Stan Beer
Wednesday, 15 October 2008 15:36
Opinion and Analysis
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News flash to Apple, announcements about expensive, oversized aluminium clad futuristic looking notebook computers are just so yesteryear. If you want to grab people's attention these days give them something they can afford and just as importantly something they can use - give them a netbook.
Last week, prompted by the urgency of an upcoming
business trip and the requirement to get a new portable computer, I
looked around for something that would suit my needs. It had to be very
light, small but with a usable keyboard and display, powerful enough to
run the basic applications I use and easy to connect online.
Aside from all of the above, the computer I wanted had to be
affordable. I was well aware that there are plenty of sexy looking
sub-notebooks to be found for a couple of thousand or more. Sorry, but
to me they would be just an expensive luxury purchase.
The HP 2133 Mini-Note Netbook, which can be had for just under
AUD$1000, was much closer to what I wanted. I liked it when I evaluated
it some months ago - it had a beautiful keyboard although the 8.9 inch
screen was a tad small. However, now that I was actually considering it
as a purchase, to me it seemed that HP had sort of missed the point
with this machine.
With a 160GB hard drive, 2GB RAM and running Vista Business on a VIA
processor the HP Mini-Note seems like an over-engineered netbook posing
as an underpowered a sub-notebook. Anyway, for me $1000 is way too much
to splurge on a netbook.
The Asus Eee PC running a customised plug and play Linux distro created
a sensation when it was first released last year for under $600. The
problems it had were the limitations of that particular operating
system, the tiny 7-inch screen, no hard drive but a limited amount of
solid state storage, and an uncomfortably small keyboard.
In the past year, Asus have stolen the march on the rest of the market
with follow-up improved versions of the popular netbook (although Acer
and others are trying valiantly to match the Eee PC with their own
netbooks).
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