Nokia brandishes superfluous Booklet

Nokia has come late to the game with its Booklet, but the move is probably less about selling computers and more about ousting the cuckoos infesting Slough and Newbury. Nokia has been trying to spin its Booklet as something end users want, when in reality it’s a piece of hardware designed to appeal to network operators who …

[Jason McQueen]

Do you Work for Sony Ericcsson or Something?

I think the comment is a little harsh given that nobody has any hands on with the Booklet or even know its price.

On the face of it, the Booklet appears to be a product I could be interested in. A small, nicely made, notebook/netbook that is sufficiently powerful to run office apps and has connectivity without having to use a USB dongle.

whilst I dont doubt that the move comes to meet a degree of corporate schmuzzing, to say that the product is mediocre and unwanted by the end user, when the specs appear to be better than 90% of netbooks that are flying off the shelves is just misguided at best. Biased at worse.

[Tom 64]

Hello Mr. Happy

Thats rather negative. By all accounts this looks to be a half decent product. Nokia's engineers arent to be laughed at. I'm curious what HD ready means though. will it come with a 720p screen or decode acceleration via a chipset that's not Intel's?

I for one welcome our Finnish engineering overlords...

[Torben Mogensen]

Don't call it "subsidised"

I have said it before, and I will keep saying it: Don't say that operators subsidise the price of netbooks or phones: You pay the same as if you buy the hardware and telephony contract separately. It is just a hidden pay-in-instalments scheme.

Subsidy implies the operators actually paying part of the price, which they (of course) don't. So call them "package deals", "instalment plans" or some such.

Anyway, the thing that will decide if the Nokia Booklet will succeed or not is price: If it costs more than 500 pounds (when you add in the added cost of paying premium rates for a telephony contract), it won't, but if it costs less than 300 pounds, it will. Between these, it may or may not have a moderate success. Depending, of course, on the competition it will face once it comes out.

[Tim Parker]

Bitter and twisted..

..given that you've not used it at all (unless you actually do have something to say rather than this subjective bile) - don't you think this might be slightly previous ?

..or are you just having a spectacularly bad day ?

..or are you Ted Dziuba in disguise ?

[Andus McCoatover]

superfluous?

Looks like what Netbooks are evolving to.

Apes evolved to man (or so we're informed) and Asus 701 (of which I posess 2, the third I bought is in a Kenyan orphanage) evolves to this.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) in action?

You wanna play games? Get a playstation. Or a life. Or a girlfriend. Or a chess set.

No, not superfluous. In my local pub in Ash Vale, Hampshire, people took the pis*s out of me 'cos I was an early adopter of an Orange Nokia 2210. Stopped laughing when my wife had to go urgently to hospital for my son's birth as a result of a call.

Week or two later, most had one. (Phone, I mean...)

When my friends saw my ASUS 701, many asked if they could check their e-mail. From a park in the city. THEN they bought one (OK, most bought Acer Aspire One, but...)

A chelsea tractor is superfluous. So is any recipe from Josceline Dimbleby, listing ingredients one can only get from Harrods. Of course, only available on Tuesday, when there's an "r" in the month..

This aint superfluous. I want one. NOWWWW, else I'll throw myself on the shop floor and re-enact the "terrible-two's * ". And promise to stop breathing until I get one!!!. I'm good at that.

*Anyone with a nipper understands what I mean. Checkout Moderatrix when she can't get the last glass of 'champers on a Friday night...

[Robert Hill]

Someone got up on the wrong side of bed...

Certainly, the conclussion that Nokia is introducing a netbook to preserve their share of the network operator stocklist isn't that much of a revalation. OF COURSE they would, and actually it is probably a good idea for them to do so, especially if they can make it a semi-premium product, include Ovi, and close out competition like Samsung. Actually, with most of the old notebook manufacturers having moved into handsets, Nokia is simply repaying the favour. And it's not like they actually have to DO much to produce it, other than to spec it to Foxconn or similar, and draw up the marketing and support plans.

Netbooks ARE what people are buying now - people want Windows so they can actually run real apps on them (I even use Adobe Lightroom on mine). The Linux/Windows netbook war has already been fought and won - by MS - and not due to MS marketing, but due to user perferences for an OS that could actually run some common apps and not just a browser and email client.

Nokia may well have an opportunity to offer something more than a "me too!" product in a tablet form, but they also had to compete in the bread-and-butter market segment to guard marketshare first, and to garner Ovi sign-ups secondly (that user data they are gathering is VERY valuable stuff, ask Google and the operators' own media groups). Basic strategy really...

So why the bile in the article?

And where is the dead Tux icon when I need it?

[Bill Cumming]

Looks like...

... This will be the first of those mythical 'ARM' based netbooks (or booklets as nokia calls them) that geeks and techies have been waiting for... ;):):)

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia is just trying the ice with the stick ...

Meaning that they will use the Windows as the test rabbit for the Video content and location services to be sold via the Ovi portal + the test bed for building Qt applications. Now the real boom and bang will be when the Nokia machine will start to produce each second at least 20 a net enabled devices ( Now they produce some 16 phones each second ... ) and believe me those devices will not be Windows based but rather Linux maemo based ... ok the cheapest phones will be Some Symbian dynos left overs ..

