Another Day, Another Netbook Wants to Run Android

Engadget has a mock up of a proposed future Android powered netbook. It looks beautiful but it is completely non-functional at this point. If they manage to pack the power this netbook claims (a TI OMAP3 processor running at up to 1GHz, 512MB of RAM, a 2.5 hard drive or SSD, and an 8.1 inch screen) in a tiny 1.76 pound package at a reasonable price, it will be compelling product even if Android isn't up to snuff. It's a good bet that five minutes after this machine comes out that someone will try to intall Ubuntu or Windows on it. Still, this machine is so early in the planning stages that it is unlikely to come out any time soon—if it comes out at all.

Android On Ubuntu? It's More Likely Than You Think.

One of the neat things about Google's Android smartphone operating system is the fact that deep down inside it's running Linux, an operating system originally created to run full-fledged computers. If nothing else, it's a gee-wiz, Moore's Law, isn't the march of technology cool. But now Slashdot reports that Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu Linux distribution are looking into a way to get Android applications to run on Ubuntu.

This is very cool. While a number of companies are expected to bring out netbooks which run Android, the preliminary results have been underwhelming. Android was originally designed for phones and a lot of work has to be done to get it to run on netbooks. Linux already runs on netbooks, in fact "netbooks" exploded as a category last year because of the EeePC which was originally put out by Asus using a customized version version of Linux. So it just be easier to move Android applications to Linux than it is to move Android onto netbooks.

Think about it, the same applications that run on your (OK, my) T-Mobile G1 phone might also run on a Ubuntu powered computer. If nothing else, it would make exchanging data between phones and computers easier than ever. For fans of mobile computing, it's a win-win.

HP Pavilion dv2—Occupying a Murky Netherworld Between Laptops and Netbooks

Writing about the UMID M1 has gotten me to think a bit more about small computers. I'm currently using a new HP Pavilion dv2. The dv2 isn't a netbook but it's not a full-fledged laptop either. And this bears out in the machine's specs. Armed with an AMD Neo processor which has been compared to Intel's Atom but runs hotter and faster, 4GB of RAM, and ATI Radeon graphics, the dv2 packs a nice punch in terms of real world performance even if it falls a bit short of modern dual core notebooks. It's only slightly larger than a comparable netbook but runs hotter and has less battery life. The result is a tantalizing machine, capable of being a workhorse computer while remaining very mobile.

The dv2 comes with an external DVD-drive which looks better than most external DVDs which is something you don't get if you buy a netbook. It is slimmer and more stylish than the average netbook. Most netbooks use Windows XP as their operating system and most laptops use a 32-bit version of Windows Vista. The dv2 is packing the 64-bit version of Vista which is faster and more secure than the 32-bit version but is not always compatible with every older piece of software. It also packs bright white LEDs which is something of a trend among notebook computers. They always seem to pack brighter and brighter LEDs every year.

But the thin profile of the dv2 is its most striking physical characteristic. At barely an inch thick, makes my Acer netbook and HP laptop look positively obese by comparison. It's a bit heavier than an average netbook but considerably lighter than a normal laptop. This really brings home the fact that this machine in just about every way—in terms of size, weight, performance, and even price—is in between traditional laptops and netbooks. I'm not sure that there is much room in that spot for this machine but we'll see.

It's always interesting to see the choices which are made by manufacturers in terms of the ports which adorn the sides of the notebook PCs. For older laptops this is not much of a decision since they are so big. With newer, smaller notebooks and netbooks it can be a real struggle. My old HP Pavilion has S-video, VGA, firewire, 3 USB ports, 3 audio jacks, ethernet and modem jacks, an SD card slot, an IR port for a remote control, and a proprietary port for an HP expansion dock which I've never seen used by anyone. And it has a built in DVD burner. My Acer netbook has a VGA port, 3 USB ports, an SD slot, two audio jacks and an ethernet jack. The dv2 is equipped similarly to the Acer machine but also adds an HDMI and an external USB DVD burner into the mix. This makes it more complete and more versatile than the average netbook.











But the battery life on the dv2 is only about two and a half to three hours. Impressive to be sure, but less than half what you can get out of a netbook with a six cell battery like the Acer Aspire One. Long battery life translates to long standby time and less need to plug in and recharge. And it runs hotter than most netbooks. So the question is do you want longevity or speed? Depending on your situation, you will probably want one or the other at different times.

