Netbooks were a GOOD thing and we threw them under a bus

I want a new netbook

I want to update my current 10 inch netbook to a better, less power hungry, processor and decent screen resolution. Nothing exists. In a recent conversation with Dell they tried to sell me a W8tablet with no keyboard for more than twice what I paid for my netbook. I laughed at them, but really the manufacturers have the laugh, not the consumer.

Ahhh, I mourn the NetBooks passing

My Eee used to go in the checked in bag, a spare laptop and got me out of trouble on a number of occasions. I've had one HP and two Dells develop plumage issues in bits of the world where getting a replacement is difficult/expensive and the Eee (900, if I remember) was a life saver in a way the tablet would struggle.

For the author's problem, the 11" MacBook Air would probably be perfect albeit an expensive solution to the problem. Just buy a pre paid, LTE MiFi device in the US perhaps?

Unlikely

"Is there a hardware maker brave enough to provide not what the tech giants envision, but what users actually need?"

Probably not, or at least not at a price point where the consumer is prepared to accept some compromises in the spec.

As I haven't been around the OEM scene for a while I'm not certain what the margins are for bare laptops, netbooks i.e. not loaded with "crapware" and so on are these days. If they are as thin as they used to be then it is probably not in the commercial interest to move against their real paymasters i.e. the likes of Microsoft or Intel, with their "marketing" slush funds and other assorted inducements to toe the line.

Mind you, if the current trend of ever increasing size in mobile 'phones is anything to go by, by the time my good old Asus 701 heads for the scrap heap there will be a phone with a large enough screen to allow me to use it as a replacement.

Remember those "portable" bricks that used to pass as mobile 'phones many years ago, we just might be moving back in that direction.

Pixel Qi Display

I love my Samsung N145/150 netbooks - got about 20 for work use, a couple for the kids at home.

Cost nothing.

Run for ever.

Weigh nothing. (well theres no bloody metal in there for sure)

Runs Matlab, LOffice, etc.

Don't really care when the missus stands on it and smashes the display.

Don't care if a dirt bag flogs it when I'm travelling, or I fill it with beach sand, or drop it in the sea.

Get a pixel Qi display. Costs a couple of hundred $, but you can read the screen in full sunlight, and the battery life is even longer. Piece of p**s to change screens in my Samsung N150's

And Windows 7 Home - brilliant.

eee 4G

I've just ordered a new charger for my 4 gig stock 1st gen EEE. I suspect I might find I need a new battery shortly, but I'm sick of classes being held up because my vastly-more-powerful 2012 laptop doesn't want to display the video I'm trying to show my students. It's small, light, with good codec support and an SVGA port. Job's a good un.

Battery life and ARM

"I have a feeling that despite all the hype, Chipzilla's Haswell processor will ultimately not turn out to be the miracle that we've been promised. Those of us who value battery life are going to miss those small, cheap Atoms - or start turning to ARM for salvation."

There are two points to be made here:

1) ARM is the way forward anyway - the new Chromebook is _awesome_ once you put a proper Linux distro on it. It's spiritual predecessor, the Toshiba AC100 is pretty awesome, too, and smaller to boot.

2) The problem with battery life on that grade of machines is increasingly becoming the power draw of the screen. Technologies like PixelQi are hopefully going to address that in the near future but until those displays are available in at least a decent range of standard sizes and are drop-in compatible LVDS replacements for the current generation of LED backlit TFTs, I doube they'll see much market penetration, especially while they are unable to compete on cost.

Ah the Woolworths syndrone....

well all mis the demise, we all say how it's a tragedy and should be allowed to happen, but last I know these are businesses. If you don't buy the products, they don't sell them. It's called economics.

Syadmins etc are not 99.99% of the buying public.

Oh and Eadon, can it! Still waiting for the evidence that M$ (sic) went round and threatened to kill the 1st born of the manufacturers families unless they banned Linux from going on netbooks.

Come back Netbook

Couldn’t agree more with most of this.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a resurgence in Netbooks a few years down the line. Tablets are all well and good, they definitely have their place, but for so many applications, a keyboard and a few more ports is so mightily handy. Maybe a few years of people trying to do their accounts or proper photo editing on a tablet will remind them how handy a keyboard and trackpad can be. And I don’t need to worry about free disk space etc.