[F1reman]

calm down

The article wasn't bile.

Bill IS a bit of a cynic but we all know by now that the manufacturers see the operators as their real customers and not the end-user. Bill Ray is simply reminding us of this fact.

I agree that Bill should have waited until he's played with the device (hey, maybe he has?!) before really going for it like he did at the end of the article, but the article is not a hardware review, was not intended to be and was only ever about 'how things really work' in the industry.

And anyway - I read the register BECAUSE of opinionated writers who aren't scared to bite the hand that feeds 'em.

More Bill please.

Although there's a whiff of bitterness in his writings I still like them.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Bill Cumming

Nope, it's been confirmed it will be built round a dual core Atom CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Superflouous?

Nope, it's just another netbook option to add to the competition. Always good. "What's competition?" I hear Apple say ;)

And this one comes with a spec better than most. If the price is right it's a winner.

If I hadn't bought my Samsung NC10 (slightly lower spec, no 3G), I'd be tempted by this if it's around the £300 to £350 mark.

For those who want to go for the instalment plan by paying contract and call fees, rather than a lump up front payment then it's just as attractive as any other. Bonus here though is being Nokia then it'll probably come SIM free if you pay for it outright whereas many netbooks with 3G included are tied to an operator.

And it's not late to the game. Most people don't have netbooks. Laptops are at saturation point now, but netbooks are still way behind even if there are a lot in the shops.

And remember these are netbook 2.0. The current flock of netbooks most people have bought in the last couple of years are crappy underpowered cut-down linux powered junk.

Far more important here though is not the gadget itself, but the use of Microsoft products in a Nokia device.

[Tim Parker]

@F1reman

>The article wasn't bile.

Really ?

bile

1 a : either of two humors associated in old physiology with irascibility and melancholy b : a yellow or greenish viscid alkaline fluid secreted by the liver and passed into the duodenum where it aids especially in the emulsification and absorption of fats

2 a : inclination to anger b : acrimony, vitriol

I'd say by 1(a) or 2 (a) or (b) it smacks of it myself.....

> More Bill please.

Yep and more Ted - between them we can sweep those fact-based hand-biting wimps from El Reg once and for all. Who needs facts or reason when you can have OPINION.

> Although there's a whiff of bitterness in his writings I still like them.

Fairy nuff

[Bill Cumming]

@ Steve 70

Drat!!

I was hoping that they would use the better ARM cpu's instead of the power greedy Intel CPU's ^_~

I'd thought Nokia would be tripping over all those ARM CPU they use... lol!!

[Stuart Halliday]

A-GPS

So it's to use A-GPS. This means it needs to be near a cell phone mast to work doesn't it?

I suspect it'll come with a monthly contract for the 3G. Let's hope there is a pay-as-you-go contract as well.

[Robert Hill]

@F1reman

I like bile, acidity, spiciness, and sheer lewdness in writers. That too is why I read El Reg, and have for some time. But I really don't get where something as white-bread as Nokia introducing a logical product that doesn't seem all that bad in it's segment warrants it - save such tones for things that utterly DESERVE it, such as what Nokia is actually DOING with all of that personal Ovi data they are collecting, or the mobile operators such as "O2 Media" that are flogging "personalized advertising" using our mobile phone history processed by analytics to sell us yet more stuff. There are definately things that warrant and indeed scream for bile...it's just this seems like construction workers whistling at all the girls, even the ugly ones...

PH, because of the last bit...

[Nick Kew]

@Bill Cumming

+1. I want an ARM device; as of now the N810 seems the best option.

Since Nokia has missed this opportunity, I shall be entirely unsurprised if Apple is first-to-market with something groundbreaking with ARM and e-ink screen. Which, alas, probably means less openness and more lock-in than we'd get from Nokia.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mediocre article

I wouldn't call Booklet mediocre. The leaked specs make it unique in this form factor. Even the processor is so new no other manufacturer has even released a presskit of a future product. Its screen resolution is on the higher end too and the first 10" notebook with HD connector. Wish it had 10/100 ethernet connector too but then it would have been made by the mentality "add all and then even the kitchen sink".

As for why Nokia is going for PC business one commentor here might have a good incling. Nokia has mainly made phones for shops, not for operators. So to think this has been made to entice network operators is a bit far fetched. This really could be a tit for pc makers moving into handsets. If they can use economics of size as they do with handsets many pc makers may be in trouble. And if you want to diversify to new markets and have cash, recession is the best time to hit.

Ps. Booklet is such a good name for netbook line I was surpriced it isnt registered yet.

[jodyfanning]

Still a real GPS

A-GPS just means it is assisted to get an initial lock. Usually with phones or the current Nokia tablets they just contact a server to get the latest satellite positions.

They all still have a normal GPS chip and work without the "A", but the lock will be a minute or two instead of under 20 seconds.

To me this netbook looks much more like an Apple product than a normal plastic cheapo job from Asus. And with features like the GPS I am more than interested.