The Ultimate Netbook

Good article- but i'd only throw in the SSD (too high costs still) if it's of a decent enough size to merit having, like 32GB+ otherwise a HUGE HDD would do me. Track points - Evil. Still think that the MSI Wind / Advent 4211 ticks most of these boxes- but after a few months of use I wish it had a higher resolution screen. I don't see the point of an HDMI out since the chip can't play back HD content without grinding to a halt, VGA's fine.

Please HP, put a dual core Atom in your next Mini-note!

I'd add one more aspect to this recipe - a simple and inexpensive but hardwearing carry-case for the netbook, with a handle. No bigger than it needs to be, but with space for the mains adapter (redesigned if necessary with small size and minimal depth to fit easily into the case) and coming eg with a small travel mouse - most users I know always prefer to use a separate mouse, given the option. I know you don't need a case for use around the house or outdoors or even eg necessarily on a train (unless it's a long journey - think battery life), but for taking on trips away, on holiday etc it's very handy to be able to quickly pop all the relevant items in a small compact case and to have mains recharging available. Otherwise, IME you end up still having to put the various bits in a non-custom-made bag of some sort, which typically ends up being almost the size that you'd use for a regular laptop, if not the weight, and so losing some of the convenience of the netbook format.

You're making some very good points - especially about the trackpoint!

The statement that people opt for WinXP because they want more flexibility and freedom is however a bit surprising. I'd rather say that you should get WinXP if you want to avoid getting on a new learning-curve, and want to be more, well, conventional.

I love reading TR reviews, because you guys obviously understand hardware and how people use it. But (with all due respect) on the topic of "exotic" software from the GNU/Linux world, you could perhaps use some fresh blood to bring the team up to speed. Especially with the advent of the netbook-phenomenon a lot of people expect GNU/Linux adoption in the consumer-market to have a (mini-)boom, so now is a good time!

Sorry, I sent that comment off unfinished...
The thing I really wanted to point out is that the Apple App Store, to my mind, was modelled on something that had long existed before in the free-software world. Debian and thus Ubuntu (which indeed you favourably mentioned) have software repositories that offer very simple software installation options - and they did so long before Apple did.

The reason you'll run into weird cumbersome installation routines when you search the web, is that hardware support in GNU/Linux always trails hardware support in Windows. So people who want to install something on the newest hardware will have to jump a few extra hoops. This is not the case however with netbooks, since Intel has offered excellent zero-day driver support for GNU/Linux - and that's why it's such a great time to start exploring this subject!

@John Dann: I bought Mc Bain's Lovechild (a Crumpler bag) for £15 and it's perfect for what you want, I use it with a 1000H btw, it fits like a glove

Great article, though I think the EEE PC's keyboard gets far too much stick for the right shift, particularly as I never use it and it has never caused me a problem. A big issue would have been if the Fn key was in the wrong place, which it thankfully isn't, though I think it is on other netbooks.
Trackpad is great idea too, I've always found them easier to use than touch pads

One more thing... The passive cooling in the Dell netbook is a nice addition!

About the HP, I think the 1280x800 screen breaks Microsoft's rules for volume licensing of XP to netbooks, which is why it sells with Vista/Linux.

Good read!
I, too, would like a trackpoint. And VIA's Isaiah chip. And something better than Intel's 945 graphics chip.
I'd also like to have an ExpressCard interface for feature epansion, and the OS in ROM, in order to minimize power consumption.
Re this last:
Remember the Handheld and Kneetop phenomenon?: IBM WorkPad, NEC MobilePro series, HP Jornada series--and a lot more--all running WindowsCE in ROM, and getting 6-12 hours of run time on a single charge (some even more with a new battery; the Z50 WorkPad even had a battery pack replacement which used AA cells, good for 2-3 hours of run time).
Please: no diatribes about WinCE. THE POINT is that an OS in ROM is more power efficient than the same OS run from RAM.
"But what about adding programs?", you ask.
WinCE has an elegantly simple solution: a portion of the RAM is allocated to 'program memory', so that one can add programs up to the extent of available memory.
Perhaps you don't remember the WinCE machines.
Perhaps the current--and future--manufacturers of nettops/netbooks/MIDevices should.

Great job, well written article. I would just have a few points to add.

First, I must agree with the yungchin: the repos in the linux world are working perfectly, very easy to use and readily available.

Secondly, the screen resolution. I am not sure why that is such an issue for the companies producing netbooks and notebooks. My girlfriend has bought a budget laptop for just a bit above the ideal price mentioned in the article and the screen resolution is 1440 by 900. So obviously cheap screen panels are available to manufacturers. Let's hope we see them in netbooks sometime soon.