Just gotta hope my Acer Aspire does me until then.

Are the libroffice crew working on a port?

If not they should be...

I find Polaris/KingSoft OK for most things, and it should certainly suffice for bashing out some copy, but libre office (supporting a BT/USB mouse and keyboard) would be rather useful.

Work bought me an Asus EeePC 1018P a couple of years ago, to replace a Libretto that I'd run into the ground. I don't drive and have to walk all over the site (and elsewhere) so something small and light that slips in a backpack with decent screen, keyboard and battery life and USB ports to run serial consoles were the main requirements. The 1018P has all these, runs Debian Linux like a champ (I believe it came with some version of Windows pre-installed but that got nuked from high orbit using the Deb installer the first time I turned it on!), and has a decent enough dual core CPU to make watching videos, etc perfectly possible.

For a network tech/sysadmin/programmer/webby chap on the move, a netbook like this is a definite requirement. I've tried tablets from various manufacturers (inc Microsoft's Surface RT) and the only one that comes close is the Asus Transformer, which seems to try to give you the best of both worlds. Now if it could just have Debian sneaked on there instead of Android....

We didn't throw netbooks under the bus, Microsoft did

The first netbooks were a no-frills mini-notebook running Linux. They weren't great, but they were stable and reliable. With a huge amount of arm-twisting Microsoft were able to get the BestBuys of the world to only sell the Windows versions of the netbooks. As soon as the obligatory virus scanner was installed, the things ground to a halt. It was even worse when the Win7 Starter bloatware was forced onto the unsuspecting public. Add to that, the hardware specifications were very tightly controlled. If a reasonable screen resolution was to be had, then the full version of Win7 now Win8 had to be installed.

The tablet computers run an OS, which better suits lower performance devices. The truth is that people don't want Windows, but it was rammed down the PC user's throat. The result is that netbooks have become very unappealing. In fact, if the numbers are any indication, PCs have become unappealing.

Once again corporate greed and a whipped distribution channel have acted against the best interest of the computing public. Such behaviour is so common place that most people hardly pay attention.

Ian

Options

Since the manufacturers clearly know where they are headed, and they expect us to meekly follow, this surely opens an opportunity for some small company to produce a recharging station for laptop batteries. I know that there seems to be more battery types than there are laptop types but the bigger companies such as Lenovo and Dell have at least a hint of commonality and it should be possible to create a 'smart clip' to put onto the battery prior to connecting it to a standard 20v supply lead so that the clip handles the regulation and any interfacing for smart batteries (if such a thing actually exists).

I love my netbook

It's small enough to throw in a bag, cheap enough to not shed tears if it's stolen / broken, and (just) fast enough for stuff like browsing, casual gaming. I'll mourn netbooks when they're gone though I think in time that small laptops will creep back down in price soon enough especially when manufacturers realise people are not going to pay stupid money for an ultrabook. Asus are already tentatively going that way with their Vivo book devices.

MSI WIND ftw

Went looking for a cheap viable option for the girlfriend a couple of years back and got her an MSI WInd - not least because it came in hot pink apparently. Throw in the USB 3G Dongle and she was set. Survived everything until she ran it over with her car. Shes now using my i5 Toshiba laptop.

Nostalgia overload

I didn't think anyone still said "WIMP" in that way...*

* As opposed to merely casting aspersions on your rugged physique

Did anyone ever make...

a 10" netbook with 1280x800 res and decent battery life?

I think for the resolution > 1024x600 there had to be a non-Intel CPU. The best I can think of was the Samsung NC20 (12" 1280x800 with 1.6GHz Via Nano and 5 hours battery).

The other VIA based netbook I can recall (not hard, 'cos there's one on my desk) was the HP 2133 that was a 9" 1280x800 machine but slow & with appalling battery life.

Lightweight Linux (Bodhi Linux)

I have a crappy Samsung netbook. It came with Windows7 starter, this was completely so slow it was unusable.

Ubuntu faired a bit better but was still so slow.

