a multi-tasked stream of consciousness or perhaps just emails to myself
I was quite pleased to see Sascha show his NC10 and confirm my own purchase decision. Seems he agrees that the Samsung NC10
This video from Scoble is a great capture of a conversation on Netbooks, Vista, XP licensing and the Sony Vaio P – well worth the 10 minutes.
While I had power on my recent American flight overseas it was not via standard jack and unfortunately was of the cigarette lighter variety – a plug I did not have in my bag. Passing back through Heathrow yesterday I decided to check into the Dixons there and was sold the Kensington Universal 70w DC Power Adapter
In theory it’s solid, but in practice not so much so…
So I finally went netbook and got the Samsung NC10
Over the past year I scaled my work laptop from a 15″ to a 13″ Lenovo X61 and the weight was a huge break on my shoulder and back. The smaller machine runs about 3.5 pounds with the larger battery which also offered a longer range (~4hours) than what I found in the previous (T61) machine. This small system has been serving me well. The X61 does offer a weaker video card and which can’t play some of the videos we tend to embed in powerpoint for presentations. Until the NC10, the X61 offered the longest unplugged time of any laptop I’ve used. I know there are newer Lenovo systems that offer better specs but I don’t have any current ability to request an upgrade.
The NC10 on the other hand is my personal system. I chose it compared to other netbooks based on the build quality, larger keyboard (93%) and 6-cell battery which allegedy can deliver close to 8 hours of battery life. I gave the system it’s first real unplugged test this week and am very happy to report that the battery easily went through a day of meetings which started before 9:30 and lasted until 4pm. There was roughly 30% left on the battery at that point which could have lasted about another hour according to the meter. I was connected to wifi the whole day except during lunch when I left it on standby in our conference room. That’s 6 and a half hours!! With another hour to go it looks like 8 hours is actually a doable number. I was running XP and the Samsung has a an custom power management application which is part of their standard install. My screen was between 2 and 3 degress of 8 on the brightness scale. The screen actually gets quite bright but is definitely not required for a day of work.
One thing I’ve immediately noticed about the NC10 is that the smaller size does not in any way feel cramped. Swapping the Samsung NC10 into my bag for the first time I was very pleased to note the weight (~ half a pound) reduction on my shoulder. While the 10″ screen is the current upper end of the netbook size range, it’s hardly massive and I felt worthwhile for the close to full-size keyboard as well as the potential for eye strain on the smaller system.
I’m going to upgrade the RAM to 2GB from the 1 that comes standard and may eventually consider an SSD hard drive over the 160GB one that comes standard as I think I could make do with less storage once I sort what OS I plan to run. I’m currently triple booting the system between Windows 7, XP and OSX. I’ll have some more to discuss on that shortly as well. The trackpad does take a bit to get used to though I think that may actually be more of a personal thing as I’ve been trackpoint only on the X61. The trackpad is shorter but wide so a bit of finesse and you can easily handle it. Typing this on an airplane tray table is quite comfortable and fortunately the guy in front of me has not reclinced (coach on Finair). Overall this machine is really quite remarkable. I’m loving the
access, responsiveness and really can’t think of anything negative
about it. I know it’s a bit more than quite a few netbooks out there, but even after paging through the CES announcements I’m not feeling like anything really beats the range I’ve got.
I’ll have to see how far I can push my use into regular business life. I’ve yet to install any office suite so some attachments — powerpoint in particular are impossible to review or edit. At least google docs can easily handle word files. I suppose I can always install office or open office if I feel compelled.
As seen in Heathrow …
Location based services are something that’s been hyped for a years now. While everyone has heard of the coupon from Starbucks example, how about a real world practical use case? The emergency system in Israel is the first time I’ve heard of anything like this and sounds very impressive.
The 10 minute warning system that Israel has been using to notify civilians in the vicinity of structures they will be bombing is fascinating. I could not find an online description of the system but the way it works is that civilian neighbors of a structure that will be attacked are given a 10 minute warning by phone to evacuate the area. It appears to be fairly precise given the counterproductive nature of giving evacuation warnings across too broad of an area.
Think for a second about what it would take to make such a system effective. First and foremost, they would have to have a map of every structure in Gaza, which is clearly something Google does on a daily basis, but then they would have to have a database of phone numbers attached to every person in each structure (remember this is predominately a mobile based telecom system). [Venture Chronicles]
A team at VentureBeat was able to get Android running on an Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook, which is certainly a cool hack.
I’m not sure this is something I would personally want in the current state other than as a proof of concept. Though once things are perhaps more optimized for a larger touch screen it might be cool on a MID.