The Dodge Retort

I’ve been playing with HP Mini Model 1151NR that come bundled with Verizon Mobile Broadband for a couple of weeks now and the convenience is growing on me.

It’s much slower than Wifi and cable Internet and the Verizon Access Manager that you use to find the network and connect is a minor imposition. One problem is in my office I only get one bar ( four is tops) so connecting can take a little longer. You can track you speeds from a Statistics tab. Verizon says average speeds are around 500 Kbps with bursts up 1.4 Mbps and it generally delivers as promised.

Video downloads take several minutes, but it’s fine for browsing, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, email, visiting The Dodge Retort and other standard apps.

I’m going to return the loaner to Verizon soon and am going to miss it. Next decision is whether to spring for the unit at $200 and a two year commitment at $60 a month. I have a full review of the HP Verizon bundle  coming up at eweek.com.

Also, Verizon just gave me a Mi Fi mobile router with Mobile broadband in the back end and Wifi out the front so I don’t have to decide right away. It’s about two thirds the size of an iPod Touch and connects via USB to its host. I will report back in a week or so on that. Meanwhile, stay connected.

I have not posted for several days because I was busy with my new CBS Interactive blog ThinkingTech at SmartPlanet.com. Check it out.

We’ll cover all manner of smart technologies from the rehabilitation of the grid to smart gadgets that report on traffic in realtime. The focus is on smart technologies that are kinder to the planet and that help humans. It’s a great site with lots of video (hey, it’s CBS!)

But don’t worry, The Dodge Retort is still a top priority for me. In fact, I’ll be introducing video shortly and should be getting a Dell Mini 10v to review.

I also finished my review for eWeek.com on the HP Mini 1000 Model 1151NR that comes with Verizon wireless mobile broadband. I will summarize that review here next week. My conclusion is that it works as advertised, but could use some refinements. It’s all in the bars!

I’m posting this from the passenger seat of a moving car, by the way. I do like that!

Seeing red is goal of HP's Vivienne Tam edition

Dell Mini 10v is awash in colors

You can have a netbook in any color you want as long as it’s black. While that timeworn notion thought to be coined by Henry Ford is changing, it would still seem to be the case (pun intended) from netbook leader Acer which dominates a third of market.

Acer’s most powerful model the Aspire One 11.6  says nothing about color choice and it’s black in the picture so I assume it’s, well, black. Or dark. It’s the same with Aspire One Pro 10.1, Ultra-thin 10.1 and regular 10.1 models. Only it’s 8.9 models comes in colors: sapphire blue, golden brown (like a perfectly-cooked McDonald’s fry), seashell white and rose pink. Near as I can tell, there is no black for the 8.9 inch model.

I’d like to think Acer is a reflection of the Taiwanese netbook maker’s greater focus on real features than cosmetics. Black is fine with me, but let’s face it, to teenage girls, color is a major feature. Dell and Asus by comparison are downright psychedelic.

In fact, number two maker Asus offers multiple colors for all its 24 netbooks. It’s new Eee PC 1008HA comes in white, black, pink, blue, sapphire blue and Ruby Red. Dell, too, is awash in color with the Mini 10v which can be had in jade green, ice blue, promise pink, passion purple, alpine white, red and not just black but obsidian black (Dell makes a $5 charitable contribution when the red and pink are purchased). All but the latter is $40 extra. What’s more, Dell offers the Mini 9 and 12 with sleeve covers in grey/famingo pink and jet/cabernet.

The wildest design is the Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam edition which probably comes closest to looking like a purse especially when it’s owner is wearing a similarly styled print dress. It plays off the notion of the art of accessories. It’s way too red for me – passionate red some politely might say and the $700 starting price is in the stratosphere.

Then again, it’s all in the eyes of the holder (of the netbook).

I am cruising in the passenger seat along I-95 in Maine ready to post thanks for my Verizon VZAccess mobile broadband. It’s the version that comes bundled with and built into an HP Mini 1000 Model 1151r. No card or gadget to plug in.

Quite honestly, I’ve had some problems with it so stay tuned for the full review next week.

Damn, that tractor trailer is close!

PC industry researcher and analyst Stephen Baker has little use for netbooks. He argues they’ve nothing but weaken an industry that was already wracked by the “worst retail environment in 50 years,” fierce price pressure, a dismal 2008 holiday shopping season and the closure of the huge retailer, CircuitCity.

“I’ve been one of louder dissenters on netbooks. They’re bad for the industry and for consumers. All they’ve done is grind down price points. The [notebook] industry has cut itself off at the knees and is now about to cut itself off at the waist [with all the new netbook and low-end notebook microprocessors such as Intel's Atom, AMD's NEO and the ARM11.]

As NPDGroup’s vice president of analysis, Baker freely admits he cares more about his PC company clients than buyers who benefit from savage price-slashing. Indeed, Baker calculates that average selling price of a notebooks suffered a steep decline thanks in part to netbooks from $714 in March, 2008 to  $620 in March, 2009. Average selling price for netbooks in March was $319, he adds.

“That’s a pretty aggressive decline. Notebooks were selling well before netbooks showed up and have now taken billions out of the industry. Consumers never asked for netbooks,” he says.

While he sees netbooks eventually morphing into low cost entry level notebooks,  I don’t think the netbook phenomenon has begun to play out yet. Wintel netbooks which have been largely responsible for netbook success so far, but super low-cost Android-based netbooks using the ARM processor promised for the later this year will be the next shoe to drop. Coming from another direction will be   more capable Android-based mobile phones promised from giants like Motorola for later this year. And this battle of deep-pockets has staying power with Microsoft versus Google, which is Android’s biggest backer.

The good news is that entry level notebooks are shedding their image as slow and heavy. A good example of the new crop of entry level notebooks is the 3.8 pound HP Pavillion dv2 “non-netbook” just positively reviewed at pcmag.com. Still, it’s $750 pricetag is more than double that for the average netbook which is falling. That leaves netbooks with plenty of pricing headroom.

Baker believes netbooks which are increasingly being cast as “mini-notebooks” will still be around in six to nine months, but probably not in 18 months. “We’ll have to see what happens.” And it’s all good for consumers and businesses.

Dell, Lenovo and HP, which all trail Asus and Acer in the booming netbook market, have committed to building in 3G capability to their respective netbooks for the Chinese market with the hope China Mobile can jumpstart the netbook market there.   China Mobile with a reported 640 million subscribers – that’s right 640 million – will subsidize the sale of these netbooks with a certain amount of free Internet service, according to an IDG News service story.

Netbooks subsidized like mobile phones is certain to boost sales. After all, state-owned China Mobile is world’s largest mobile carrier followed by number two Vodafone.

In the U.S., AT&T has teamed with Acer, Dell and Lenovo to offer netbooks for as little as $50 in Philadelphia and Atlanta if customers commit to a broadband contract. Verizon has confirmed it will come with a similar offering in June, very possibly using HP netbooks.

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.