One thing regarding the dv2 that I'm not ambivalent about is the keyboard. It compares favorably to the keyboard on my biggest laptop, my HP Pavilion dv9000. This machine comes with a nice big keyboard, complete with a number pad. But it's not without its problems. The right shift key for example is shrunken and scrunched up next to the up arrow key. As a result, I often find myself moving the cursor instead of entering a capital letter or punctuation mark and vice versa. The dv2's keyboard has no such tricks. Except for the function and arrow keys all of its keys are nice and big which makes typing a joy. One of the few things that is missing from the dv2's keyboard are dedicated Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End keys (to save space these have been remapped to arrow keys where they must be accessed using the Fn key.



While the dv9000's keys are fairly traditional with their trapezoidal mound shape, dv2's are much flatter. This makes them feel much larger than they really are while at the same time they also have a subtle curve to them that hugs your fingers as you type. This style of keyboard has been becoming more common in recent months and I certainly hope that it is the beginning of a trend.



While I have never been a huge fan of the touchpads that are so ubiquitous on notebook PCs, the dv2's is at least better than the ones you'll see on any netbook. It is a little wider for its size than you'd expect and that makes navigation on its wide 1280x800 screen a little easier. This screen resolution is quite a bit better than what you'll see on a netbook but about average for a modern laptop. While it's smaller size makes the screen crisp and sharp, it also makes everything look smaller so people with less than perfect vision might find themselves cranking up the font size on this machine.

Generally speaking, the dv2 is a fast machine with a lot of memory and a big (250GB) hard drive. But you might to pack an extra battery if you take it on the road....

Google Chrome Hits Version 2.0, Sweet Spot

Engadget reports that Google's Chrome browser has hit version 2.0 and gives an overview of the new features. They seem especially excited by Chrome's new ability to allow users to remove embarrassing websites from the New Tab page. This doesn't seem like such a big deal to me—maybe I have no sense of shame.

I'm more excited by the new Full Screen mode. A lot of people think that Chrome with its speed and compact user interface is ideal for netbooks. I've always prefered Firefox on my netbook because of its full screen modes which hides the browser UI altogether, showing you just the web page. Chrome's implentation of Full Screen mode is not perfect. On Firefox I can hit the <ctrl>+l key to bring up Firefox's navigation bar to type URLs, search, and access the navigation buttons. Under Chrome however <ctrl>+l doesn't work in full screen mode. While this is disappointing, Chrome does still show the URLs of links when you move your mouse over them in full screen. Firefox on the other hand does not show URLs in full screen mode. I consider this to be an equitable trade.

Finally, Chrome's speed—it launches instantaneously on my Acer netbook—continues to trump Firefox by a wide margin. While I still prefer Firefox on my bigger, faster, not quite so mobile computers for it's tremendous variety of extensions, Chrome has hit the sweet spot for me in terms of usability and speed. It has earned a place as the default browser on my netbook.

How Low Can You Go?

Boing Boing Gadgets features the Umid M1, a tiny, little Windows XP laptop which measures 6.2"x3.7"x0.7" and weighs in at just 0.69 lbs (11.04 onces). I hesitate to call it a "netbook" because even though this little guy has the classic netbook package—an Atom processor 512MB of RAM and a 16 or 32GB solid state drive and a 1024x600 screen—it is a bit more expensive than the average netbook at $600-$750.

It's still an amazing little device which packs a full fledged PC into a package only slightly larger than my cell phone. And I'm not kidding about that last part. When its slider is open to reveal its keyboard, my T-Mobile G1 is roughly 4.6"x3.9"x0.7" and it weighs 5.6 ounces a little more than half the weight of of this tiny PC. Judging from the pictures on the website and doing a quick comparison with my G1 and a tape measure, I think that a person with reasonably big hands should be able to thumb type on this device. This is important because while the keyboard is almost certainly too tiny for conventional touch typing, being able to thumb type would make it a lot more usable—particularly to people—used to using cell phones with QWERTY keyboards. This is a very intriguing little machine.

Easy Peasy Breathes New Life Into Old Netbooks

Easy Peasy is a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution for netbooks. One of the challenges with the original Netbooks like the Asus EeePC was that not only were they severely underpowered, they shipped with a virtually unusable version of the Linux operating system. I suspect that the current popularity of Windows XP on netbooks is at least indirectly related to the poor custom Linux distros which sort of looked like Windows but ran quite differently and were even clunkier and buggier than Windows. Unfortunately XP is also poorly suited to the very lowest of low end netbooks. I have an old Asus EeePC 4G with a 4GB solid state hard disk. Windows XP can quickly outgrow a 4GB disk.

Easy Peasy was better alternative with relatively modest hardware requirements. Installing it on my EeePC was easy and it ran much better afterwards. Now there is a new version of Easy Peasy out which promises to fix bugs, upgrade applications, and update the icons and color scheme. It looks like a promising piece of software and it is certainly better than the default operating system that usually runs on these little computers.

