Requiem for the Humble Netbook

Today a very influential, and inspirational, man – I dare say a sometime hero of mine – slated the “inferior” experience of the Netbook. Whilst he was presenting, excellently, his latest product, the iPad as the “I’m not sure there’s a niche for a computer between a Smartphone and a laptop, but if there is, this is it” product, I got to consider the humble Netbook. In particular, my humble Netbook.

The Acer Aspire ONE A150.

I bought mine for $530 from OfficeWorks in Nov 2008, some 14 months ago. Then proceeded to get $70 cash back. Take home price AU$470. I kinda enjoyed that experience. You don’t have to wait for 60 days either, they’re still out there, lower in price and richer in performance. Such loss.

Since, at the time, I worked for Microsoft, I immediately installed Windows 7 on it. Only the Release Candidate (the OS wasn’t to launch for almost a year yet) and immediately found that the device became my “carry around” computer. It was so light, but could comfortably run Communicator, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, & Word  simultaneously.(hey, I was working for Microsoft) I guess I needed my laptop to multi-task when I was out the office. Of course, now the Aspire runs the released version of the Ultimate Edition of Windows 7.

When I say ran Powerpoint, I do mean I presented! To an audience! I simply plugged into a projector for other people to see my presentation. There’s a std VGA port on the side. Amazingly the Aspire will drive my 22” 1680 x 1050 monitor, as well as it’s own (dual screen extended desktop). Go figure.

The scoring system for the Imagine Cup in Cairo was developed, tested, and implemented on that little PC. Imagine that! Not planned of course, but my powerful new laptop wasn’t delivered in time, and as I was in Egypt with only carry-on luggage, well that was the only PC I had. Condolences little guy.

When I travelled, as I was wont to do. Both professionally and personally. I communicated with the people at home via Skype, and to the people at work with LiveMeeting &/or Office Communicator. You see, this humble, some even say, cheap, computer has a built in webcam! I know?!? For under $500! Australian $.

In the BR* days until May 09, I & the team were responsible for evangelising IE8 and Silverlight, which I ably ran on my little blue plastic companion. Now I tend to use Flash & Firefox/Chrome (but that’s another post). It is nice though, being able to show my Vimeo, Viddler, and YouTube videos to friends, family, and business associates on the go. I’m not sure what I’ll do when I lay my Aspire to rest, without being able to view Flash or Silverlight on the web – such a barren experience I’m sure.

I do have to admit to buying a 9-cell battery on eBay. Y’see, the almost 4 hours I got from the 3 cell didn’t quite cut  it for my work day. So I guess we’d have to add the $130 to the purchase price. I do like being able to go for a whole 8 hour day, and then still have the 4 hour spare battery for those evening networking events. I wonder if batteries also head to the Netbook home in the sky?

I can’t count how many emails, blog posts, and documents were composed on that great little, included, responsive keyboard. I suppose I’ll have to draw pictures with my finger now. Tragic really.

I do remember being disappointed to discover that the Aspire didn’t support Bluetooth. Or rather, didn’t sport, Bluetooth. Of course it supports the standard, it’s running Windows 7. So $10 bought a little BT dongle, that amazingly plugged into one of the 3 standard USB ports. The USB ports also just came standard. So did the Network Port. Yep, there were times I wanted to plug into the wired network, to stream video and transfer large files. Not to mention Video Conference. And I could. Without extra cables or attachments. How I’ll miss that.

When I was in Vanuatu, on a Wedding Anniversary, I thought I’d lost my SDHC card from my camera! I could’ve sworn I’d put it in the Netbook SDHC slot (to transfer diving photos and videos to the 160GB drive), but the slot was empty when I took it out of my bag. Then I turned the machine around, to see my card still plugged in. It seems there were 2 slots. One actually reads MMC, xD, and other formats. Wow. Of course, with Windows 7, you can extend your system memory with a little known technology, called ReadyBoost. Which you may want, as the machine does only come with 1GB of RAM. Still, it’s nice to be able to add 64GB of storage or memory, at a whim. Ah, those were good days.

Some of my erstwhile colleagues, employed, so wealthier than I, replaced the included Hard Drive, with a Solid State Drive, or SSD. Of course this improves battery life, and performance. But I was happy in my pecuniary strangulation to muddle along with the 160GB.

I did find that in Sydney there aren’t as many Wi-Fi spots as I’d like, so purchased a 3G modem (on a $29 plan). This just slots into one of the other spare USB ports, standard in so many devices today. The modem takes a std SIM (which I often use in my Fujitsu Lifebook). It was lovely to be able to open the Netbook and be online in under 30 secs. Windows 7 resume is so quick, isn’t it. I’ll miss that.

More and more I found there are times when I want to draw on the computer. Especially around photos, and for presentations. So when Aldi had a Graphics Tablet for $60 I bought one. To my delight, Windows 7 has Tablet functionality built in natively. So it was easy to just use the graphics tablet during the few times I wanted to draw. I mean, mostly I use a mouse and type, but there are times I get a little creative.

But mostly, I’ll miss the name. Inspirational, like my hero. Aspirational even. Yep, humble, inexpensive, cheap, inferior little Netbook, I’ll miss you.

RIP.

Tagged as: Acer, Apple, Aspire ONE, iPad, Mobile, Netbook, Technology