netbook advice

[Licho]

Well I bet that today any phone can handle reading eBooks.
They all have Java and big enough storages.
I'm reading mine in qReader on my old rusty Nokia N70

[Pressure Line]

thats true, but its a pain reading on such a tiny screen.

[Licho]

I think its fine, never had issues with this. You can fit lots of text into screen. I never tried big eReader but i prefer reading book on phone to reading it in paper form (I usually have both forms, because i download ebook and buy paper).

[zwzsg]

I just tried, and Spring does run on an Asus Eee PC 1001HA. Rather poorly of course, 2-3 FPS on a simple scene.



Now I'll want to try to dissect those numbers to see what's the bottleneck.

[Neddie]

Well, there are two weaknesses, the Intel GMA and the Atom CPU, but I'm fairly certain from my past efforts that the CPU is the more relevant problem.

The only reason I would read a text on a screen rather than on paper by choice is if I could read bright text on a dark background, which most ebooks don't permit me to do anyway. Reading ebooks on phones rather than screens of notable resolution makes the comparison even more laughable. It might work for you Licho, and that is fine, but it wouldn't work for me and of course most of our peers think we're both lunatics.

[Pxtl]

If the smartphones suck, there's non-phone handhelds like the iPod Touch or the new Samsung YP-MB2 Yepp Android device (basically a non-phone Galaxy S).... or one of those Android-based Chinese knock-off ipads that are dirt cheap (but have short battery life).

[Pressure Line]

@ Pxtl: I should have been more clear, the phone plans here kinda suck, hell I pay ~$60NZ/month for 20GB of DSL (granted, I live about a mile from a major telephone exchange, so I actually get pretty good speeds, but yeh)

[Teutooni]

I was considering netbook a while back but went for smartphone (Nokia N900) instead. If it's browsing and the occasional small app, 600mhz ARM should be enough.

Music, eBooks etc are for granted on any smartphone/laptop I guess. The headset that came with it is pretty nice, better sound quality than my old computer stereo.

EDIT: X-com terror from the deep (didn't have the original at hand) confirmed working on N900 with dosbox. The game is slow and awkward to play with touchscreen, but hey, it's possible.

[Beherith]

There is one netbook that gets my highest recommendation: the gateway lt3103u.
Its the same form and weight factor as all the atom based ones, yet is superior in almost all aspects:
11.6" 1366*768 screen, which is just enough to do some real work. I find the current gen 10" ones with 1024*640 rez extremely limiting.
2gb ram, 250gb hdd.
X1270 gpu - Way better than the intel counterparts, runs spring at native rez at 30-40 fps, works fine on 1v1 games. No graphical glitches.
AMD athlon 64 cpu at 1.2ghz - Way faster than the atom, and 64 bit native to boot. Can be overclocked easily to 1.6ghz on the fly if you need more power, or downclocked to 800mhz if you need more battery life.
Can play x264 encoded HD content at full hd rez.

Cons: The battery life is about 4 hours on the 6 cell default battery. More if downclocked (but even then XP still runs fine on it)

Got it in november on woot (refurbished) for a massive 250$. Best computer money ever spent. I do all my work on it (since my calculations run on a supercluster anyway)

[CarRepairer]

11.6" 1366*768 screen, which is just enough to do some real work. I find the current gen 10" ones with 1024*640 rez extremely limiting.

It's one of the the few 10" screen netbooks on the planet that has wxga resolution (1200x800 [1200x768 effective] ) which is why I got it for just browsing the web and the occasional small app.