Finally, on the point of the trackpad: my preference is with the touch pad, but that's just a question of personal taste. However I think that the size (and format) of the screen leaves space under the keyboard anyway, so it can be just as well put to good use.

A few points you missed:

1. Good design should also include a practical finish, nothing that requires wiping the fingerprints off every five minutes to look good and nothing that scratches too easily.

2. Good speakers are a must, my eee PC makes a great radio and is used as one fairly regulaly (a normal radio with it's limited channels and no listed again service is no replacement).

Speakers should ideally also be loud so the machine can be used as an alarm clock.

3. I'd love to see an eSATA port as well, with the onboard SSD being limited capacity having full speed access to external drives would be nice.

An excellent piece but I think that you left out one thing: a dual mode screen. Say what you will about the OLPC devices, their idea of a screen with a low power daylight mode for doing things like using it as an ebook reader is superb. The same goes for having the kind of hinge arrangement that folds the screen over and allows the device to have a tablet mode.

For those of us who are on the road ten to thirty hours a week, a netbook has the opportunity to really be our everydevice. Your points about network access underscore this. But to do that, it needs to be able to shift mode to handle the very different power consumption and UI requirements of these wide-ranging functions. I couldn't agree more about the superiority of the HP 2133 keyboard but while that's great, I also want to be able to pull out my little beastie, fold it into notepad mode, and hold it in one hand to read on while waiting on long lines or take notes while walking around a trade show.

Interesting article.
I quite agree with RustinHWrights comments, the tablet mode and ereader functionality would be a big selling point for me.
I don't think netbooks in current form are for me but i would love to see proper full powered "mini" laptops. i was for some time rather tempted by the Vye mini (http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-devices/review/2008/02/18/Vye-mini-v-S37B/p1) but didnt think it was quite there. (bought a samsung Q45 instead, which is great and does what i need but is bigger/heavier than I really want)
So for me most of what you listed but adding a 9inch, high res touch display, tablet mode, some sort of low power ereader/email/messenger mode, and Sony TZ level performance and battery life. I kinda hope they dont make it 'cos I want one and I hate to think what it would cost!

For me, the netbook will in the future be the ultimate computer. Once CPU+GPU and SSD technology comes along far enough then there will be no need to have a computer any bigger. I don't think we are far out either.. 5 years max.
A 10 inch laptop with a near border-less 'touch' OLED screen and a few hundred gigs will be all you will need... ever. It's not science fiction to imagine one of these things looking like,a dn being as thin as, one of those cool Sony e-readers.

You've been slashdotted! This story is on the front page!

A few points:

It's all about money. You're talking about a NOTEBOOK here, not a NETBOOK. A NETBOOK has to be cheap - less than 400$US. Anything past that, and you might as well be calling it an 'ultraportable' or a 'mini notebook.'

Some fun modern visual design is fun, but I don't care If my netbook is just plain black or white - again, design must be a function of cost.

The keyboard must be usefully large - I'm asking for a lot, I know, especially if we want this thing to stay small, and I'd be willing to compromise, so long as I won't get carpal tunnel after one day of use.

A netbook has to be durable. If I drop it, it would be nice if it didn't break. It should survive in a backpack, having coffee spilled on it, and getting thrashed about on a plane.

Maybe the technology isn't quite there for a cheap utile computer, but we're getting close.

For me, the keyboard has to be narrow enough for thumb typing, but not so narrow as to prevent touch typing. That's a difficult order, but it's what I want in an "ultimate netbook".

I also want:

a twist/convertible screen (like the Fujitsu U810), which also means a touch screen.

some form of comfortable to install HSPA modem (so either an internal PCI-express-mini card, or an ExpressCard that is on the front/back edge, and not on the side edges where ti would make thumb typing awkward).

micro-DVI-I out (to support both digital and analog monitors)

6ish hours of reliable battery life (not just estimated)

Has to have vendor support for some variant of Ubuntu (Ubuntu standard without the touch screen, Ubuntu-MID with it)

I think most of what I want would be modest changes to the Dell mini.

@Jopey: Hardly, a few hundred gigs is quickly filled by HD movies (each blu-ray is 50GB), and resolutions are going to reach at least 600DPI in the next decade or two (from the current 140dpi on netbooks) if not sooner so quadruple the size of movies.

