I bought my first iBook G3 because I wanted a laptop but the PC-based alternatives of the time were either extremely ugly and bad or very expensive. I stayed with Macs for years because the trend with desktop-replacements on the PC-side was not what I was looking for. Laptops are supposed to be carried around, used everywhere and they shouldn't cost a fortune because they are, in the end, quite fragile and disposable. Now there is finally a class of computers that fit my kind of use, the netbooks.
Yes, I am quite aware that they aren't new things anymore, netbooks were after all introduced in late 2007 (according to Wikipedia) but for a number of reasons it took a while before I purchased my own.
I ended up buying a HP Mini 210, its a 1.22kg laptop with a 10" 1024x600 screen, 1GB of RAM and a hyper-threaded 1.66GHz N450 Atom processor from Intel. At a little over 300 euros that's quite a nice bit of kit for a small price and quite average both in specs and prices of current netbooks.
The computer comes in a simple and small box with little more than the computer, the charger and manuals in several languages. The computer has protective plastic taped over the shinier parts and you have to attach the battery yourself but, while not as elegant as "unboxing" a new Mac, there's really not much you can complain about.
Any complaints should go to the way the OS-installation is handled on new Windows PC:s, the OS is installed when you first turn on the machine which means that you spend the first hour with your new machine watching progress bars. An annoying ritual for anyone who has had the pleasure to start a new Mac - by the time Windows is installed a Mac-user has already migrated all of his or her files and started working.
I went through with the install, not because I wanted to use Windows, but because I wanted to see that the hardware worked and get a feel for how new Windows-computers are these days. The massive amounts of trialware are apparently gone, only Norton and a few other bits and pieces remains but the experience is less than stellar nonetheless. The next day I installed Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook remix - I'll go in to more details about that in a separate post.
The hardware itself is nice, the build quality feels better than many more expensive (larger) laptops but obviously its not competing with 1000+ euro MacBook's. I like the finish of the covers, it's not the glossy fingerprint-magnet that many PC's are nowadays, instead it has a slightly brushed look and feel. Obviously its small and light but still manages to have more USB-ports (3) than many of the MacBooks. The screen is bright and sharp enough to read very well but is glossy which I don't particularly like but its no worse than other glossy screens I guess. The keyboard I particularly like, its very much like any Mac-keyboard with spaces between the flat keys, big and similar enough that I could immediately start to touch-type with decent speed and accuracy. Unfortunately the trackpad is not as good, its small (which is understandable) but has buttons built into the trackpad which makes it somewhat inaccurate, especially if you want to click-hold and scroll. Will take some getting used to and I suspect I might be looking for a way to disable it while typing longer texts.
What else? The battery-life seems decent, its hard to find clear information on how long the battery is supposed to keep up to begin with and using Linux with its less optimized energy-saving will probably drain it faster than in Windows. That said, this morning, while I downloaded and tested out, installed, configured and played around with Linux I had it on for over four hours and had 20% battery left before going into town to eat. If less strenuous use gave me 5-6 hours of productive time I'd be happy - there are Netbooks with bigger and better batteries out there if that's your thing.
All in all I'm quite happy with my purchase at the moment, I will be using it much like a toy to re-discover and play with Linux after a long hiatus from using Linux on the desktop (or in the lap in this case) and as a secondary computer - I'm still keeping my 24" iMac so I'm not abandoning Steve and his funky bunch totally but looking forward to some fresh perspective! I'll write more about Ubuntu Netbook Remix soon.
