Aspire one
linux 120GByte hard drive for 150UKP at asda.
I could two (or three of them) for the price of a Wind.
Then I could paint one white, black and pink :-/
Jacqui
The X110 may mark LG's first foray into the netbook market, but it's really an LG-branded version of the well-established MSI Wind, this time with an HSDPA 3G modem added. And it's that add-on that really makes this netbook stand out, since it means you can slip in a SIM card and access the internet from virtually anywhere. LG …
According to page 3 of the review, this comes with a serial port, and no VGA out!
Yeah, I know, it'll be someone mis-reading the images - a sub-D connector is always a serial port to some. But a real RS232 port could be a boon to some of us!
The one with the FPGA dev boards in the pocket, ta.
For that you can either get a completely new (larger) laptop, or a small, reconditioned with a year's warranty thinkpad or Toshiba. Both of those will be a lot faster, much better built and have more than 2 hours battery life..
350 quid for a netbook is a false economy. Spend a bit more and get something decent.
Most users will never get beyond a web browser and the office applications, so OS choice really makes no difference at all.
It's more likely the case that Microsoft have the manufacturers over a barrel, offering them the carrot of XP at a knock-down price, whilst threatening with the stick of removing their preferential treatment with respect to desktop systems should they not pony up.
Will post more comments when I actually have it charged and spend a day with it. The improved keyboard led me to buy it over the Advent 3G model - and 3G is an option worth paying for, as dongles aren't compatible with a "mobile" use unless you like destroying your USB ports.
With respect to Linux on netbooks - I think that Linux makes sense at two ends of the market - the top and bottom. Skilled Linux users will of course revel in putting their favorite distro on, especially as so many distros now have netbook-oriented versions. At the bottom end, people that only want a web browser and email will also find the linux option very attractive, especially with the skinning and UI tweaks that have been done.
The problem is the middle market - people that actually might want to run the occasional Windows productivity app on the move, and don't want to mess with WINE. In my case, MS Project and Visio are must-have apps on my netbook, no matter how slow they are - just having them at all allows me to leave my heavy work laptop at the office, and there are no really compatible Linux equivalents (that I have yet found at least. There are Linux ALTERNATIVES, but I need to share these files with others, so...)
With the 160G harddrive on the LG, I may just partition the disk and put both Ubuntu and XP on...
Yep, why Asus said over 75% of the Eee's got XP installed on it within the first three months. With many companies going over to only shipping netbooks with XP on it (also because its something silly like £5 a license for them) it is going to be soon a case of finding one with Linux on it in a field full of XP boxes.
You might find a little thing called bribery involved here.
Microsoft: "Can you install WinXP on these here netbooks?"
Manufacturer: "Of course, but we have to pay for Windows licences and then the product becomes more expensive. Linux is free..."
Microsoft: "What if we give you WinXP?"
Manufacturer: "We still have to put better hardware in which makes it more expensive"
Microsoft: "What if we discount your licences on your other products more than we already do to make it cheaper?"
Manufacturer: "That might work..."
Which is more profitable for a retailer? A device that costs 200 wholesale and sells for 250, but has a 50% return rate, or a device that costs 225 wholesale, sells for 250, but has a 5% return rate?
A linux-head who buys a netbook with XP on it just throws away the copy of XP, and installs his or her own preferred flavour of Linux.
The other 95% of the population is only familiar with XP, and if they end up regretting their purchase of a Linux netbook, they'll return it to the retailer for exchange or refund.
Even if Microsoft charged the regular bulk prices for XP, manufacturers aren't going to have the volume necessary in the Linux market to drive the margins.
I think you might find that many of those that do not like Linux don't understand what is happening with XP either, it isn't a case of Linux being too hard, it is unfamiliar and that is enough.
However, XP is supposed to be dead. not only is it not dead, it is being given away to netbook manufacturers.
Why?
because the Linux on these things is good enough to do the things people want to use these machiens for. As Microsoft cannot afford to let people get used to another OS they will cross subsidise to undercut Linux.
You can see that even in the early XP releases, where netbooks with XP in Australia were CHEAPER than the Linux versions. What Linux is being used for is not as a cheap OS for netbooks, but as a barganing chip for OEMs
I still like Linux on my main home machine and my Netbook, so I will stick with them ta muchly
Overall comment: it is great for what it is. The keyboard is MUCH better than much of it's competition, especially the Dell Mini 9 that I almost bought. Build quality seems OK, and the finish is nice. Bright screen, half-decent performance (obligatory "my OTHER machine is Phenom quad-core with 8Gbs of memory and a water-cooled graphics card...", which is the case actually). Wouldn't want to try Vista on it, but I can boot Eve-online in the classic graphics mode and actually run it, although I am not sure combat is an option.
To the AC above, I have an iPhone, and a BlackBerry Curve, and three laptops (one work, two personal) besides my huge desktop. I love my iPhone, but typing long messages on it is a pain (especially work emails), and it can't view many attachments from work. My BB is a great email tool, but a terrible phone, and STILL can't view many attachments readabily, especially PowerPoint docs. And since I don't have the BB Bold (which costs more than my netbook!), I can't edit any attachments either...
The netbook with 3G should solve a lot of problems, and of course I will still carry my iPhone to do all the light-duty stuff. I am hoping that my iPhone and netbook will replace nearly every other device I have, besides my desktop.
Anyway, I bought mine for £322 including next day delivery, not on sale, and for that price it's a small premium to pay for having a good screen, useable keyboard, and embedded 3G. There are cheaper, there are models with longer battery life, but if you want embedded 3G it's currently the best of the bunch...
