The Dodge Retort

Much improved keyboard starting with Asus' Eee PC1000HE

Maybe they are mini-notebooks after all. Asus and Acer, the two biggest netbook companies, are planning to release models this month with 12-inch displays.

For its part, Asus is planning product blitz that includes an Eee PC with an 11.6 inch display for release later this month, according to a Digitimes interview with Asus president Jerry Shen. However, 50 per cent of the 2009 shipments will remain units with 10-inch displays including lighter and thinner models coming this month, according to TDR sources.

At the CeBit show in Germany last month,  Asus introduced the Eee PC1008HA, a thinner 2.4 pound 10-inch netbook with a five-hour battery. Invariably that model will most likely end for sale here. Forthcoming Asus netbooks will include the improved Chicklet keyboard that first appeared in the Eee PC 1000HE introduced Feb 9. Keyboards in previous Asus netbooks were horribly cramped.

The company also has an 15.6 inch XS15 ultra-thin notebook in the pipeline for between $1,000 and $1,300 as well as 13 and 14 inch entry level models, according to the Digitimes story.  Asus also introduced a 12-inch S-121 (S for Stylish on the Go computing) with a whopping big 512 GB solid state drive at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. An Asus spokeswoman declined to confirm existence the unannounced models and said availability and pricing of the S-121 in the U.S. were still unclear.

She added that the 1000HEis presently Asus’ best-selling netbook.

The Acer Aspire One Model 751 with an 11.6 inch display was demoed by Acer UK general manager Bobby Watkins in a Youtube video posted in May 1. It’ll sport a “full keyboard,” Intel Atom CPU, one GB of RAM, Windows XP Home, an 160-GB hard drive and 5 hours of battery standard with a 6-cell battery option for “all day” computing or up to nine hours, Watkins said.  The unit will come in five colors and will be out this month, costing about $570 (379£).

A message was left for Acer public relations to verify the video and offer details when the 751 might appear on shelves in the U.S.

The companies now join Dell with its Inspiron Mini 12 in the 12-inch netbook club.

I did three netbook reviews for eWeek.com a month ago and I invite you to read them. Indeed, I liked the HP Mini’s terrific keyboard, and Lenovo’s Ideapad S10′s and the Asus’ EEE PC 1000H features for the price despite less than  satisfactory ivories.

That was 4-5 weeks ago and so I’ve evolved my opinion  as I’ve become an everyday netbook user. My revelation is this:  I can get used to the smaller keyboards and displays, but have a more difficult time with slower or I should say inconsistent performance. Using the netbook in bed has been hit or miss proposition and always slow when using the Internet which is all the time (I’m in the cloud, baby!)

Before I blame the netbooks entirely, one likely culprit could be Comcast and my router. Comcast Internet seems slower and I’ve been waiting for years for FIOS to come to my neighborhood.

Still, the Internet performance of my tethered Dell desktop far exceeds that of the netbook — presently, a very slick looking Lenovo Ideapad S10 model 4231 — which on one or two occasions could not find my wireless router. What’s more a  Lenovo T43 notebook (a older but nice machine) wirelessly performed just fine in the same spot two doors and walls and about 40 feet away from the router.

That made me question graphics performance of the Intel Graphics Accelerator 950 or 1.6 Ghz Atom CPU in the netbooks because graphics intensive sites like CNN.com or Boston.com were the slowest while Google was its usual fast-self, relatively speaking. I suspect the spotty netbook wireless performance was due to a combination of factors.

To calibrate my conclusions, one can adjust to smaller netbook keyboards  and displays just as with a Blackberry.  Slow performance is much tougher to get used to. The good news is that performance always improves with time and is something netbook vendors should be able to fix.

The netbook revolution just got more interesting with huge discounts for customers signing up for two years of 3G broadband from the likes of AT&T.

For example, signing up for two years of AT&T LapTop Connect earns you a $350 mail-in rebate on the Dell Mini 9 normally priced at $449. With only 8 Gb of solid state storage, the unit is overpriced compared to similar models, but it’s one of the few with a built-in cellular modem. Radio Shack and AT&T have teamed up to offer with a similar deal with the Acer Aspire.

At $60 a month for two years, $1,440 for 3G more than makes up for the discounts of the netbooks. And I’ve used 3G and once you get it, giving it up is often not an option.

The weak link in these deals, quite frankly, are the netbooks. The tech press and analyst firms which forecast sales ranging between 25-35 million units in 2009 have fallen in love with them. But the keyboards are still cramped and the displays are too small to stably hold an image. The other problem is the high expense of 3G — $60 a month is a lot (it’s the same for Verizon Mobile Broadband, but AT&T has gotten the jump in the netbook market).

Computerworld posted a story today that asked an intriging question: are netbooks the cell phones of the future? HP, according to the story, which makes the best netbook I’ve had the chance to test is also rumored to be considering a 3G bundle

Consider that I was using Gmail video chat to converse last night with my son who is studying in Europe and you see how the phoning part falls into place. I didn’t use a cell phone or a land line phone to make that call. I used my small computer whose role in calling is only going to increase.

