Owned my only laptop in the early 90s, a 25 Mhz monster with all of 4 megs of memory but 5 kilos. Then I had a Mac notebook at the agency. But this new baby has pretty much all I ever wanted - most of all, a $150.- (!) price tag, making it a throwaway product. http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/25/medison-celebrity-150-of-linux-laptop-for-the-people/ Hmmmm... after looking at the FAQ, it does look like the same kind of scam that €1.- flights to London are: additional costs for everything attached. But OTOH, why shouldn't somebody have paid close attention to the OLPC program and try to make some dough out of it. I'll believe it when there are units in the hands of reviewers.
Actually, I want the Asus EEE laptop. Supposed to be $200 for it in August.. it weighs less than 2lbs. 7" screen, 4-32GB Flash based HD, 900Mhz Pent M processor, Linux or Windows, 512MB Ram, Wireless, camera, etc. I want it because it's so small and light. Could use it in the car as an mp3 player, perfect for taking notes. There is another version of it coming out for $300, but has a 10" screen. Oh yeah, Asus is a half-way reputable company as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
Been following this over at SA. Virtually everyone over there agrees it's a huge scam. Also, I've got an Asus laptop. It's expensive to get replacement parts due to their rarity. Very expensive.
Uh, the EEE looks nice too! I'd just need it to type in text, so I don't need fancy stuff. WLAN would be nice too. I'd even go for a monochrome display if that means smaller and lighter.
Well, the EEE looks amazing to me. It's very small (7 inch widescreen) and less than 2lbs. I mean, that's all I've ever wanted in a laptop, to take notes and perhaps view a video/listen to some music. Could also use it in the car as an MP3 player. Maybe a light game or two, as well. Just a very basic, standard functionality, light and small notebook is all I've ever wanted. For $200USD, it can't be beat, IMO! I bet it's just going to be hard to get a for a little bit. I also happen to think it looks damn sexy too!
Those Linux crusaders are really ridiculous. So, now they get what they want with mainstream companies jumping on the bandwagon at last and they are still whining. Those idiots actually believe anybody cares if every little bit is open source - or even OS at all. What counts is that it works and doesn't cost much. These types are so far from reality that they just won't get the fact into their thick heads: nobody wants to reprogram their operation system but a few supernerd virgins. Nobody gives a hoot as long as it works
I'm using a Sears gift card to get myself a little HP TX model, only 12 1/10" for the monitor Small, light, portable...everything I wanted in a laptop...for free!
Yeah, well, I just got a 15" MacBook Pro. It's huge, got sharp edges, and you could kill a man with it if you needed to. It's great! I like my laptops to have some power and substance behind them.
A laptop that large would make it unusable for me. I want one I can take to class for notes, or pull out on an airplane without being a gymnast. It's mostly gonna be an electronic writer's notebook for me, so small and easily mobile was key. And there's no way in hell I'd ever buy a mac.
You so petite and frail that you can't carry six pounds of laptop around? Meanwhile, if you want to write on the thing, wouldn't you want a larger keyboard?
Six pounds plus my school books is six pounds too much. I don't want to lug around more weight than I have to. It seems silly. As for the larger keyboard, eh, I can work just fine on a smaller one. Edit: Besides, it isn't the weight that bothers me, it's the size. A 15-inch screen is awkward and unwieldy. 12 inches is much more manageable.
Would somebody actually put a name to a company and face the press to scam a few thousand € from prospective costumers? Hmmm... this is really weird
I hadn't heard about this one. Basically it's the perfect ebook-reader as well, except for the battery life, of course.
I'm pretty sure Sony's actually coming out with an eBook reader device that is worth a damn sooner or later. Basically uses a very fancy screen technology that not only replicates printed text very nicely, but only requires the screen and most of the device to be powered to change pages. Incredible battery life. One of those sorts of things that I think a dedicated device is really designed for.
