud vs local power or reinventing (touch screen) vs tweaking (small keyboard) embedded but you can talk about these separately if they are really what you are getting at. Netbooks are just another range of options in the computer family alongside normal laptops, desktops, desktop replacements, workstations, etc.).
Why would anybody possibly object to that? I mean there are plenty of reasons for plenty of people not to by one (I don't have one) or not to personally like them (eg can't adjust to the keyboard).
Why do people object to (or defend) their existence?
I recently put a 30gb hard drive in, an atheros USB wifi stick and installed Arch Linux on there and it's fantastic. It's not as quick as a modern laptop but is more than capable of basic browsing and xterm-based fun. Aside from the two years that I haven't used it, the overall cost works out at roughly £250 per year. It has a 10.4" screen and aside from the memory is roughly comparable to an EEE PC 701 in terms of performance.
I'm more than happy with it and it still holds a charge, 9 years later.