So We Meet Again Yahoo!

I like to play around with different browsers. Yahoo! Mail doesn't like that. Currently I'm playing around with the new Firefox 3.5 Beta, which for some reason was named "Shiretoko" by Mozilla, when I try to read my email. And Yahoo! Mail blocks me. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Yahoo! Mail lets certain versions of Opera log on and then sends them into a constant redirect loop when you try to access your inbox. Yahoo! Mail also complains that the 1024x600 resolution on my Acer netbook is too low.

Ironically enough, the error screen that Yahoo! Mail throws up at me lists the browsers that it supports and one of them is Firefox 2.0.0.1 or higher. Guess what Yahoo, Shiretoko is Firefox 3.5. That makes it Firefox 2.0.0.1 or higher. Your own splash screen is locking me out of Yahoo! Mail even though I'm using a browser which technically is on your list of supported browsers. Another irony? Chrome which is not in Yahoo's list works just fine with Yahoo Mail!

Granted, Yahoo! Mail does let you go to its "classic" mail page but it's nowhere near as nice as the one that they are locking down so zealously. I have been using Shiretoko on a spare laptop for about a week and I haven't had a single crash. Google applications like GMail and Google Reader work just fine with it and I suspect that Yahoo! Mail would work just fine with it too. Yahoo! needs to get its act together or it will continue to fall behind Google in terms of web app functionality.

The Acer Aspire One—Small is the New Black

I have been using the Acer Aspire One for about a week. It is one those "netbooks" that are so hip these days with the techie set. Although netbooks themselves as are a new category, the concept of a tiny notebook computer isn't that new. Sony, Panasonic, and Toshiba were all making tiny laptops for sale ten years ago. But usually these little notebooks would cost upwards of $2500 and were for the most part only available in Japan.



But things have changed recently. As computer hardware prices have fallen and the Linux operating system has improved to the point where it can be seen as a viable alternative to Windows, it has become possible to build a really small and really cheap laptop computer. My Acer Aspire One cost me $399.


A Little History


The netbook trend has been building for about a year and a half. It sort of started when Palm, looking to revitalize its line of smartphones, announced the Foleo, a simple Linux-based laptop which was meant to be a large keyboard and screen for its Treo smartphones. Palm is primarily a cell phone and PDA maker not a computer company—and it showed with the Foleo. Equipped with wi-fi and a lightweight Linux operating system, the Foleo was capable of being a useful computer in its own right but Palm had primarily meant for it to be an accessory and marketed it as such. Because of this, the Foleo was woefully underpowered and had very little storage of its own. It was also very expensive for a phone accessory—$600, about the same price as a big clunky laptop. While its small size (which it achieved despite having a keyboard and screen which were larger and more useful than what has become the standard on netbooks) was attractive, the Foleo lacked the functionality to justify its price and Palm pulled the plug on it days before it became available for sale. I personally suspect that if Palm had tried to sell the Foleo at half the price they originally intended (in other words for $300 instead of $600), it would have been reasonably successful.

After Palm's embarrassing face plant, Asus came out with a little notebook called the EeePC. Running a lightweight version of Linux and powered by an Intel Celeron processor with a tiny screen and keyboard, the original family of EeePCs cost just $300-$500 and they were a rip-roaring success selling 355,000 units in six months. This just opened up the floodgates with competitors coming from MSI, Acer, Dell, HP, and others.

And that brings us to the Acer Aspire One which I am using now. Over time, netbooks have gravitated to a common set of specs and the Acer Aspire One is no different. It has an Atom processor which is Intel's new mobile friendly chip which has become almost ubiquitous in netbooks. It has a small but above average for netbooks 8.9 inch, 1024x600 pixel screen and a fairly small but usable keyboard—you won't be composing any novels on this keyboard but it's fine for e-mail. What separates this particular version of the Acer Aspire One from other netbooks is its 1 GB of memory and 160 GB hard drive. This is enough storage space to comfortably run Windows XP instead of the sometimes quirky Linux distributions which other netbooks use. As a result, my Acer Aspire One feels more like a normal laptop than like a "netbook."


Size Versus Speed


Without a doubt this notebook's number one feature is its small size and weight. At only about 2.5 pounds, lifting and carrying it is effortless. Here are some pictures of my 8.9" Acer Aspire One together with a 15.4" HP Pavilion dv6000 notebook and a Palm Treo 680 smartphone for comparison.