There will be plenty of reason for bigger screens - working with A4 documents is one of the obvious ones (paper isn't going to go anywhere) but there are plenty more.

screen resolution of 1440 x 900 is all that I want added. I find it hard to use any laptop type device with a "reasonable" amount of screen real-estate. I want to be able to browse the internet and edit documents without having to do much scrolling. Vertical resolution of 600 is not enough!!

as long as i can play command and conquer generals, for a little while, while i'm out and about, then i'll be happy.

Some great points, but not sure I follow your graphics arguments though.

You say it doesn't need to do 720p but then you want a hdmi...whats the point in easy tv connectivity to display low res video???

Trackpoint++

That brings up a related point: good quality keyboard (thinkpad 570, T series), and NO windows keys, thanks. I need a decent-sized control and alt. And a decent-sized ESC key.

If at all possible I'd also like a hardware serial (because dongles suck and I _need_ serial), as you noted wired ethernet, but also 802.11a/b/g (not n, but a is very welcome here), and 2, 2.5, and 3G data. Also, fax support, no matter how quaint, has turned out to be very useful to me on occasion. By the same token, if there's room left, a combined POTS/ISDN interface, because sometimes that's all that's available. An external button to forcibly de-activate each wireless much like pulling the plug on ethernet is also a good idea (certain X-series thinkpads have this).

And, crypto acceleration support in the cpu. And good power management, of the forcibly turn things off as in _no_ power supplied kind. It's a small thing, but important. While at it, a user-writable part in flash to store a kernel and sundry data would be good too. I'd ask for firewire but it has security implications.

A big fat battery then replace it with those fancy new nanobattery things; 24hr+ battery life is a good thing for travel. I'll take weeks if I can get it, hot-swap and recharge times measured in minutes instead of hours are good alternatives. On the same note, technology has come a long way but special care for a screen readable in direct sunlight as well as the deep of night and everything in between is quite useful.

Oh, and while I understand the situation is different for others, windows support is of absolutely no importance to me. Zilch. Nada. Niente. I'll take any other CPU architecture if it gets me better support in the areas I do want. I only need FreeBSD or NetBSD but will settle for MacosX or linux.

Funny how requirements sometimes differ so much from what the market offers.

Although more, as another writer put it, in the realm of notebook not netbook, I do have a suggestion for Apple sparked by this remark in the first couple of paragraphs of the article, "we're still waiting for the Apple iPhone of netbooks."

Disclaimer: I use both MS and Apple OSes on a regular basis, not *nixes. I have used both Macs and PCs since 1985 or thereabouts. The setup I have now is pretty standard for me for the past decade: 1 mac and 1 pc hooked up w/a KVM and NAS.

As an iPhone owner, my idea of the perfect ultra-portable is something that has a built-in dock for my iPhone. This device would have its own memory, storage (an SSD just large enough for the OS and the rest in plug-in SD cards - up to 4x16gb cards is enough), and video. Unlike the MacBook Air, it would have built-in Ethernet as well as USB. It would, however, use the WiFi, cell, and Bluetooth radios in the iPhone for all other forms of communication including untethered. It can be used with the iPhone docked or not.

Plug the iPhone in and it starts charging and syncing and a small utility would mirror the iPhone's display on the portable's screen. Oh, and it would use the same power cord/charger adapter as the iPhone.

Just a thought.

Missing one thing for me. To be a Killer device needs to have a 3G modem built in with a sim slot and a connection manager that selects the cheapest/faster available connection e.g. 3G, hot-spot, home/office wi-fi. To live up to the name a netbook has to be about connectivity as well as size?

My idea of what netbooks need to become is pretty much the same as Cellar's: a keyboard with good ergonomics, all the wireless connectivity you can fit, a big battery, and please keep doing no-Windows versions. Maybe even only those. On netbooks it's more visible than ever that Windows is a waste of money and processing power.

cjb110, I think Andy says so because high resolution outputs can be useful in regular netbook usage, while the powerful video cards needed for HD decoding and gaming are not.

siwaters, integration with many devices is very welcome, but if it becomes just another "you can use our devices with our devices with our lovely proprietary methods" I'll pass.

Do you mean "To surmise" or "To summarize"?

I would argue against the "nipple mouse" people fall into either hate them (like me) or love them (like you).

The gesture friendly trackpad of the Asus 901 series is excellent however, particularly for reading items or surfing online. The two finger scrolling is very useful.

Adiitionally, the 3G should be changed to "easy access mPCI-e slot for 3G services". With the release of Xohm service in my area, that is what I'm shooting for, but ultimately a form factor that all the 3G services will utilize is what we want.

You're missing a major point...

