Netbooks tend to weigh between two and four pounds and have 7 to 11 inch screens. In performance, they tend to lag substantially behind last year’s desktop recommendations and contain fewer features.
Prices of the PCs themselves have, in some cases, dropped down close to the sweet spot of these netbooks, O’Donnell notes. Instead, they look like shrunken models of full-featured laptops, with traditional, if cramped, keyboard layouts and 8.9-inch screens. Most of the low-cost netbooks will run Linux, to avoid the higher cost of the Windows operating system, and also because most of them have about 2G bytes of flash storage, for which Linux is more suitable. Novell’s SUSE Linux is already being pre-loaded with laptops from vendors including Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo.
Custom OEM netbooks using Moblin-based Xandros technology will go to market in the second half of 2008, delivering the rich user experience that customers are expecting on these platforms, plus a 25 percent boost in battery life. Further distribution of these materials is strictly forbidden, including but not limited to, posting, emailing, faxing, archiving in a public database, redistributing via a computer network or in a printed form.
There’s no word on whether the memory is the same for both netbooks, but the Mini 1000 currently offers an 8 or 16 GB SSD drive or a 60 GB HDD. HP plans to roll out 3G option for both of these models in December.
Combining all the simplicity, quality and ease of use you expect from Acer with everything you need to stay connected, chat and manage your life on the road, these Netbooks are set to change our expectations of simplicity on the move.
