First off, I’ll have to say that this is a nicely designed piece of hardware. It’s about the right size (keyboard is more comfortable than the Lenovo, and I have big hands) and I like the jet-black design. I also really appreciate some of the small details, like the revamped keyboard, and the way it automatically powers up when you open the lid. (Yes, it will actually turn itself on if opened, as well as resume if suspended). The resume from suspend time is great, and I wish all my other devices were this fast.  Battery life is really excellent, and does seem to be in the 8+ hours of actual usage range.

As for the functionality, well, it’s basically the same as Chrome on my old Atom-based netbook. It feels a little faster than the Lenovo, likely because of the SSD and newer processor.  It does web browsing, e-mail, etc well.   Contrary to what I’ve seen elsewhere, it plays YouTube flash videos and most other flash things just fine.  Hulu works, but there’s a little framerate stuttering.  Maybe I’ve got low expectations for flash because I usually use flash on Linux, so I’m used to things sometimes not working.

The screen resolution (1280×800) is fantastic, and a huge improvement over the 1024×600 of the Lenovo.  It feels pretty much like a regular laptop in this respect.

There are a couple of things that are a little quirky, like the two-finger scrolling.  It works sometimes, and other times just doesn’t work at all, or is kinda jumpy.   Also, it seems like the “palm detection” of the larger trackpad isn’t great, and the cursor will sometimes move while typing.  If/when this results in an accidental selection, then work is lost, which pretty much sucks.

That’s it for now!  More thoughts in a week or so…

As the computer market continues to move down in CPU power, price and size, the ability of a standard netbook to run sites like hulu.com has become questionable. The little Atom 1.6GHz processor just doesn’t have enough oomph to play large-format videos. (Youtube.com works great, its just the other sites that are pushing larger resolutions and larger bitrates and more sophisticated codecs).

Additionally, flash is just something that sits there on web pages using up your CPU, and that means that it’s using up your battery, which is bad. So, I’ve disabled flash altogether (via FlashBlock) on my netbook’s configuration, and I’m tempted to do so on my desktop machines as well. FlashBlock gives a nice “click to play” experience that I really prefer over the default of many sites which is to just start playing flash videos & sound as soon as you enter the page.

Maybe the netbook processors are going to improve, and maybe that means that in another year or so flash won’t be such a big deal, but in the interm, I think Adobe is in a pretty bad situation, especially due to the mobile factors I mentioned in my last post…

Here are my first thoughts:

1. The screen is actually more functional than I thought it was going to be.  1024×600 is just fine for pretty much everything.  There’s a little more scrolling than normal, but nothing huge.  I do find that I am running Firefox in fullscreen mode more, so maybe that makes up for it.
2. The keyboard is actually quite good.  There are only a few weird things.  The number keys are offset to the left a bit more than I’m used to, and that means I hit 2 instead of 1, for example.  There are some other keyboard quirks, like the ~ key and PgUp/PgDn buttons, but I’m sure I’ll be able to get used to those.  The key autoreapeat happens a bit faster than I’m used to, and doesn’t seem to be adjustable in Ubuntu.  (Although repeat on/off does work).  I’m just tapping faster than normal.  The keyboard is large enough that I can touch type at full speed with nearly no problems at all.  Excellent!
3. The synaptics track pad works, but the vertical motion is way too fast, and I’m tracking an xorg bug and discussion on mailing lists about the patches that are proposed to fix it.  As soon as I can get a build of the .deb for people to check out, I’ll do so.
4. Battery life.  I only have the “3-cell” version, and people complain a bit about the battery life.  It seems to be working for 2.5-3 hours for me, which is really just great for what I’m using the laptop for.
5. The CPU is plenty fast, the graphics are plenty fast, and 1GB seems like plenty of RAM.  It really doesn’t feel like it needs an upgrade.  I’ve even been doing some ./configuge && ./make stuff for the drivers, and it works speedily and well.   The Atom shows up as Dual Core, due to hyperthreading.  CPU Frequency scaling works, and the steps are 800Mhz, 1.07GHz, 1.33GHz, and 1.6GHz.
6. It’s very light, and seems very well built.  The LED backlit display is very bright (on full brightness, which I don’t really use at night).

