War of the Netbooks
The War of the Netbooks begins here…
We’ve all seen them, drooled over them, a few of us have even bought one.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg (I’m surprised no one has called their machine “iceberg” yet) when it comes to the race for the best netbook.
The developers of netbooks seem to be wildly flailing around with the features built in to the smaller spaces as you can see just by comparing several of the different options that ASUS has produced yet there seems to be a clear feature set that has emerged in the marketplace.
- 1024 x 600 (default) screen resolution
- 3 USB 2.0 ports
- Multi-Format Card Reader
- 802.11 b/g/n wireless connectivity*
- External monitor support
- Web Cam
- 1gb or 2gb Ram**
- ATOM based Intel Processors
- Available in an array of colours
**Depends largely on OS
The other side of the coin is that although there are some clear leaders in the Netbook war, with almost 14 companies in the race and tons of configuration options its hard for consumers to choose between 2 manufacturers let alone 14.
The big question is operating system, do you go XP or do you go Linux?
Both have their upsides and downsides, and for most people it will come down to preference, but when some companies start creating different load-outs depending on the OS pre-loaded some things start to tip the scales.
Here is just a quick list of some of the current offerings:
- Asus EEE PC 701SD, 2G Surf, 4G, 4G Surf, 8G, 900A, 901, 904HD, 1000, 1000H, 1000HD
- Acer Aspire One
- Dell Inspiron Mini 9
- MSI Wind U90, U100
- Lenovo Ideapad S10
- Apple Macbook Air
Thats just to name a few!
Worst of all is that the machines are starting to be cloned and re-badged, the MSI Wind has now several different names depending on the country/stockist supplying the product, and to top it off each iteration of the name comes with a slightly different set of features.
For example the MSI Wind derivitive (they share the same platform) from Medion AG (German Company) is called the AKOYA loses Bluetooth but gains a 120gb HDD instead but it also borrows from the design ethics of larger HP notebooks.
So where will this end? Will we end up with a portable über-device that packs a fair punch but at a comparatively low cost?
I think its almost still too early to jump into the ultra portable PC market just yet for some, but the offerings that are in the marketplace are just too good not to snap up.
And hey, if it turns out to be crappy, I’m sure there are a lot of people willing to take it off your hands for near what you paid for it.
If you’ve seen/bought/used a netbook throw a comment on the post, I’d love to hear some of your reactions.
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Wait…the MacBook Air is a Netbook? At like 4 times the cost of the next product? I wouldn’t call it a Netbook…
I’m thinkin about getting one of those Acer Aspire Ones with the 120GB HD… Disappointed on the amount of RAM, though… can’t we put 2GB in?
I’ve messed around with/set up a few at work and for friends, but haven’t bought one for myself.
A while ago, I nearly bought an eeepc 701, but once the rumors of a 9″ model started I thought I’d wait for one of those. By the time the 900 was available, news of the 10″ models, versions with atom processors, more ram, other brands offering higher screen resolution, full size keyboards etc. made me pause again. Now with Intel launching a dual core atom, I think we’ll see even more new models…
Now, in a way, I think the newer, larger, more featured “mini laptops” (I hate the term netbook for some reason) have lost what made the 701 so appealing. The original eeepc was small, light, had good battery life and didn’t seem to try so hard to do everything a larger laptop could do. At the time it was released, it was also significantly cheaper than even the cheapest full size regular laptops.
The manufacturers now seem to be pushing to make them more and more like full size laptops. For the most part they’re not much bigger than the 701 (the 900/901 are pretty much identical), but some are. Some are noticeably heavier, and many don’t have the type of battery life that such an easily portable laptop needs. Really, what’s the point if you have to keep plugging it in all the time? You may as well be on a full size laptop or even a desktop.
The larger screens/extra features etc. have pushed the prices back up, while the prices of traditional laptops have dropped significantly, so now the entry point for some 14/15″ laptops is below the entry point for a 9″. Performance hasn’t changed though, and while you may be able to get them with (or be able to add yourself) 2GB of ram, but they just crawl if you do anything that really needs that much. With a clean install of XP SP3 they’re quite responsive, but add to that a basic anti virus and firewall (AVG and Comodo for example), Firefox with a few plugins, an email client, Adobe reader, iTunes or Winamp and the other few things that may have background services you start to notice things becoming a bit slow and that’s before you load up more demanding apps. The same can happen with Linux distro’s like Ubuntu, and lets not even mention how poorly most of them run Vista.
With all that said though, I probably will buy one soon and I’m leading towards the Dell. I have a 14″ dual core notebook and an iphone, which fit the bill quite well most of the time I need to do some sort of portable computing, but there are times when I could use something that fits in between them.
[edit] I agree with Herne about the Macbook Air. At 13.3″ & AU$2500+ they don’t really fit into the same category.
Thanks for the comments guys,
I agree with you that the Macbook AIR is WAY to pricey for what it actually is, the fact that they tried to release a netbook killer that costs more than their high end flagship desktop model (24″ aluminium iMac) does make it totally lose relevence in the netbook war.
The AIR was clearly a way for Apple to flex their fanboy muscle, they knew that it would be a machine that only hardcore mac fans would purchase.
The reason I’ve added it here is because of the feature set matches that of a higher end netbook / very low end notebook, it finely walks the line in a micro-niche that doesn’t quite work.
Sure its screen is 13.3″ when most are 8.9″, SSD drive option, 1027 x 800 native resolution which is higher than some, 5hr battery life, limited port connections and a 1.6Ghz processor, but if you look at the system specs (http://www.apple.com/au/macbookair/specs.html) then it really does belong in the netbook catagory.
That said, it has more function that a usual netbook, probably due to the inclusion of Leopard as its base OS. If you do a search on OS X and the Asus 1000H you’ll see an interesting video with it running, and its almost worth doing for the OS on that platform.
The MacBook Air is pretty, but that’s about it. They pretty much crippled its usefulness by including only 1 USB port and no optical drive. If you have money to burn then I guess you can go fap…
I think the most useful thing that the Macbook Air has done is cut Rahul Sood’s (He’s from HP) birthday cake.
Wow thats an expensive knife, but how many knives can play streaming fullscreen video at the same time?
Cutlery usage aside, the Air falls flat on its face with the 1 USB port, they could have added 2 of them if they got rid of the stupid Micro-DVI port.
Don’t even talk to me about Apple’s decision to recess the ports…