As I’ve stated in one of your previous posts, I think these things are ridiculously overhyped gadgets with a major identity crisis. They can’t decide wether they want to be notebooks or handhelds and they seem posses the worst attributes of both. I can’t wait until these “netbooks” fade away into oblivion.

I think it’s important to point out that these machines have their shortcomings, but if you are looking for an ultraportable they are going to cost you about 1/3 of something in the same size/weight class running, say, a ULV Core 2 Duo processor. So for this you have to accept certain limitations.

I’d had issues with online HD video (like Vimeo) but these machines should play 720p video from the hard drive pretty well. It didn’t sound like you had a good experience, but I’ve had an OK time with 720p.

I’d say if you have do the essentials- Skype, Firefox with multiple tabs, MS Office/Open Office, etc, the system is going to be enough for many people. If your demands are more than that you might want to consider something more powerful.

Regarding the battery life, 1.5 hours is pretty sad. If you are running a 6-cell, which increases the weight, you should be able to get more towards 3 hours if you are doing online work (which is the majority of what I do on my notebooks).

Yes, I can’t wait for some AMD-solutions! I think AMD have a better product for the netbooks, so we can hope that Atom goes kaboom.

Maybe it is for a reason that early mini-notebooks were running Linux. It seems that Windows demands more CPU power and RAM than Linux based machines. Video playback, also of higher resolution movies, works just fine, with more than 25 or 30 frames (I tried increasing frame rate by playing the movies faster), using mplayer, vlc and xine. Battery life is indeed not great – running with an UMTS modem mine runs out of steam after about 2.5 hours. And indeed, some web designers seem to assume that sub-1280×1024 displays have disappeared by now.
Just tried to resize a 700×650 pixel image to 2000×2000, took 3 seconds, sure, a far cry from the 0.2 seconds one would expect on a more powerful platform but far from unbearable.
My mini-notebook does a great job now as gateway (as I have relocated recently, and have no wired internet yet). It is my impression that you were using software, or an operating system, your mini-notebook isn’t quite suited for.
(Mine is not an MSI Wind, but an Acer Aspire one, though specs shouldn’t be too different)

ouch

The screen size/res is a complete joke. I could possibly tolerate lower end performance, if all I wanted to do was do some basic web surfing. Seeing your pages and videos getting cut off, leads me to believe they are not even capable of delivering a decent web experience, let alone a more typical PC experience.

the intel atom is a true epic fail, i cant wait for a 45nm ball grid array dual-core bobcat like design by AMD (Sempron BGA) or the VIA Nano dual-core CPU. Buy an Atom based netbook or shoot myself in the foot? hard decision… i am waiting for the first dual-core netbook based on AMD or VIA!

i think articles like these are predictable when you just have no product in the pipeline

Kinda scary that AMD is missing out another market.

I think you have completely missed the point of the netbook. I would argue that the average consumer is only “surfing basic, light websites” (ie, facebook, google, youtube, ebay, amazon, cnn, new york times, etc). The target user of this style of computer is someone who wants portability with basic functions such as simple internet browsing and office products. I would further argue that this represents most of the computer, let alone laptop, market, although that is an entirely different argument. Users that are interested in high-end graphics and more powerful computers are working on systems that offer significant cooling capabilities and are easily upgradable (desktops).

Those high-end users certainly wont spend $500 on a low-end Dell or HP, which become hot and are bulky/clumsy.

Another point is that the average consumer does not really care too much about HD video on laptops let alone is able to explain what HD video is. They certainly wont expect it to work on a laptop that costs a third of most decent HD TVs.

I do agree with your assessment of prices but increased competition will drive prices down (see Lenovo and Dell’s entries and Asus’s subsequent price cuts). If AMD was in this market, prices would drop further.

For full disclosure, I own a high-end Dell computer, an iMac, a Toshiba Tablet PC, and have now ordered an Asus netbook. I decided to purchase the Asus because it will accomplish what the Toshiba could not: be easy to carry.

I have used a Sony Picturebook for many years particularly whilst travelling on the train to work. I checked the e-mail, wrote manuals and developed VBA code. On a 1024×480 screen this was not easy.

I now use a version with 1280×768 which is about the minimum I can work with having gotten used to 1600×1200 CRT and LCD screens. The 1.06Gb processor and 5400 rpm drive and software rust make for a slow machine, even newly installed.

All portable devices are a compromise and it does depend upon what you are wanting to use them for to determine if they are fit for purpose or not.