The main thing holding battery life back is the chipset. Why don't any of the netbooks out there use the SCH chipset instead of the power hungry 945? You get better video decoding to boot. It might even become realistic to go fanless once the chipset power gets brought down to the processor levels. Suddenly a 3 cell design actually has reasonable battery life (~4 hours) and a 6 cell design has much more. Now that Intel has finally caved on the 1 GB ram limit on SCH there's no excuse not to use it...

Some of the stupidities on the platform are because of component vendor restrictions. Intel spells out features you can and cannot do with atom, like no dual core laptop parts. Microsoft spells out features you can and cannot do with XP. We will continue to see stupidities because of fear of self cannibalization by the component vendors.

I'd like to see a 12" screen myself, SCH chipset, with a good fullsize keyboard/trackpoint to match. I prefer 2.5" SATA hard drives.. But 1.8" is better than SSD IMHO.

You ask for built in HSDPA but do you really need that built into every netbook? For most people Wifi is good enough. For the 5 percent of you who actually can afford 3G, you can get a USB 3G adapter or plug a 3G expresscard /54 into the HP.

A note on the whole HSDPA thing.
My solution was to get a HSDPA capable mobile phone on a £35/month contract, that gave me unlimited internet access (usual "fair use" caveat) when browsing on the phone itself or using it as a bluetooth modem for my notebook. Works flawlessly for me at virtually no extra cost over a standard mobile contract, and no silly "dongles" hanging out of my laptop

For me, the killer addition would be a docking station for relatively cheap. I don't mean a usb one, but one that uses a bus extension, has video, and the ability to attach more peripherals and cables. Having one at home, and one at work would eliminate the storage, wired vs wireless, etc.

Wyrdone: Yes, but how does the state of affairs differ from the trackpad? There are plenty of people who hate them too. From me it's another vote for the trackpoint, it's just seems the best fitting device for netbooks. Especially the current crop with widescreen displays who's reduced height would mean no space for a trackpad if the keyboard wasn't crunched up vertically (put next to my normal keyboard my eee 701 extends about a centimetre past the bottom of the space bar)

Mr. Linux: While you may be lucky enough to live somewhere with wifi blanket coverage for most of us wifi is completely inadaquate for mobile internet and there are only very limited places where we can connect.

3G sounds like an obvious choice for those who can afford it. But for me:

A) 10 inch screen. I couldn't deal with anything smaller, plus the keyboard will be actually usable for my chubby fingers!

B) 6 cell battery. Like to get at least 4 hours out of the battery, it seems you can right now at the moment, but I'd also like a 9 cell battery as an option for 6 hours plus.

C) The designs so far are really nice. I especially like the Aspire One and the Mini 9, but again, they use 9 inch displays. Not much to say on this front.

D) Sub 3 pound weight. Obvious, as light as possible, don't even want to know it is there!

E) Trackpoint!!!! In my opinion the trackpoint is better than the trackpad, or is it touchpad? It would allow for a taller keyboard and that stupid trackpad won't be so damn narrow and framed with the mouse buttons.

F) Price. My desire would be around the 500 dollar range. But I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for something like this.

These days its possible to use phone (3G and Smartphones) to make GSM calls, GPS and Internet surf.
Question
Are there netbook PC computers that can do the same thing. i.e. you put the 3G som card in it and it can be your GSM phone, GPS and surf unit all in one. Like a smart phone.

Thanks

Andy: Amazing article! Very in deapth analysis. You clearly know what you are talking about. I have a question for you though. Which netbook should I get? I need it to have a typable keyboard (the right shift key's position doesn't matter to me though), decent speed, built in wi-fi, a Windows operating system, and a low price (no more than US$400-ish, US$300 is ideal). It should also definately have a disk drive and be able to play flash .swf files. Appearence doesn't matter that much to me. I am mostly going to be using it around school. I am willing to wait a couple of months for the new ASUS or Toshiba if you think those will be better for me.

Thanks!

Draco

What about a 10inch netbook with 1280x800 res.? I think that would be fine on a bigger netbook as long as it didn’t rundown the battery.

…Hey does anyone have any information about the quality of the 10.6” screens that are supposedly on ActFind.Com’s 10-incher Laptops?

http://www.actfind.com/Laptop-and-Notebook-Laptop-Notebook/c616_617/p3206/Laptop-computers---Laptop-10.6-inches-Screen-1G-DDR-120G-PATA/product_info.html

(Yeah, I know their products are mostly cheapie and low-spec – You don’t need to remind me that. I’m just asking about the 10.6” screens… Thanks…)