Currently viewing the tag: "netbooks"
For the past 2 months I’ve been working on a series of posts called You Grade The Brands. I’ve been reading the reviews we did of notebooks and netbooks in 2009, going brand by brand, to suss out common strengths and weaknesses amongst a company’s laptop line. It’s been a very illuminating process. Also, I never knew there were so many laptops in the world. Lordy!
I’m putting up the last post sometime today, but you can check out all of the others here. We hit all of the major notebook vendors from HP, Acer, and Dell on down to Samsung, MSI and Fujitsu (with a lot more in-between). If you’ve ever owned a laptop, please click on the company’s post and let us know how you’d rate your experiences with that brand.
We’re looking for both positive and negative feedback on everything from how long it lasted, how often it broke, how tech support was, how much you loved using it, anything.
Also, if you’re in the market for a laptop, you might want to check out the posts to see if the brands you’re interested in are likely to have the features you need.
While I was looking for a picture of my version of the AlphaSmart for yesterday’s post I came across a post touting the superiority of the Neo (that’s what they’re calling AlphaSmarts these days) over netbooks. To say I was shocked is an understatement. In these times when netbooks flow from the heavens like water, why in the world would anyone still use an AlphaSmart? I was doubly surprised to discover that this guy is an SF writer (he went to Viable Paradice). Thinking on it, I’ve probably met him. But that’s neither here nor there, my main shock remains: AlphaSmart over netbook? No wai!
He even has the same netbook I do, a Samsung NC10. Yet he still feels that the portability and usability of an AlphaSmart is far, far better. He also cites battery longevity. Though I’ll agree that years of battery life is better than a few hours, ever since I got my NC10 I haven’t felt chained to an outlet. (It’s the 7+ hours of battery life, I love it, so.) And while it is great to have a machine that allows you to concentrate on just one thing, writing, the device is just a little too unitasking for me.
One of the reasons I stopped using my AlphaSmart is that it was crap for editing. Sure, it would allow you to get some words down on the screen and drive forward. However, you certainly can’t edit really well on that thing, or go back through what you’ve written and try to take stock in a meaningful way. And only seeing 4 lines of text at a time felt like far too little. You can’t edit already-existing text. And if you’ve typed a major chunk of your novel on the thing, good luck trying to get a sense of the structure.
Not that Marko claimed the Neo could do any of these things. These were just my reasons for giving the machine up. I needed a gadget that would allow me to do all of my writing tasks, from the first draft through to the editing stage, that was easy to carry, light, and had a reasonably-sized screen. Aftre I accomplished that with my Eee PC, my next goal was a netbok with long battery life so I wouldn’t have to worry about outlets. And here were are.
Having read through his whole review, though, do you think that the Neo has enough advantages over a netbook to justify putting the latter aside?
This Christmas I gave my niece a netbook[1] and talked to her about how to care for it and online safety and stuff. What I forgot to mentioned was how to sit while using one. I’d completely forgotten about this post on GottaBeMobile about these 9 bad netbook postures. In fact, I think we were both doing that first one while chilling on the sofa and watching Animaniacs[2]. I’m a bad example, just like always.
I wish this study came with 9 good postures for using netbooks, as it would be helpful to know.
Notes
I keep forgetting to mention the awesome holiday contests going on at Laptop Magazine right now. Every week we’re giving away new, cool gadgets. From now until December 28th you can enter to win an HP Mini 311 11-inch netbook with fancy ION graphics. And starting on December 21st you can enter to win the Toshiba NB205 (the model that comes with Windows 7, I believe). Two of my favorite netbooks available for free. Can’t get any more awesome than that. Click here for details or to enter.
For reasons that should be clear to everyone reading this blog, I’m usually the person folks in my circle of friends and acquaintances come to when they want advice on which netbook to buy. I am the netbook queen. Plus, I get to play with (and sometimes review) a larger sample than most. Thing is, my netbook advice hasn’t changed in many months. So I thought it would be good to put it in a post here.
If you’re looking for a netbook, these are the ones I suggest:
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It’s as if Acer has been reading my mind (or my blog). We just reviewed the new Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T, a netbook-sized laptop with a CULV processor inside. It’s not quite my dream machine — I’d prefer 10-inches to 11.6 — but still closer to the performance I want in a smaller form factor.