There are a couple of weird quirks, that I’ve mentioned above but will reiterate here:

1. Touchpad vertical movement is too fast.  I’m getting used to it, but it would be nice for it to be “normal”.
2. Screen brightness is very dim after a resume from suspend.  (Dimmer than anything I can set with the brightness buttons, and it returns to normal when I adjust brightness manually)
3. I haven’t tested video (webcam) or microphone yet, but sound works great.
4. Keyboard quirks (~, PgUp, Home, F12, are all hard to press.  There are buttons unused by Ubuntu (The ‘Home’ button and Windows Menu Button)
5. I’m having a bunch of trouble with 3-button (middle mouse button) emulation in X11.  Supposedly the synaptics driver does it automatically, but I haven’t delved into this much.  It does work, but just not predictably.  I’d like to just set some key+click combo to middle mouse.
6. Keyboard key repeat rate is too fast and delay is too short, settings under Ubuntu don’t seem to take effect. (this is minor, and I’m sure I’ll get used to it)

Here’s my rebuttal to their 3 main points and their conclusion:

1. Too Little CPU.

Really? Is a 1.6GHz modern-day processer really “too little” for running a web browser? Thats funny, because web browsers on mobile devices (iPhone, Android) work just fine with about 1/3rd that many cycles, and with CPU Frequency Scaling, my 2.1GHz laptop is usually running at a measly 800MHz, and that seems just fine as well.

I’ll admit that it likely has too little CPU for fancy window effects in Vista, or under compiz for Linux, but those features are pure glitz and no substance, so they don’t really count in my book. I’m fine having a simple window manager and running pretty much nothing but a full screen browser.

2. Too small of a screen.

Well, if you want a small laptop, you have to have a small screen. I really think the Lenovo S10, with its 10.2″ screen, is one of the best out there. Just like most laptops, the screen is pretty much the same size as the entire top cover, so without compromizing size (and thus portability) I’m not sure what the actual complaint here is other than “they’re too small”.

3. Too small of a keyboard.

I think this is being fixed, and quickly. The original Asus Eee machines have horridly small keyboards, but the newer models (again, like the Lenovo S10) are 85% of “full size” and I suspect that the next generation of machines will be 90%+. Again, this only comes with a compromize in size, and thus portability, but it may be worth it. An 11″ screen may be the optimal for netbooks, but thats not really a formfactor that’s hit the market yet.

Their conclusion: You should just buy a full size laptop.

I don’t get this point at all. Saying that one should buy a $600+ plus full sized laptop instead of a $350 netbook is just a crazy argument. They’re two totally different machines. The full size is fast, heavy, and doesn’t last on batteries. The netbook is small, light, but slower, and lasts much longer on batteries.

I’m not arguing that netbooks are the best laptops on the planet, I’m just saying that for $350-$450, they seem like a pretty sweet deal. If you want something as small and light, but with a bigger screen and better CPU, you end up going into the $1500+ range. Given the choice between a MacBook Air (or similar, Lenovo X300) for that price, or a $400 Lenovo S10, I think I’ll choose the netbook any day.

Caveat: I haven’t actually gotten my S10 yet, so I’m really not one to say whether this is a great machine or not, but I’m hopeful. I’m mostly just going to use it for hacking on the couch, where something small and quiet will be just perfect.

Acer Aspire One user forums

Asus eee pc user forums

Lenovo S10 user forums

Any advice on how to choose between these 3 would be appreciated.   I’m planning on running Ubuntu and not storing much data, so an 8GB SSD would be fine, although I’d prefer 1GB RAM, and most seem to come with 1GB+160GB or thereabouts…