I believe our livelihoods are bettered when we can get information and entertainment wherever we are and whenever we want it. So I’m always interested in the technology that can potentially fulfill this need. That’s probably why I’m tracking the growing popularity in netbooks, especially since I owned and tinkered with some of their precursors, including the Z50, back in the ‘90s. But it was a recent press article that raised my concern about the viability of today’s netbooks. In the article, a vendor was quoted saying their netbooks would always perform less than their standard notebooks.
At first blush, this seemed obvious since netbooks are, by definition, priced lower that notebook/laptop platforms. But the lines are blurring. I just saw in the Friday Fry's pullout a Gateway notebook on sale for $400. That’s in line with the pricing of many netbooks offered by Acer, Asus and Dell. Granted, it’s a sale item, but there’s lots of pricing crossover between (intel)Atom powered netbooks and Pentium/Athlon powered notebooks. Since the Atom is inherently slower than Pentiums or Athlons, wouldn’t it seem prudent to go with the higher performing platform?
Vendors however are downplaying netbook’s processing power. They tout smaller size, and longer battery life. In that case, an Atom CPUs are better than Athlons or Pentiums since the former have a thermal design power in the 2-8 Watts range while the latter have TDPs of ~30W. This means Atom configured notebooks could last at least five times longer than conventional notebooks. Of course in real life there are other factors that affect battery life: internal peripherals, screen size and use load. For example a netbook with a flash hard drive will use less power than another with a conventional hard drive and CD-ROM. Yet annoyingly, one doesn’t really know how long netbooks last since the MobileMark battery life tests tend to over state battery longevity. Furthermore, the structure of its tests (specifically DVD and gaming tests) doesn’t seem to reflect the typical usage profile of a netbook user.
To further complicate matters, there seems to be differing opinions of what a typical user does with a netbook. Given its small screen size, lack of a gaming graphics card (why?) and CD/ DVD drive, one might assume that netbooks are used for web browsing, email and typical “office” applications. But what entertainment options exist for the mobile warrior? Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and YouTube let you download and view content; so shouldn’t watching downloaded media be an important consideration when buying a netbook? If so, netbooks need software or hardware CODECs to show video effectively, but that requires both processing and battery power. Likewise, Google’s vision of web enabled apps with its Chrome and Android operating systems (and to a lesser extent Microsoft’s with its Office Live) will also push processing requirements so that users may be disappointed with down powered netbooks. Vendors should recall the broken promises of windows CE devices that offered good battery life but limited performance and functionality.
I fear that bargain hunting PC shoppers (which in this down economy includes everybody) will be sorely disappointed when they discover they gave up much more than just the size of their screen and keyboard in their new netbook. When a netbook running iTunes and a web browser is maxed out, or turns your downloaded “Heros,” video into the equivalent of a slideshow, you know its the kiss of death for that platform regardless how well it handles e-mail. For that reason, shoppers should look beyond size and battery life. They should fully understand how well their netbook will not only work for them on the road but entertain them as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment