The Fate of the Netbook...
LoopyByteloose
Posts: 12,537
One of the few things that I might be helpful on is Taiwan news.
ASUS has an article in the local news today saying that they are shifting their production focus away from netbooks and toward pads and other platforms.
So, it may be time to buy one last netbook - like the ASUS Transformer - before they become hard to get.
I switched from an EEEpc 701 to a Toshiba NB250 as I liked Toshiba Satellites and though it might be worthwhile. I regret this and now am thinking of getting one last ASUS netbook. The fact that they have the aluminium base of the keyboard as a giant heatsink and they use a display that are covered with glass are two important features.
ASUS also is one of the few profitable computer companies this year with sustained market share.
The Toshiba NB250 display is covered in soft plastic and I have ruined one by washing it with rubbing alcohol. Also, the battery in the Toshiba is on its last legs. And the machine runs hotter than the ASUS.
I think ASUS has an excellent engineering and design team. They also has a very good relationship with Intel. And they are not afraid to support Linux. Toshiba seems to be a Windows loyalist.
ASUS has an article in the local news today saying that they are shifting their production focus away from netbooks and toward pads and other platforms.
So, it may be time to buy one last netbook - like the ASUS Transformer - before they become hard to get.
I switched from an EEEpc 701 to a Toshiba NB250 as I liked Toshiba Satellites and though it might be worthwhile. I regret this and now am thinking of getting one last ASUS netbook. The fact that they have the aluminium base of the keyboard as a giant heatsink and they use a display that are covered with glass are two important features.
ASUS also is one of the few profitable computer companies this year with sustained market share.
The Toshiba NB250 display is covered in soft plastic and I have ruined one by washing it with rubbing alcohol. Also, the battery in the Toshiba is on its last legs. And the machine runs hotter than the ASUS.
I think ASUS has an excellent engineering and design team. They also has a very good relationship with Intel. And they are not afraid to support Linux. Toshiba seems to be a Windows loyalist.
Comments
The ASUS Transformer is much more expensive and it is indeed a Pad, but it also has a dockable keyboard that makes it a notebook. And there are a few ways to run Linux on it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/ASUS_Eee_Pad_Transformer
The situation in Taiwan is that we tend to get the left-overs in the local shops from whatever is sold for export all over the world. In some cases, very good computers are made here (like HP servers) and the USA doesn't allow them to be sold here. The best I can do with with gamer computers built from scratch as the motherboards and the videocards are all one the shelves of retail stores as so as they come out.
Ah, now I see the ASUS EEEpc 1015CX has Windows7. That seems to be the goodie.
The bad part about the EEEpc 1015CX is this pesky little note in the specifications:
I see no reason to accept that in this day and age.
They are resurrected with ARM based tablets that can accommodate keyboard/battery attachment and drive HDMI screens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook
By the way, why do you say Intel is a better fit for Linux? Windows is a better fit for Intel given that it and most of it's apps don't run anywhere else. Linux is running on bazillions of smart phones and tablets now that use ARM. It seems to fit very well.
And so you are saying I should edit all the above discussion or risk the legal wrath of Psion.
Whatever EEEpc produced, it was exactly what I wanted. It weighed about 1kilo instead of two, was cheap enough to loose in an Asian night market without ruining your holiday, booting lightning quick from solid-state hard disk, and was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It also was small enough to fit in the compartment under my motor scooter's seat and didn't require a whole backpack to carry.
I just went along with the crowd and accepted that they were called netbooks or notebooks as they were 'sub-laptop' sized. I had seen computers like the Psion netbook from Sony and HP, but never quite had what I wanted. It seemed that I could not load mainstream software and that the keyboard was no where near reasonable.
What do I say ALL Intel is a better fit for LInux? It seems that Intel provides Linux with all the info to make everything work and is the first choice of their binary archives. If you had a Nvidia video, they didn't want anybody to know what was in their video driver, you had to load a proprietary driver than didn't work well in Linux. Of course, the Nvidia drivers for Windows and Apple were stable, just not Linux.
So, is Psion really on the prowl to sue the world for adopting the term many years after its fate was sealed in regions of the globe that it never got a foothold in? I guess there is a hungry lawyer out there somewhere that try.
You never know who might sue you for what now a days. Create something with the look and feel of something else, you're sued. Write a program more complex than "Hello World" and you could be in big trouble.
It is never quite that simple. Trademarks can be only for given localities - you have to have a presence in the market place.
Remember Apple (The record label) had a dispute with Apple (The computer company) over the name. As they were in different businesses Apple the computer company was in the clear. Of course now Apple computers owes it's success to its presence in the music business.
A certain Mr McDonald who had a restaurant bearing his name in Scotland was sue by the McDonald's, property investment, sorry clown entertainment for children, sorry burger company as they wanted his name. Despite the fact he was in that locality first.
not cheap like a EEE but VERY fast .a I3 Netbook .
Are you sure that the "soft plastic" isn't just the piece of cling vinyl used to protect the screen during shipping? If it is, you haven't ruined anything: just peel it off.
-Phil
Actually, I really intended to type 'notebook', but some how 'netbook' ended up on the page instead. In converstation with friends and associates, I use the term 'notebook computer' rather consistently.
I gave it the Windows 10 upgrade back when and it works fine about as fast as it ever did... slow by today's standards and wastes tons of power as heat. A nice lap warmer on a cold winter night. I rarely use it, but it's been a loyal dog and I dutifully keep it updated along with the rest of my fleet of PCs. Woe unto him who gets far behind in his monthly Windows 10 updates...
Anyway, it was noticeably sluggish the last two times I fired it up and I'm 99% sure it's the hard drive (160GB capacity, mostly empty). I found a bunch on (surprise) Ebay China and was pleasantly surprised to nab this new 120GB 2.5" HDD for just $11: https://www.ebay.com/itm/272071892361
Should be an easy HDD swap after saving data & making a USB recovery drive, as I did on my big Toshiba laptop last year.
Not a mission-critical or heavy-duty application, so it's likely this Chinese drive will last as long as I need. At that price, what else can we use these heat-generating HDDs for? Mini-boat anchors? Coffee cup warmers? Vibro massage therapy? Gyroscopes?