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Choosing the Right Netbook
Digital Cheer
They get called lots of things. They should be called netbooks, or at the very least, nettops. Ultra-portable is acceptable. UMPC is right out. Without breaking out the dichotomy yardstick, what am I going on about? Eee PCs, naturally. I want 'em, you want 'em, and they're practically sized to be stocking stuffers... But it's not just Asus anymore, there's a lot here to pick from, and I don't just mean all twelve different flavors of Eee PC. Acer with their Aspire One, HP makes a handful of Minis, MSI has their Wind. Lenovo's pushing their S10--which is remarkably similar to the Samsung N10--Gigabyte's got their M912 (catchy) and then there're the rarely-mentioned Kohjinsha SX3 and SC3, and at the other end of the spectrum there Dell with Inspirons Mini 9 and 12. For starters. The only thing these machines have in common is an ideal. It's not price, since some of these machines do or can break the $1000 point, and it's not performance, because there are, or at least are going to be, some relative powerhouse netbooks. It's about function: the idea that you want connectivity, data, and everything else that comes with the series of tubes, but you don't even want to carry a laptop with you. And, yeah, price does play a part. Historically, little laptops weighed the most in dollars, and while you can spend a grand on a really, really nice netbook, that's still a fraction of the cost of a true "ultra-portable" laptop. By being cheap alternatives, they become playful, just like getting an XPC. The Eee PC has revitalized the coding and modding communities, spurring on the Moblin Project, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and tapped a bottomless vein of soldering fun. Puppy Linux never had it so good. So, You In? There's some stuff you're going to have to give up to play with the netbook crowd. At the top of the list is performance. Even the bestest ever Eee--like an Eee of the future!--is going to be a little, uh, sluggish, unless maybe you haven't bought a computer in about a decade. This comes with a list of applications you're going to live without. Word? Maybe if you're patient. Media Center? These computers don't even have optical drives. Photoshop? Orange Box? AbiWord, Winamp, Gimp, and NetHack. Getting a netbook is something of a digital lifestyle choice. I can't believe I just wrote that seriously. Ever notice that "making a choice" is a little like "contracting leprosy"? At least lepers get to live in Hawaii. Right. You're thinking about joining a priorities-backwards club of people who don't really care about power; it's about access and traveling light. [Kurtis: members of the tech press, traveling business-persons, and little people - this is for you). This is true for the software as much as it is the hardware. That sound your speed? Alright, let's talk options. The Atom There are three major netbook processors, and the Atom is arguably the best, the others being the cut-down Celeron used in a good number of Eee PCs and the Via C7-M used predominantly by HP in their Mini-Notes. I'm going to go ahead and make the sweeping declaration that Celeron-based netbooks aren't worth it for most people. On the one hand, they'll run most operating systems up to and including XP just fine, but you're not just interested in running a framework. Browsing has come a long way since the '90s and if you want to run a browser with more than one tab and maybe listen to some music simultaneously, you'll see how inadequate they really are. And Via's C7 isn't really great on its own, but the chipset more than makes up for it; Atom processors are currently paired with Intel 945 chipsets, which are power-hungry and really bad at video processing. While the C7 is slower than an Atom clock-for-clock, the Chrome 9 chipset it's paired with picks up a lot of the slack. So much so that Via loads Vista on their Mini-Notes. And so that things are clear: cheap solid-state drives, like the ones in these computers, are slow. One of the biggest performance gains is in buying one with a hard drive that spins--so much faster that it's almost not worth considering a netbook with a solid-state drive anymore. Most of these computers are very similar, with 1024x600 (WSVGA) displays, 1GB of RAM, 1.3mp webcams, 802.11 wireless Internet and hopefully Bluetooth.
Page 1: So what's the deal with these 'Netbooks' anyway?
Page 2: Asus Eee PC Page 3: Acer Aspire One & MSI Wind Page 4: Asus N & S series Page 5: HP Mini-Notes Page 6: Lenovo, Samsung & Dell Page 7: Further Reading & Final Selection 
Related Articles Add Comment
5 User Comments 1 - Posted by
Anthony
on December 14, 2008 - 1:37 am I got my Dell Mini9 for $300 - XP, 8GB SSD, 512MB. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB and the new 16GB SSD will be here next week hopefully. Of course I'm just going to hack it and put OSX on it... =^) Also, the Mini9 has has BTO Bluetooth option. 2 - Posted by
roberton
on December 14, 2008 - 2:25 pm Funny you should mention nethack. I've got the original Eee (700?) and I do indeed play nethack on it a lot! This is partly on an installed copy, but more so now just using telnet to nethack.alt.org.
3 - Posted by
saxuntu
on December 14, 2008 - 5:05 pm I don't know what the hell your talking about with the SSD being slower. I'm writing this on a Dell Mini 9. It loads Open Office faster than my computer with a standard HD, 3GHz processor, and the same amount of RAM. As for the keyboard its a 9 inch computer, what do expect. Complaining about netbooks being small is kind of missing the point.
4 - Posted by
paulb
on December 14, 2008 - 6:15 pm Talking about missing the point (even when your intro touches on it) - netbooks' success are a classic case of the marketeers missing their own market ... the first generation were apparently thought of as low cost devices for students etc - hence their abysmal battery life. But the Atom generation brought with it some more serious battery specs ... particularly the Eee 901, creating for the first time a viable low cost alternative to high end sub notebooks. For those of us who have to do serious but simple work on the move (using Office-type tools rather than Photoshop etc) they were a godsend. I'm with you on the preference for a decent hard disk rather than a cramped SSD. I had a 901 and liked it well enough but when my "proper" Toshiba failed I looked hard at the options and realised that a Samsung NC10 actually did pretty much everything I wanted from a mobile computer - a good keyboard, pleasant screen and more than enough poke to cope with office apps, even from Microsoft (I don't know what you're talking about there). Netbooks aren't toys for geek modders - they are good, serious tools for work, and a sudden outburst of rational design and specification. In that sense the Samsung is not distinguished by particular features - it's just the best execution of the concept (for the moment). 5 - Posted by
Kurtis
on December 15, 2008 - 2:44 pm I think I can speak for Max when I say that we know netbooks aren't just toys for geek modders. As writers, we very much realize the value of these little lunchbox 'puters, and I'm really glad to see that we finally have portable work computers with decent battery life that don't cost $3k.
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