Designing The Ultimate Netbook

Harden writes "TrustedReviews has an interesting take on what the 'Ultimate Netbook' ought to be. From the article: 'How to solve a problem like the netbook? To my mind, despite nearly every manufacturer taking a stab at the thing, none has yet quite distilled my idea of what the Ultimate Netbook would be. This is partly because, until recently, not everyone had a clear understanding of what a netbook was meant to do, but also because manufacturers have all been far too busy jostling for market share to put a lot of thought into the finer details.' What would your Ultimate Netbook include?"

Re:Power Consumption / Battery Life

[ThinkingInBinary]

The XO gets its 9-10 hours of battery life when reading ebooks by turning off everything but the LCD and DCON (display controller). The system goes into suspend-to-RAM but leaves the screen on so you can read it. If you use this with the screen in reflective mode (no backlight) it can last a hell of a long time. Doing anything else, though, it gets a normal 2-4 hours of battery.

Re:It would fit in a jacket pocket...

[jamesshuang]

Ever hear of the Nokia N810? Same form factor, 200mhz ARM proc, microsd slot for expansion, wifi and linux. If you want *cheap*, look for N800's. Same processor minus the keyboard, but two SD slots for 32 gb of memory (or more!), and sells for around $200 now.

Re:An Apple

[MrNaz]

I am a frequent traveler. I use my ThinkPad X40 for when I'm on flights, going to conferences etc, and my ThinkPad T61p for heavy lifting such as long coding sessions, graphics work etc.

Extended battery life for long flights.

My X40 gives 4 - 5 hours on a charge.

Swappable battery for long flights.

Check.

Don't care about weight.

Check, hence I travel with two laptops, one in my carry on (X40) and the workhorse in check baggage. I'm a pro at packing my stuff around the laptop, 10 long haul flights and no damage to it yet. Helped also by the fact that ThinkPad's are built like tanks.

Don't care about thickness except as it affects height.

The X40 is no MacBook Air, but were I spending that budget I'd get a X300.

Total height when open should be at least 1.5 inches shorter than a Macbook.

No idea how big a MacBook is, but the X40 is pretty small so I doubt it'll not meet this.

EIther FireWire 400 with power or a built-in CompactFlash-compatible reader---the USB readers suck in my experience and I like to be able to back up photos while on the go.

Hey, I thought we were talking netbooks here? The X40 doesn't have firewire, but since when is that a concern on a small and light aircraft companion? For reading CF cards, get a $5 card reader, they're diminuitive these days, and weigt in at about 20g. The X40 has a built in SD/MMC reader, the T61p can also do the MemoryStick range IIRC.

Sufficient external port power to drive an external laptop HD (again, ideally, through FireWire).

You're having a different discussion here. No netbook will do this.

ExpressCard port for when I need a port that it doesn't provide.

Dude. NETBOOKS.

Two USB ports.

Check.

Wired ethernet. Too many hotels I've stayed in recently don't have wireless or charge extra for it.

Check. Both ThinkPads have RJ45 ethernet and RJ12 modems built in.

Low thermal output. I want to use this on my lap comfortably.

Check, the X40 runs quite cool, and is dead silent.

Must support at least 2GB of RAM.

NETBOOKS! But yes, it does. What are you doing that requires >2gb of ram that also doesn't thrash the battery life?

Must not have soldered RAM on the motherboard. I've had lots of trouble with motherboard RAM going bad, so I like my RAM replaceable, thanks.

Dunno about this one,

64-bit-capable Atom CPU for maximum viability.

Stop smoking crack.

Mac OS X support.

I said stop it with the crack already. MacBook Air is your only option for a small netbook here, and I think everyone agrees at this stage that the MBA is a product birthed from pure stupidity.

Your wants are not met by the current crop of products. You seem to want desktop performance in a netbook size unit, with the full flotilla of ports and no compromise in battery life when doing heavy duty work. Even if I were willing to pay big dollars for a netbook, which by definition is a *secondary* machine, there is no product that solves the absurd mix of wants in your list.

The X40 is a good tradeoff given the niche that the netbook is supposed to fill. When you're asking for does not exist, and if it did, I doubt it'd be anywhere NEAR the price range we're talking about here with netbooks.