Besides the netbook devices a number of low energy machines also running versions of Linux are being heavily publicised in the wake of the netbooks. As these tiny boxes can plug into a full size 1920×1200 screen but even with the 1.6GHz processor can’t run all You Tube videos (a must for my 12 year daughter) and has problems with full screen playback of DV and DVD sources. At a price, and as a second machine they do have a place, e.g. whilst the desktop computer is tied up processing HD video. I do not understand why the processor used is such a bad performer. There are few tasks that I require that an old Pentium 500MHz can’t do that a 3GHz core 2 dual can and mostly that is about recording digital TV, importing DV and HDV and creating DVD outputs.

I opted to get a Nokia N800. It runs also Linux but weights under half of that of the netbooks and runs for over 6 hours on a single supplied battery. On it I loaded several applications including a choice of Media Players, calculators and dictionaries. So it has French, German and Spanish dictionaries, Wikipedia and CIA world fact book, 5000 novels and works of literature, language learning tapes, classic music and also a few hundred pop songs and the odd dozen games. With the internet, web camera and Skype (the school uses Skype to get pupils to work together on projects with children in other countries) it makes for a flexible student’s computer. The netbooks will do the same but weigh more and will not run all day long.

I have used the GPS from my Nokia N95 running maps on the N800 which is better than reading the maps on the N95 but the 800×480 is too small for me to read clearly and at a glance. Web browsing is painfully slow unless you have a clear idea what you are looking for – too many sites need a higher resolution and do not scroll well. It is very good as a media player, but the effort to convert my library of video to the quarter frame size just takes too long. iTunes (AAC) and MP3 are perfect and I sometimes plug it directly into the hi-fi.

Although the netbooks cover the basic PDA and Office functions they do not have the capacity for the attachments e-mailed at work. Large Power Point presentations, Office 2007 documents and spreadsheets that have grown to 40 Mb. Short e-mails fine, but having to read a 100 page Word document with tables and graphics on a small screen is no fun.

A mobile phone like the Nokia N95 and iPhone can be used to look up things on the internet and access online e-mail. I wouldn’t want to do much typing, even with a Bluetooth keyboard but they cover enough PDA and media player functions well enough that they overlap the functionality of the netbook. The keyboard and screen on a netbook is not a sufficient improvement to make them worth carrying. The saving grace is that if it where to get stolen or broken on a trip getting another one is not very expensive, particularly those that are had for under £100, and the memory cards with your data can be transferred from one machine to another. Going for a better specification and running Windows XP brings the cost higher than for a second hand picture book with more RAM, larger storage and bigger screen.

I might be content with a 1280×768 version of the Nokia N800 on a screen over 9” diagonal if it also ran for 7 hours with Wi-fi running and Bluetooth.

Some friends do like their netbooks and use them in the house to look up information, making a few notes or browsing the internet whilst in the pub. I do not see that this is the killer application for these devices. Even though they think they know the limitations it has not stopped them buying more than one PDA, internet tablet and now netbook finding each lacked what they wanted. They don’t want a laptop because of price and size/weight. I feel the longer that they use the netbook the more they will wish it was a more powerful notebook.

WOW Hd editing on a netbook…

Sorry but this blog and the video seems more like mn why did we missed this.

As stated before you should not compare a net book with a fullsize notebook. Wich will have no longer battery life ( i know cause i own a eee pc 5h and a turion based notebook 3h)

The only right comment is about the way they develop atm beeing fairly priced and small to getting to big and expensive compared to low end notebooks that coe standard with vista.

Well Pat, I think this post should be revised in the light of new offers on the market today. The MSI Wind is one of the most expensive netbooks around. You should go with Acer or ASUS. Personally, I’ve been waiting for netbooks to get a few enhancements for quite a while: decent battery life (now 6 cells = 5-7 hours), more storage space (80-160GB available now), more memory (1024MB now), bigger screen (10.2″ available) and of course Windows (most of us are more familiar with it). So after only 4 months all this has changed completely as you can see about specially pricing (you should have waited too). Now
I’m now waiting for a few things: (a) 1024×768 display please, (b) AMD to launch a good ultra-low TDP dual core Athlon to kill Intel Atom N270 and 330, (c) a decent and less power hungry chipset from AMD/ATi (in contrast to the Intel 945G dump) with a real IGP (low TDP Radeon 4XXX) with an S-Video output.

If AMD delivers, Intel will take a big hit. I hope this message gets forwarded to some guys in the engineering and marketing departments since this is a good niche with very high profits to take over Intel. Meanwhile we are all stuck with the same low value offers from Intel. Value is at what AMD excels, I hope the company stands for it to come to our rescue as it did with Turion CPUs for notebooks and the spider platform.

Give me hint or contact me if AMD can finally put us out of our misery.