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Comment by varjag | Hacker News Reader

Amen.

I'm usually taking my personal AspireOne on business trips. Our operations guy refuses to stock netbooks because they are "underpowered". And, at least once I had our contractor remark that it's impossible to work on such an underpowered machine - while it was happily rebuilding Linux kernel at that very moment.

The thing's so much lighter and compact than company laptops, it makes huge difference when you have to climb a 70m tower with it, or unfold it during 13-hour flight. And most typical tasks in personal computing are not resource-intensive at all.

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I think it's all relative to what you're doing at the moment. I have this scary machine as a desktop here, that basically functions as a glorified terminal most of the time, but when I start coding I'm so happy that it is as large as it is.

But that's mostly due to software bloat and a memory hungry strategy, I'm sure you could do the same stuff with a much smaller machine if programmed more efficient.

I'd hate to travel with this rig :)

I got an HP mini this week, runs Ubuntu 10.04 very nicely, and has a lovely matte screen. It was the only laptop in shop with a nice matte screen, even the super $3000 3d laptop had a glossy screen! Who wants a glossy screen, are they insane?

I deliberately use slower machines so that I write more efficient code!

> I deliberately use slower machines so that I write more efficient code!

That's a good trick. Runners do something similar: http://www.nefitco.com/weightvestarticleuk.html

It could be that most laptop manufacturers are copying Apple's glossy-only-unless-you're-rich Macbook design.

Which is - I'll agree with you on this - rather ridiculous.

I think it is more of a what people want thing as glossy displays do look prettier when glare and other factors are not interfering.

Glossy screens have a much higher contrast ratio, aren't covered in plastic and are much easier to clean. You can easily stick a matte layer over the glass if it's that much of an issue.

Can you recommend a good matte cover? I was just going to replace the entire screen on my MacBook.

The anti-glare film from PowerSupportUSA.com is the best computer accessory I've ever bought.

Thanks! Ordered.

Apple was actually quite late to the glossy party. Side by side glossy screens are preferred by customers, at least in the short "Pepsi challenge" comparison.

the reason being something along the lines of "oooh, shiny!"

Practically every monitor in our office is of course matte. If they were glossy displays, we would really be struggling to read any text on them! Perhaps this is more of a problem for people like me who prefer white-on-black.

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