No, you can’t carry a netbook around in the your pants pocket and it would be hard to answer one walking down the street or, perish the thought, driving. Assuming unrestricted mobility, size remains a drawback. Still, a netbook has much more functionality and versatility than a cell phone. And the cost of a high end Smartphone and netbooks are colliding in the same price band.

In fact, the Blackberry Storm at Verizon with a two-year service contract is twice the cost of the discounted netbooks. Think about it: besides reliabilty, the major advantage enjoyed by cell phones are look, feel and size.

Collapse-ible netbook anyone?

I bought an Asus Eee PC1000 last Saturday at BestBuy and exchanged it this morning for HP Mini . Why? The cramped keyboard.

After all, I am a word guy and my major interaction with the machine is through my fingers banging on the keyboard. The keys were plenty small and tightly-packed causing me to frequently hit two keys or the wrong key. While the HP keyboard is considerably better, the Mini isn’t a slam dunk. With netbooks, it’s about what you are and are not willing to give up.

Two additional but smallish complaints with the Asus were washed-out display colors and inability to horizontally fit everything on the 10.1 inch display. As a result of my latter beef, the mouse arrow when reaching the edges of the display caused the image to move.  The Asus had a button allowing users to instantly change display resolution to make the image smaller or larger. That mitigates the problem somewhat, but didn’t eliminate it. Watching things jump around on the display made me dizzy.

Ahh, such are the compromises we accept for the netbook’s wonderfully small size and low price relative to full size notebooks. Therein lies another advantage of the HP Mini. It’s thinner and lighter at 2.38 pounds. The Asus weighs about 3 pounds and feels considerably bulkier.

The Asus is a lot of computer for the money – 1 .6 Ghz Intel Atom processor, 1G of DDR2 memory and 160G hard drive and higher display resolution than the Mini. It’s also come way down in price: I picked it up for $330 at BestBuy and a lesser model, according to CNet,  was selling as for between $380 and $599 last Fall. I paid $400 for the Mini.

Ounce for ounce, the Asus offers more for the money by way of tech specs. The HP Mini’s I bought comes with a  measly 16G of memory-based storage. That could be a problem so I suspect I will be relegated to using USB memory sticks which tops out at 8G. And there a slot of an SD card which also top out at 8G, getting me up to 32G if I need it. HP does have Minis with a 60G and 160G hard disk drive, but BestBuy didn’t stock those models and I did not want to make another trip.

(By the way, BestBuy charges a 15% restocking fee if you ask for your money back so it made more sense to do the exchange. Also in the Best Buy fine print? You have only 14 days to return or exchange a computer after you buy it.)

Already Windows, Firefox and few other basic apps have gobbled up 7G of that precious storage. But the Mini should do just fine serving as a twitter, email, surfing and blog posting tool. My desktop will remain the repository for all my photos, videos and other junk. Both the HP and Asus came with 1G of memory which should be sufficient.

The Mini keyboard is vastly superior to the one in the Asus. The flush-set and non-tapered keys are bigger and the keyboard feels wider. That’s was the deal breaker for me. Secondarily, the HP’s  more svelte form factor is appealing.

Besides, the 160G hard disk, the Asus had three display resolutions (highest: 1024×768 as I recall) to the Mini’s two (highest: 1024 x 600). Then again, the HP Mini display is 10.2 inches versus 10.1 inches for the Asus. These are nano-quibbles. Annoyingly, the display in the Mini goes back only a bit beyond 90 degrees, making viewing the display diffcult when slouching or balancing it on crossed legs.

The fit and finish in the Asus was decent, but better in the Mini whose keyboard and mouse feels crisper. The HP seems a little faster and its the colors brighter and more in the display. However, the display’s shiny screen does produce significant glare. Power wise, the Mini should do better on a single battery charge given there’s no hard disk.

One thing that is really irritating is that it’s impossible to tell which model you have if you want to dig more deeply into the technical specs. The only place I initially found my model number is on the box (1030NR). The most prominent   sticker on the bottom has several long numbers, but bore no the model name. I finally located the model number on another sticker affixed to bottom swimming in a sea of numbers.  The Asus was a bit better in that it had a name – Eee PC 1000.

Nowhere in the Mini’s scant printed documentation did it publish comprehensive technical specs or answer questions such as whether the memory could be expanded. For an experienced user, the documentation is useless. Model numbers and documentation are important because so many new models are being released into this hot segment. It’s good to know where your model sits within the product family. I saw a stat recently that said around 25 million netbooks are forecast to be sold in 2009.

It remains to be seen if I can compute with only 16-32G of storage. If not, I’ll return the Mini to BestBuy and eat the 15% restocking fee. I also hope to get my hands of a Lenovo IdeaPad. Stayed tuned.