N.B. - I don't think battery life is stellar, but then I had Eve running nearly all the time this evening, and the graphics on that game are power hungry (I just watch the temps on my water cooling rig soar when I play it on my desktop). At least the charger is half the size and weight of a normal laptop charger...
N.B.2 - I am still shocked at how many people above just don't "get it" with netbooks...please don't compare browsing on a 3" screen with onscreen keyboard to browsing on a 10" screen with a real keyboard and Flash, Silverlight, and anyother plug-in you need. The iPhone is great when necessity/travel demands it, the netbook is great when you WANT to be on-line...
I only need a little light surfing away from home and webmail access which is denied to me in the office. I use less than 1GB per month and this only costs £198 for 2 years worth if you get 2 of the £99 12GB/12 month 3Mobile packages which means that for the rice of this 'deal' from Phones 4U is only about £220 more expensive than it should be. What a rip off.
......Linux netbooks are fine for your grandma who wants an internet appliance and for nerds that want to travel back to the 1983 with the sudo apt get command line interface time machine and mess around there all day trying to find something that could be discovered installed and running within 3 minutes on an XP machine. For everyone else they're cr@p.
>> many web pages appear cramped and cut off in their prime – no one is likely to use this as >> a replacement for their desktop. (from the article)
It has a VGA out, so why wouldn't you use it as a replacement for a desktop - provided you kept your monitor and the machine was powerful enough?
What *matters* is whether, after you've wiped the disc and put an off-the-shelf Linux distro on the machine, all the hardware still works. If the manufacturer has plonked on some gizmo that only has a Windows driver, then effectively the machine is *dongled* to Windows XP. That's worth knowing. If not, then Microsoft probably only charged a tenner for the XP licence so it frankly hasn't hurt much.
So, could the reviewers please try this little experiment in future. (It would also allow you to test whatever "recovery disc" procedure the machine has for restoring XP before you give the machine back!
@Jase
Yes, apt-get is a command line utility, but it is streets ahead of anything that M$ has or probably ever will have. Recently I had the misfortune to install XP onto my son's netbook and I had to reboot and run Windows update 8 (yes eight - count them) times before it was fully up-to-date. Updating was time-consuming, boring and required me to be there on and off for several hours.
I also recently upgraded an Ubuntu machine from 8.04 to fully updated 8.10 with one simple command and one reboot. You may think that apt-get dates back to 1983 but in saying so, you merely betray your ignorance of what a proper ackage manager (like apt) is capable of.
In this day and age when nobody is running 8 bit displays anymore, why do we have bar charts with 2 or 3 very similar shades of the same colors? Isn't the whole point to make the colors as distinctive as possible? I'm sure there's some reason why this didn't happen, it just wasn't a good one.
>"Why no review of the Samsung NC10 yet?" - EdWeb
-Indeed. Especially when it's widely accepted as being the bees knees by everyone. "Samsung haven't sent us one yet" is a poor excuse.
>"The X110 is currently on sale online for a credit-crunchtastic £299 without the 3G option" - El Reg
-£299 is definitely not buttons and washers but the [superior in every way?] Samsung NC10 can be had for £299 from Amazon too. Which surely reduces the relevance of (yet) a(nother) rebadged Wind.
>"It's almost pocketable at a mere 264 x 177 x 30mm in size and 1.2kg in weight." - El Reg
-Like pretty much every other aspect of this machine. This is a thouroughly average spec compared to competitors that have been available for 6 months or more. Why the overly gushing text and fairly weighty final percentage for a thouroughly average (and thus, at £300+, overpriced) machine? Quite comical in light of your recent article on UGC vs 'expert' reviews.
>"Aspire One!!!" - Mr & Mrs Johnny & Jenny Predictable, every hour, on the hour.
-Yes. If 2 hours of battery life (and upgrading the innards being a b!tch) is sufficient for peoples needs. Which for most folk, it isn't. So you need to drop £50+ on an extended life battery that'll stick out the erse of the AA1. And by then you'll have spent more than you would've on an EEE 901 or similar.
>"Linux?!" - Mr & Mrs Johnny & Jenny Predictable, every hour, on the hour.
-Linux: So good, they couldn't give it away, eh? Which is maybe a shame for the undoubtedly noble cause of (F)OSS, but them's the breaks and £20 for a copy of XP is hardly the rip-off of the century, all told. Admittedly there are a few proprietary stumbling points, but the iron MS grip is definitely loosening in many key areas, with the ever increasing uptake of cross platform apps like Firefox, OOo, Gmail, etc. If it really irks you, send off for your XP EULA refund - which, at the end of the day, will be approx. £7.39 at best). Linux is like the Lib Dem party - all worthy etc. Not gonna be a dominant force any time soon though. But very useful as a pressure group of sorts for snapping at the heels of the big boys and keeping 'em in check.
>"Bar Charts Need Work" - AC@17:03
-Agreed. Not just the colours. The arrangement of the legend is counter-intuitive (it should be arranged so that sequentially, the legend corresponding to the bars from top to bottom are read in the legend as column 2 following column 1, rather than the legend being arranged in sequential rows). And why is the EEE 901 (as a onetime benchmark in the eyes of El Reg, non?) not included in the results?
I think lots of these will be bought in the run up to Feb 14th...
And the users of these machines will hardly care about the specs as long as it has a 'Start' button and is shiny & pink.
My wife already wants one. Honestly, I despair sometimes.
Where's the IT angle merely because it hardly matters to my wife, and presumably others.