Comments on: Netbook v. Notebook – Confusion Ensues

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:33:19 +0000

Nigel!

I happened upon this article searching for an AMD-based netbook as well as “The Future of Mainstream Notebook PCs”.

I admit, I’ve been an AMD fanboy for some time now, dating back to the K6-2 (High School). I even have some stock in AMD. But it really upsets me that you take such a negative stance toward netbooks, and such a positive stance on ONE product: HP’s DV2.

For instance, the MSI Wind U210 is the freshest and most cost-effective “netbook” that I’ve seen in a while. And its been getting great reviews.

Sure netbooks don’t have the full capabilities of a noteback… but wasn’t it just a few years ago when the laptop segment was divided between notebooks and DTRs?

AMD shouldn’t close the door on netbooks so fast… Netbooks integrated with wireless via phone companies – providing an “always on” device (Nokia’s Netbook for instance) will gain in popularity. AMD is really shooting itself in the foot for not expanding into the market more.

By: Dawood

Dawood — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:05:25 +0000

Of course, recent trends have considerably diminished the difference between these 2 gadgets, but anyway there are still points to consider before purchasing one or another. Below I’ve tried to list them all:

http://www.myhowtoos.com/en/how-to-choose/87-how-to-choose-between-netbook-vs-laptop

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:26:34 +0000

I checked out these other ultraportables with the Intel SU3500 (core 2 solo 1.4ghz) and T2700 (pentium single core 1.3 ghz)…the processors are actually fairly weak i think. The are only somewhat better than an atom, but i am fairly certain they still cannot handleHD flash video for example. In fact, on at least one benchmarking site the single core athlon neo bested the SU3500!!! Anyway, I think the DV2 may be a good computer for me after all, but i’ll wait and see if any other Turion Neo computers are announced.

Thanks, it is a great processor!

By: Rambaldi

Rambaldi — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:52:07 +0000

I believe there was one from BenQ but I don’t know the details of that sorry.

By: Andrew Fox for Nigel

Andrew Fox for Nigel — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:26:45 +0000

From Nigel: The HP dv2 has had many good reviews and is award winning, and I personally find my dv2 very useful. But not every design is for everyone, and that is why we are pleased we have more than twenty ultra-thin platforms coming to market soon.

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:12:23 +0000

I have done some research, and determined that the AMD Turion Neo X2 is all the processor that I need. Unfortunately, the only option with it is the DV2z, which although interesting, has several serious design issues (poor battery life, larger and heavier than other 12″ notebooks).

I am looking to buy a computer soon, please tell me that AMD has other Turion Neo X2 Ultraportables coming…otherwise right now i am heavily considering the budget-ultraportables with Intel ULV’s (though i do not yet know how the single core pentium SU2700 will perform).

By: asH

asH — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:06:42 +0000

until laptop battery life substantially improve, AMD ‘portable’ nettops maybe an attractive alternative second option, considering their ‘processing advantage’ over laptops….plug one into my car interface on the road akin to the Apple auto interface…possibilities abound with a quality product
asH

By: asH

asH — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:21:57 +0000

AMD Chases New Form Factors With Low-power Chips
Agam Shah, IDG News Service

….”To the victor belong the spoils”
Neo!!

THATS WHAT I”M TALKIN’ ABOUT!!
let the branding begin!
nice.

By: asH

asH — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:43:31 +0000

Thin is in.

All paths converge in the thin arena, RISC procesor vs CISC. Apple’s will probably produce the de facto standard with their October presentation of the Apple tablet. Intel’s Atom may not be a worthy competitor; that leaves AMD to defend CISC’s honor….”To the victor belong the spoils” …Llano

By: Sean Gordon

Sean Gordon — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:53:34 +0000

As Toby Hudon aboves says, they have changed a lot from when they first came into the main market. Now they’re getting hard drives (and farily alrge ones at that), and i’m sure i’ve even seen one or two with dual core, or plans for one at least…
Now that is just going too far. That’s straying into low-end laptop territory. The whole point of them was a simple, cheap, portable computer that can be used to work on the web (hence the oh=so=crappy=and=overused-marketing-bull****-of-a-name NETbook), not to have 10″ screens and be used for streaming video from the internet, while typing a word documents, and messing around on photoshop.
Also, as Toby above said too, Windows XP realyl should have been stripped down. It’s not like it’s an impossible task. I’ve even seen similar versions to what is really required made by non-microsoftians, who’ve got rid of everything that isn’t needed and cut it down to 700MB-2GB.
I say, go back to hassive a proper divide between “netbooks” and laptops…

By: Toby Hudon

Toby Hudon — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:39:24 +0000

Netbooks completely lost their way the moment the hard drives appeared. The core idea was to have only the essential requirements to get the system up and online so that people who worked mostly on the net could do it cheaper and with longer battery life and carrying less weight.

I’m loathe to blame Windows here, since I vastly prefer it to the alternatives available, but in this case it really is at fault. XP should have been stripped down into 1-2GB install rather than putting in 160GB HDs. But even if that had been done the CPU overhead drove up performance demands. The 7″ screens and keyboards were too small for adults, and with size bumps came easy room to cram higher performing parts.

So the whole thing fell apart on itself. Marketing not having a clear vision of what to promote it as didn’t really help either.

So now the question is, do we kill this mistake and re-invent the “netbook”? Or do we just give up on the low cost low performance niche of the market?

Personally I think cellphones are going to come up into this area from below, and their aggressive pricing subsidies will make it too hard for PC-based hardware to compete with them. The only thing holding them back is lack of formfactor innovation (ask Pat Moorhead about my ideas here) and greedy providers charging outrageous rates for data.