{"id":189,"date":"2009-02-07T22:50:16","date_gmt":"2009-02-08T06:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/?p=189"},"modified":"2009-02-07T22:50:17","modified_gmt":"2009-02-08T06:50:17","slug":"next-generation-of-netbooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/2009\/02\/next-generation-of-netbooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Next Generation of Netbooks?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you all know, I loved my netbook, the EEEPC701<\/a>. It’s quite amazing to see how fast technology grows and just how much netbooks developed. It started with a 7 inch model from Asus, and now the market is plagued with them. Lately I’ve been thinking about getting a new one, only to find that in the near future, some of these netbooks will do things far beyond what I thought was possible.<\/p>\n

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It’s been with me for almost a year, but sadly enough I had to sell it so I could move on to the newer generations of netbooks. What is a netbook? It is a cheap and extremely portable laptop. There are variations of the definition, some quoting specs, other about screen size. The truth is, netbooks have become so popular that almost every company now has their own version, some with many versions, each with different specs, design, etc.<\/p>\n

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The Asus EEEPC was the netbook that started the craze. The price was at $400, and the processor was powerful enough to run word processors, browse the internet and play old computer games. It was truly a marvel, it was the size of a medium sized book, or perhaps better described as half a laptop or less.<\/p>\n

The most popular netbook around in Canada seems to be the Acer Aspire One<\/a>, which is about an inch and a half bigger than the original EEEPC, with a much more powerful processor, but has been criticized for having a huge amount of failing parts and shoddy quality. Personally I have been looking only at the Asus EEEPC line<\/a>. In the past year, they had models to counter every model, just to list a few, they had the 700, 701, 701SD, 900, 900HA, 900A, 901, 904HA, 1000, 1000HA and the list goes on. In my opinion the Asus EEEPC line is the best. If you think another company has it down, Asus has one to counter with the same specs and a lower price.<\/p>\n

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In the past two months, the presentations at CES gave us 3 new models to the EEEPC line. The one that truly captured my attention is the EEEPC T91<\/a>, a tablet PC with an extremely efficient 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of ram and a rumored 160GB hard drive. It doesn’t seem like much, but for a 9 inch netbook that is smaller in volume than the EEEPC 701, the specs are quite incredible. What I’m really excited about is the touch screen, and the fact that it works like a tablet. To be able to swivel the screen around, write with a stylus and just point at applications really sets the T91 up for all the applications that Windows 7 originally showcased.<\/p>\n

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The 101H<\/a> is almost the exact same netbook except with a bigger screen and a larger keyboard. This netbook is about the size of the Acer Aspire One with a much thinner profile. It too is a tablet, and has the same processor. Seeing as I’m a fan of the smaller netbooks, I’m more interested in the T91, but larger netbooks have a regular sized keyboard, which seems to be important for many people.<\/p>\n

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There is yet ANOTHER netbook that I didn’t find out about until today. It is the 1004DN<\/a>. To explain the importance of this netbook, it is important to know that because of the small form factor of netbooks, optical drives aren’t included. So you can’t read DVDs or CDs, much less Blu-ray. Normally you either live with it, or get an external reader that would set you back $100 or so. It is really exciting to see that Asus has now announced a new netbook that does have an optical drive, and it is most likely going to be the first netbook in the world to incorporate a drive. Although the 1004DN is larger than the smaller netbooks, it is refreshing to see that it is possible. The fact that a DVD takes up more than 2\/3s of the space of my EEEPC701 made me think that it would never happen, but less than a year later, we are seeing amazing advances towards netbooks.<\/p>\n

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An article I read today, published yesterday reveals yet another model. I’m not quite sure where it originates from or what the original announcement is, but this new netbook, called the 1000HE<\/a> is the first in the Asus line to include the new Intel Atom N280 processors. These processors are rated at 1.66GHz and apparently allows for easier HD (720p) video playback. The last most powerful processor on a netbook is also an Intel chip, rated at 1.6GHz instead. Not much of a boost, but better than nothing.<\/p>\n

I’m not quite sure if I’m happy about all these advances or just sad. On one hand it is exciting to see all these new features and the possibility of getting a new netbook with these features, but on the other hand, it means that I’ll be waiting patiently for these features. I was literally about to make a purchase for the EEEPC 900HA, and the T91 was announced. And I planned to wait it out, at this rate, I may never buy a new netbook, especially now that I’ve seen that optical drives and tablet PCs are possible, I can’t imagine living without them.<\/p>\n

It’s a bit disappointing also to see all these features implemented on the same line, but completely different netbooks. I’m hoping that in the near future, we see the optical drive, the new processors and the touch screen in a single netbook instead. I guess that’s when I’ll make my purchase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you all know, I loved my netbook, the EEEPC701. It’s quite amazing to see how fast technology grows and just how much netbooks developed. It started with a 7 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-electronics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dsdatabase.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}