[lug] OT: netbook opinions?

[Nick Golder]

On 2009-01-04 14:58 -0700, Jeff Schroeder wrote:
> I picked up a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 when it first came out a few months 
> ago.  Love it.  It comes with Ubuntu pre-installed (although I 
> installed Kubuntu as soon as I powered it up, heh).  It's the size of a 
> hardcover book, very sleek, and completely silent.  The keyboard is 
> pretty tight-- as with all netbooks-- but from reviews I've read, it's 
> bigger than the Acer keyboards.

I have heard mixed reviews on the Mini 9 keyboard.  The unavoidable, because
it is a netbook, is how cramped the keyboard is and how you can count on
not ever touch typing - most regress to hunt and peck.

The second biggest complaint I've heard is about the function keys.  A
large amount of keys are function keys - such as ~ ` {} [] \ | and
the function keys.  I know a couple of people that have retrained their
motor memory to handle the oddness.  It's interesting to watch - it
likes watching an Emacs user. ;-)  But people who can remap their motor
memory so quickly are few and far between.

I have seen a couple of people that have largely moved to netbooks as
their primary machines.  Some are even developing on them with the idea
that less of everything is better for application development.

> 
> One complaint is the lack of a big disk.  I bought the 16GB model (the 
> biggest they have) but it's amazing how quickly you run out of space 
> these days.  Still, if you're using it for pretty lightweight tasks 
> like browsing, e-mail, and documents, you should have plenty of room.
> 

At CES there were several companies that announced new lines of new
netbooks - most of them included larger SSDs.

There are two things that I wish other netbooks would take away from the
Dell Mini 9 - there are no moving parts in the SSD model and the power
adapter makes a lot more sense than the power brick - at least to me.

-- 
Nick Golder