Brooke Cothers formerly at CNET and now as WSJ has written a post detailing AMD and Intel’s thoughts on the netbook market. Stu Pann, VP Sales & Marketing doesn’t see the netbook as a device that can be used ‘all day’ but more like ‘an hour’. I think I would have to disagree. Much like tablets and UMPCs, Netbooks have definitely appealed to a niche market, however this niche market is growing at an increasing pace.

The netbook is and has always been a product complimentary to the notebook and will never replace it. The problem exists is the requirement of a light, portable laptop for non-intensive tasks such as office tasks and web browsing. Laptops such as the MSI Wind have provided a solution almost perfectly. A decent keyboard, enough hardware capability to run Vista and a 1024×600 screen has served quite well. The only problem that lies is the one that has plagued the notebook market too and that is of a longer battery life.

I have, and continue to, use my Wind as an all day device when I take it to university for notetaking in lectures with having to charge it in between lectures. The people that are dissatisfied with the netbook are those that have unrealistic expectations of it. These machines aren’t meant to be used for Video Production or Adobe Photoshop. As for those talking about the price ($300-$600) bordering and even beating the prices of regular notebooks fail to realise it’s not a question of ‘Either or‘ but instead of ‘Whether or not‘ a person’s use case warrants the requirement of a netbook.

When Asus entered, nay, started the netbook market, the device didn’t have a named category to fall under. Mini laptop, UMPC, ultra portable were some of the names given to it. Hell even on this blog I’d tag posts posts as ultraportable until recently. It’s been about a year and the market is now saturated; much credit blame directed towards Asus. However there still lies a sense of disconnect between consumers and manufacturers. Why is it that most of them find it so difficult to produce a decent product which covers all bases. Read the rest of this entry »

The concept of cloud computing isn’t new new by any means. The idea of being able to view and process information / data regardless of what device we’re using, has been around for a while. However it’s only recently that innumerable services and startups have come up offering ’solutions’ to these ‘problems’. But the recent downtime of Gmail serves as a stark reminder of how 100% availability simply cannot be expected of any online service. It doesn’t matter how grand the infrastructure is or how scalable the application is, it is the smallest of problems that bring down the biggest of setups.

I still insist on using Outlook for my email, calendar and contact needs. Most of the time when I need access to this information I am on or around my laptop so I have instant access to this data. In the off chance that I am not, I have my phone (Nokia E90) which syncs up with my desktop giving me the exact access (emails are only the recent ones). The situation is exactly the same with my RSS Feeds (Feeddemon) and Office Suite.

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We know that Acer was planning an entry in the oh-so-hip UMPC market fairly soon and confirming that a lot of information has come leaked out today.

Here’s the scoop as it stands:

Specification:

No word on the price from the forum leak but digitimes.com seems to think it will be at 299 euros (US$469.49)

News Source: 3Fire , Mobile01

Picture source: UMPCPortal

Gizmodo managed to get a sneak peek at Dell’s forthcoming into the UMPC market. Dell had earlier announced that they will be releasing a product sometime in the Summer to compete with the likes of HP and Asus. There is no word on the specifications, screen size or price, but one can certainly expect some information soon. Atleast with the red colour it’d be safe to say the ultraportable will be coming in a variety of colours too.

However what stood out the most is the unconventional key layout. The function keys have been totally let go and the Shift, Caps Lock and other keys have been dramatically reduced in size too in order to give enough width to the letter key which tend to be more frequently used. Another thing visible in the pictures is the lack of a bezel. While no information is given on the screen size either, my guess is it might hold a 10″ screen in a 8.9″ casing similar in size to the HP 2133. More pictures on Gizmodo while a HP vs Dell comparison has been posted below.

Link: Gizmodo Gallery