The $700 price tag doesn’t excite me. Nothing over $500 ever does. If we ever get a 10-inch CULV notebook I would hope that the price would drop to that, at least. And then my poor Sammy netbook would be in a bit of danger.
Now that Acer has taken this step, I hope other computer manufacturers follow. If\Samsung updated their N line with CULV netbooks there would be no keeping me from the store.
Sorry I’m so late posting this conclusion. Lots of stuff going on at work. But the reviews editor informed me Friday that we have to send the UL30 back to ASUS, so now seems a good time to post the wrap-up.
As I said in my last post, I am definitely a netbook person when it comes to computers I carry around all the time and use anywhere. However, my needs and experience are not necessarily everyone’s. I can see the UL30 or other ultraportables being great machines for people who travel a great deal, folks going on extended trips (particularly abroad), and people with access to tables on their long commute.
Not everyone needs or wants to carry a laptop around all the time just in case you have a spare moment to write on them. Not everyone rides a cramped and crowded subway. I fall into the realm of Power User for netbooks, so what I need and do are on the extreme end of what mainstream consumers want.
That said, the UL30 came pretty close to being the kind of machine I want for a secondary computer. Perhaps if systems like this and with this price had come along before netbooks, I would be perfectly content. It has all the things I wished for back in the day. (The Day being 2 years ago. Sad, I know.)
I’m back to carrying my NC10 around now. Seshet missed me, I can tell. She always gets a little nervous when a new, cool netbook or notebook lands on my desk. However, I can say with some authority that I still think the Samsung NC10 (and its subsequent update the N110) is the best netbook I’ve ever tried. I’m glad I own one and I won’t be trading it for a fancy ultraportable any time soon.
All "My Week With The ASUS UL30" Posts:
Found this article via the SammyNetbook blog about a large percentage of netbook owners who find themselves unhappy with their purchase. Jez wonders if this is because people don’t understand that netbooks don’t make great laptop replacements. or, I should say, primary laptop replacements. I’m sure if we polled the dissatisfied we’d find that they were slightly to massively ignorant about what netbooks are for and can do.
When I bought my first netbook I wanted to use it for very specific tasks and it fulfilled its function perfectly. I sometimes tax my NC10 a bit more than I should, but that’s more because I end up doing too much at once instead of concentrating on my most important tasks. Still, I’ve never found myself unhappy.
One could say that I’m an over-informed consumer, so of course I’m not going to be disappointed. Still, every consumer should be informed. They should know how netbooks differ from notebooks, their limitations, and which netbook will give them the best experience. However, I know this is not often the way consumers approach buying electronics.
I wonder what the return rate is on laptops in general…?
A couple of days ago Brad at Liliputing talked about how netbooks are a better platform for touchscreens than regular laptops. I agree that the future of touch is probably going to be pioneered by netbooks, but that future won’t be exciting until software makers step up their game.
I don’t know if it’s an issue on the hardware or software side, but I suspect it’s more software side, especially considering the capabilities we’ve seen in touchscreen smartphones like the the iPod. Every time I’ve ever used a touch notebook I’ve found it nice, but limited. Yes, I can hand write text into documents, but I haven’t seen a program that allows me to draw on or create notes in the margin of documents like I can with a pen and paper. This may exist and I’ve missed it, but I feel like something of that nature should come standard with every touchscreen computer. It’s a basic need from my perspective.
Beyond that, I’ve not been bown away with any touch software ideas or concepts. Why bother having a touchcreen at all if it just means that you can write in small, yellow boxes that have to be cleared periodically, anyway?
Before touch can blow up on any laptop format, someone has to make touchscreens worth having. The iPhone did, and it rode on the coattails of other smartphones and PDAs that tentatively pushed the touch envelope before it came along. For once I feel like Apple’s insistence on controlling both software and hardware was the right move.
The iPhone and the iPod Touch are NOT netbooks and they also cannot compete with netbooks yet. Sure, if you made them with 9-ich screens you could maybe make a case for it. But right now, you just sound like crazy people with all your talk of “junky hardware” and “cramped keyboards”. Your insistence that an iPhone can do everything a netbook can do is just plain silly. I can’t write a novel on an iPhone — well, not without driving myself crazy and posibly going blind — I can write a novel on my NC10. And I am.
Really, now. Every quarter you just make me lose confidence in your sanity over there.
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