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Five Things that Netbooks Need? Just five?

By Jeff Moriarty (Intel) (33 posts) on September 22, 2008 at 10:00 am

Wired has an interesting article up on the Five Things That Netbooks Need.  I'm usually a little nervous what weird things are on lists like this, but I totally agree with their first four items.  I discussed several of these exact topics with people while at IDF and most people seem to agree that if the battery life goes up and the connectivity becomes constant... there will be no stopping these things.

I'd remove Apple from the list. Putting OS X on a Netbook looks fun, but that's just one option and a pokey one at that. My Dell Inspiron Mini just came with XP and it is, shall we say, a tad sluggish. There are some nice other Linux alternatives out there under development for Netbooks and MIDs. If they have an easy to use, coherent set of applications on the devices I think that's all it will take.

My Eee PC had a very simple Linux build, but "Connect to Web" is pretty darn clear.  Rather than Apple specifically, I think any polished OS that let people boot quickly and get down to work is what I'd put in that fifth slot.

Are those five issues the biggest things Netbooks need?

Categories: Mobility, Open Source

Comments (8)

September 22, 2008 11:45 AM PDT Josh Bancroft (Intel) Total Points: 3,492 Status Points: 2,992 Brown Belt

Interesting list. I agree that battery life is important, but one thing they forgot to mention is that IT'S HERE, NOW, if you get a netbook with a 6-cell battery (which is the standard configuration of the Eee PC 901 and 1000 in the U.S., and on newer instances of the MSI Wind). With the 2.5 Watt Atom processor and a big 6-cell battery, I easily get 5 or 6 hours of usage out of my 901, with WiFi on, screen at about half brightness. I also agree that they need ubiquitous connectivity. 3G is nice, but I'm really chomping at the bit for Mobile WiMAX. As soon as we can get a network that offers coverage, it shouldn't be hard to put WiMAX hardware in netbooks, and then bam! We're all online, all the time, from most everywhere. Can't happen soon enough if you ask me. Regarding Apple and Mac OS X, I'm an avowed Apple fanboy, and I personally hope that they make an entry into the netbook market, only because you know the hardware would be thin, light, elegant, and beautiful. I'm a fan of Mac OS (my main computer is a MacBook Pro), and would love to see it on netbooks, if only for familiarity/continuity, since that's what I use elsewhere. I have to mentally shift gears when I go from using my Mac to using a netbook with Linux or Windows. Regarding performance, the Wired article says that OS X runs about as fast as a 1.6GHz G5 on a netbook, and I've seen recent posts/videos stating that OS X on the MSI Wind is actually pretty quick. So I don't think it's a bloat/performance barrier - in fact, the next version of OS X, 10.6 Snot Leopard, is going to be considerably slimmed down, with a focus more on optimization and performance, and not adding a ton of new features. But I think you're right that netbooks don't "need" Apple- there's nothing about OS X that makes it inherently better on these little babies. It would just be nice to have the option. Interesting that XP feels sluggish on your Dell Mini 9. I wonder why that is? I only ask because I've been putting several operating systems on my Eee PC 901, and of all of them Windows XP is noticeably the quickest feeling. In fact, it's quite zippy, to me. I wonder if Dell loads up a bunch of bloatware or something? Might be worth experimenting with a clean install of XP, to see if that makes a difference. I can assist with that if you want to go that route. Netbooks are hot right now. Prices are only going to go down, and features are only going to get better. Competition is a great thing for users, and I can't wait to see what the next year or so brings in the world of Lilliputian laptops! :-)

September 23, 2008 12:35 AM PDT Arthur

The very first thing would be a Chipset that's actually worth buying - the currently used Intel solution is one thing that keeps me from even thinking which one to buy.

September 23, 2008 4:32 AM PDT Vasileios Anagnostopoulos

May add a sixth item? Will there be any Atom based OpenSolaris netbooks with 10" screens?

September 23, 2008 8:23 AM PDT Josh Bancroft (Intel) Total Points: 3,492 Status Points: 2,992 Brown Belt

Arthur, what is it about the chipset used in current netbooks that you don't like? What do you think should be improved? I'm not sure what you're getting at, but would love to hear more detail. Vasileios, I've been messing around with installing different OSes on the netbook I have (an Eee PC 901 20GB), and I'm going to post a writeup/comparison of them soon. I haven't tried OpenSolaris yet, but I have a little USB stick to install it from, and I can always get some help from Dave Stewart upstairs, so I'll give it a try, and include the experience in my writeup. Good idea! :-)

January 29, 2009 9:00 PM PST Florin Braescu

My wife have a MacBook Pro. Of course i have made a Linux partition on it :) Apple's hardware is very well done. IMHO a more succesful business model for Apple would be to use Linux instead of Darwin. It can keep the upper desktop (with a branded name Mac OS X) proprietary i think. This way it will benefit by the largest Linux portability, largest drivers base, largest users and devs base, the amazing speed of evolution of Linux and it will turn a competition into an asociation. They can keep and sell the great hardware too. I bet many Linux users can be attracted to use the OS X in this combination. It can be the worst Micosoft's nightmare.

April 21, 2009 11:10 AM PDT Hussain Alkhalissi Total Points: 60 Status Points: 10 Green Belt

well i agree with this points but the fifth i think they saying mac like os and not the mac os !!!

July 7, 2009 12:30 PM PDT Donald Lewis (Intel)

I'm going to try Jolicloud ( http://www.jolicloud.com/ ) on my Acer Asprire One.

September 9, 2009 8:00 AM PDT Netbook Fan

I tried out Jolicloud its nice. Works nicely on my Eee PC 701. What about Moblin? I agree with the first four points!!

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