The small size of this notebook mitigates a lot of its shortcomings. I've heard people complain about the heat produced by the Acer Aspire One but I've never had a problem with it in part because it's too small to cover my entire lap. I can just prop it up on one knee for hours and barely feel any heat. This is in start contrast to my larger HP laptop which runs at least as hot, if not hotter, than my Acer netbook and because of its heat and weight quickly becomes uncomfortable in my lap. While in its default configuration Windows XP runs a bit slowly on the One, turning off its visual styles and other eye causes it to speed up considerably. (I never cease to be amazed at how much useless, performance-choking crap Microsoft adds to its operating systems.) Turning off Windows XP's visual styles also allows you to make better use of the One's small screen as XP's default styles tend to take up a lot of room on your screen.

The One also has some other useful little tricks. Intel's underpowered but useful graphics hardware comes configured with keyboard shortcuts which allow you to rotate the screen. Normally this would be a useless little trick but on the One, the screen rotation allows you to comfortably read long web pages and documents like a hard cover book. Unfortunately, when you rotate the screen, the keyboard and mouse axes remain the same which makes anything other than scrolling text awkward.

Despite all these nice little tweaks, the One still feels a little slower than a typical full sized laptop. Note that by full sized laptop, I'm referring to my two beefy HP laptops which run on dual cores and have 2 and 3 GB of ram respectively. So the One is about as fast a single core laptop with 1 GB of ram. Having said that, web browsing does "feel" a little slower on the One. I'm not sure exactly why that is, maybe its the Atom processor or maybe it's the wi-fi chipset. Or maybe it's a problem with Windows XP.

When I installed Ubuntu on the One, it detected two processors. Since most personal computers have only one processor this is usually a sign that you have a dual core processor or a processor with hyperthreading. In fact, it does appear that the Atom processor is hyperthreaded. But does Windows XP handle the Atom processor's hyperthreading? I'm not particularly knowledgeable on the issue but if I'm not mistaken, Intel abandoned its hyperthreading technology in its desktop processors in part because Windows didn't handle it well. If this is the case—and I don't really know enough about the issue to say that it is—then it might be the part of the problem. (If someone actually reads this blog and does know about this issue, I'd appreciate an e-mail on the subject.)


Software


Like most Windows laptops the One comes with a lot of crappy third party software although it comes with less than what is preloaded on HP laptops. In any case, it's nice to have PC Decrapifier around to get rid of the cruft. (Why did Acer include a copy of InterVideo WinDVD on a laptop with no DVD drive?) The idea behind netbooks is that they are lightweight both in terms of size and software and rely on Internet-based "Web 2.0" "cloud computing" to get work done. I am actually finding that I use much the same software that I would use on a normal PC. In fact at least one Web 2.0 application, Yahoo Mail actually complains that my One's screen resolution is too low even though I think that it looks just fine. Another Web 2.0 application, Google Groups gives you a full, unfiltered view of Usenet which is a little like giving you unfiltered sewer water to drink. Sorry cloud, I think I'll stick to the same e-mail and Usenet application that I've been using for over a decade thank you very much.

I was expecting that Google's Chrome browser with its minimalist interface would be ideal for a netbook. In fact I've found that good old Firefox when used in full screen mode is the best choice for me when browsing the Internet. This is great for me since I can use Foxmarks to synchronize my bookmarks between the One and my home computer which is just a really big laptop.

Beyond that, I use the One very much the same way that I would use a normal laptop. I use Firefox to surf the web, Agent for e-mail and newsgroups, GOM Player to watch video, TightVNC to log into my other computers, and Synergy to seamlessly share my mouse with my bigger computers.


Final Notes


I've only been using my Acer Aspire One for about a week but I'm already very comfortable with this little notebook. It has a glossy dark blue finish which looks great when you take it out of the box but which is also a magnet for fingerprints. It has a six cell battery which delivers about five hours of battery life. This changes the way I use my laptop. I don't worry much about battery anymore. I keep it next to my bedside for use on sleepless nights and lazy weekend mornings. It slips easily into my backpack when my older HP laptop needed some elbow grease to fit. I can take it anywhere that I expect to be able to find available wi-fi access.

This computer certainly isn't perfect. It's a little slower than what I'm used to. The touchpad has awkwardly placed buttons and is bad even by touchpad standards. The keyboard is usable but can't be recommended for long typing sessions (I'm typing this review on my big HP laptop). I've seen netbooks positioned as computers for younger people—college students, teenagers, even children. Well, with their smaller hands and sharp eyes, younger people will almost certainly be less bothered by the shortcomings of netbooks than older people.

But the bottom line is that its small size and long battery life give this computer a degree of freedom that bigger laptops can only aspire to. So as one of the first netbooks that seems to really hit the sweetspot in terms of usability for me, the Acer Aspire One is aptly named.