My gf just got a Macbook Pro 17", it's not very big at all and 6 lbs is pretty damn light. It also gets hot as hell, so much so, I'm building her a new desktop so she doesn't have to use her laptop all the time.
That's kinda my point. It blows my mind that people are whining about the size of normal laptops as being large, unwieldy, and heavy. They really aren't, and as you cut the size, you drop functionality drastically. Sure, it might be easier to pack around in a messenger bag or whatever the hell is popular now, but will it be worth it when it chokes on loading a word processor? I've got my MBP on my lap right now. I won't deny that they get hot, but my old laptop gets a lot hotter. And really, the smaller you get, the harder it is to really clear heat out of the laptop's form factor, though I will say that on these newer SFF laptops with solid-state drives, it won't be as much of an issue.
They already have. In 2004, we saw the LIBRIé EBR-1000EP, which basically sucked because of proprietary restrictions. Also, it was only marketed in Japan. In 2006 Sony launched an English version, the RS-500 - no keyboard though, and still far too many restrictions to be interesting to anyone outside the US (for one, you're stuck with a Sony store to buy your books, and it only accepts US customers). At $300,-, the thing is expensive too. The competition comes from, among others, The Irex Iliad which has a bigger (touch)screen and no restrictions I can see, but sells for a massive $650. Devices have been promised since the early 2000s, but they are very, very slow to appear. The downside with all these devices is the (imagined?) consumer-demand to make them mini-laptops, so they try to include mp3-support, touchscreen, keyboard, all sorts of crap, instead of giving us just a dedicated reader. The result: the Irex is good, but expensive, bloated, and batteries last only 12 hours. A lot compared to a laptop, but the entire idea of epaper is to only use power when turning the page. The RS500 is better at that - it claims 7500 page turns per battery charge.
And this is a damn shame. I'm one who really likes single-function tech devices, because they tend to do one function very well, instead of a bunch of functions half-assed. Incidentally, this is why I'm not a big fan of SFF laptops - they tend to have a lot of half-assed hardware. This is why I've got a full-fledged digital camera for point-and-shoot. Got a cell phone that pretty much only makes phone calls. Got a PDA for data organization. In fact, the only multipurpose thing I've really got is that PDA. I also use it as an MP3 player, and while it works, it isn't exactly smooth as butter. Combining all of those into one device would, to me, create something that has incompatible operation flows and cheap parts to make the damn thing even remotely affordable.
Actually, I want the EEE, because all I want in a laptop is the most basic functionality, not a desktop replacement. My desktop at home can handle whatever I throw at it. A laptop with a small flash drive, 7" screen and 1ghz processor is more than enough power for me. Her's has a GeForce 8600 in it, Intel C2D 2.4Ghz, 160GB 7200rpm HD, 2GB Ram and I'm telling you, it'll burn you if you sit it on your lap. I've read many complaints about it. It's a design flaw, if anything. On the quest to make their notebooks so thin and light, they decided to not space out parts and cram everything into a very little space with poor ventilation. She's also a gamer, so plays games for hours on end, building her a desktop this week so she doesn't have to use the oven all the time and can just use it for school.
Think they don't cram it all in there in those SFFs ? I'm not denying they get hot. Doesn't get hot enough to burn you, though. Burns get full recalls . It'll get damn uncomfortable, though. Of course, I'm the one who gets sleepy and comfy whenever I've got a nice warm laptop sitting on my lap. Well...uh...I've done it. If the games require a lot of keyboard input, no, but if you've got an external mouse at the right height and need only hit a few keys, it's managable. Hell, I played through GTA Vice City on my old laptop that tried its best to melt it's way into my skin.
My iBook get hotter than my MBP. Hence the reason that I always have them sitting on a little desk if I plan on using them for more than an hour or so.
Well, I'm looking for something at least smaller than my penis Seriously, though, I'm somewhat limited to what Sears has to offer on their website. I'll make a thread on it, though, cause I'm interested in getting everyone's opinion on what a smart buy would be.
