The short answer is Microsoft Vista.
It came pre installed on my last laptop and caused me nothing but problems, It encouraged me to make the jump to Linux and I haven’t looked back.
HP will have to deliver a pretty exciting machine for me to pay for a Vista license that I’m never going to get any value out of.
</rant>
Rick Broida from Business Hacks has just complete a five day road warrior session with the Acer Aspire One. It seems his (and others) biggest complaint was the short battery life.
Read the whole series below
The Netbook Diaries – Day Three
I really need to stop it with corny post titles but something about Apple products make it an uncontrollable urge that will probably need years in therapy to cure.
JK On The Run has posted about how he’s tried to help Dave Winer resolve an issue between his MSI Wind U100 and an Apple Airport Extreme broadband router. Even though JK had the same hardware with no issues. It looks like Dave ended up sending the Wind back after it caused another brand of router to crash also.
Other Wind users are reporting similar problems, but it’s hard to judge it as an epidemic when those that aren’t having a problem don’t complain on blogs, forums and review sites.
Source: JK on the Run
Other people are
Analysts think Apple is leaving potential profits on the table by not getting into the Netbook market. They go further to predict that Apple will introduce a touch screen Netbook style machine around September 2009….. Just in time for next Christmas.
The full story is here
Scott has taken delivery of a 1200mAh battery for his EEEpc. You can’t argue that it’s not big and chunky and has lifted the weight of his machine by about half a pound. The good news is that Scott’s purchase only cost him $US62. Read his review to see where he got it. He hasn’t had it long enough to gauge how much extra screen time he’ll get for his efforts.
On an unrelated note, finger prints show up really well on the glossy black screen back of the EEE, it makes me think white could be the preferred color.
“Electric Feel” from Electric Vagabond has his home office set up completly based around his MSI WIND U100 Netbook. I’d never thought of basing a regular computing set up around a netbook. Using a combination of Bluetooth, a USB Hub and a standard monitor cable the setup only has three cords to dock and undock (including the power).
Check out the whole set up in detail here.
Liliputing has posted this picture of the box label for an Asus EEEpc 901 with 8700mAh battery. Estimated battery life is a potential seven hours, sounds like netbooking heaven to me.
Blogger State Your Purpose has written a review of his New ASUS EEEpc 1000H. Being a bit of a geek, as soon as he unpacked it was upgrade time. He upgraded to the maximum 2GB and swapped out the 160GB Hard Drive for the 250Gb HDD he had in his Lenovo laptop.
After he’d played with the hardware, he messed around a little to install Vista Ultimate for what he states was “better battery options”. I’m a Vista hater so I won’t make any comments, His install went pretty well with the only issue being the external volume controls not working, but it looks like there is a fix for it when he has the time.
Overall State Your Purpose seems happy with his 1000H purchase and is reporting 3 to 3.5 hours of normal use battery life out of his set up.
Dan Nystedt from PCWorld got a prelaunch hands on test of the AsustekN10 which has now gone on sail in Taipei for NT$23,900 (approx US$725). So while it’s at the top end of the Netbook price range it does have a strong set of features.
On the down side your only getting a three cell battery and at 1.4kgs it might be a bit more noticeable in the hand luggage.
Source: PCWorld
Computer World Columnist Mike Elgan is arguing that HP invented the best Netbook 15 years ago when they released the Omnibook 300.
While he reckons the HP Mini Note is okay he’s campaigning for an update of the omnibook as the segment killer for Netbooks.
And I can see some merit in some of his arguments.
Personally I’ll take a color screen and the wireless connectivity of the modern Netbook, but I think HP might go forward by looking backwards.
Ted Hanigan | 
11 23rd, 2008| 