I tried Bodhi Linux (which uses E17) and its insanely fast! Really snappy, in fact its like your using a different machine - more responsive than most people's Win7/Ubuntu installs...

If you have an old netbook try Bodhi Linux, you may surprise yourself.

They already existed but weren't cheap

They already existed. We had the Dell Latitude D400 series, the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad X series. However they' weren't cheap being typically £1200+.

But you can buy them used today for a little over 1/10th of that price. Because so many were used in business there are many on the used market that probably haven't been used at all.

I use a 2007 Dell Latitude D430 I use which cost me £100 to buy and £60 to upgrade to SSD. Core 2 Duo 1.33GHz ULV CPU, 12.1" 1280x800 screen, 64GB SSD. Various capacity batteries available including ones that will do all day. A 5200mAh battery can be bought for under £15 and will easily do 5+hrs.

Clearly

"We" didn't throw netbooks under the bus, Microsoft did, by failing to make available usable versions of Windows with reasonable hardware requirements.

Sadly, the option of using Ubuntu, for example, is really only a theoretical possibility for most of the market.

Agree - netbooks are still usable - love my Toshiba NB100 1.6Ghz Atom netbook

Got it in 2009. Upgraded the memory to the max 2Gb and put in a 128Gb Samsung 840 Pro SSD. Runs Windows 7 Pro 32 bit very capably. Swift little dinky work horse. Can change the battery too, the larger expanded battery appears to give me around 6 hours of charge.

Do Microsoft/manufacturers understand the market any more?

It seems to be becoming difficult to buy equipment now. Everything is a bit of a mis-mash. I don't think Microsoft/manufacturers understand that people now have several computers, tablets, phones and these are used for different tasks. Instead we still seem to be trying to shoehorn one computer for everything. I can't get a decent screen'd laptop for proper production work. I'd like something small and neat with a keyboard and a monitor connection for light travelling. I have tablets but they're for browsing/info gathering. And I have a phone. I don't need one thing trying to be all of these.

Used X-Series thinkpads are the way forward...

Robust, small, the ones I've found have had a great battery life, generally available on ebay for £100-£150 and once you've stuck Mint on them, you have your WIMP. Had two of them and the first is still going strong two years later. What more do you need?

What do you want the Netbook for

The big question is: What does one want to do with a Netbook on a conference?

If it is simply "Take notes, read email, do some minor work" than the "Netbook" still exists. Lighter, more compact, easier to use and with a better screen. Granted, it will cost more than the 450€ Lenovo S10-3 (after all needed upgrades) I bought IIRC in late 2010 but it delivers more in a smaller package. These things are called Win8 Tablet-PCs, more exactly the systems with an ACTIVE digitizer instead of the "Steve Jobs rememberance smear" finger only capacitiye stuff build into most ARM systems (IIRC the Note 10.1 is the only "in production" system with a WACOM - and the software like SNote on that is second rate compared to what Windows has out of the box)

And if I need to type something longer I can lug around a BT keyboard/mice. CAN! not must. I use Tablet-PC for notetaking/mobile work/presentations for quite some time now (granted, a 1kg core-i system) and while I have a BT keyboard in the carry-bag I have rarely (1 day per month) pulled it out. Handwriting -> Text translation works just fine, either directly or "post writing" (something SNote lacks) and even the aging Cedar Trail has more power than the Quad-Core ARM in the Note 10.1 (Compared that to an ATIV500)

One thing about the ancient MacBook, users could change batteries. But the version of OS X and, more critically Safari, are neglected and not what I think are secure.

Could go get a PowerPC version of Xubuntu, but RAM limitations may frustrate. Besides, how much time does a busy person want to spend resuscitating ancient kit?

Now, the problem wasn't that people didn't use netbooks, it was that the manufacturers couldn't make enough profit on them, and sales were usually at the expense of their higher margin products. They did not bring new customers to the marketplace. Microsoft considered Linux a threat in the sector and so XP's life as the OEM install was extended. Microsoft offered that XP with a discount pricing and subsidized the netbooks' marketing. That didn't work out so well because that meant the profitability problem transferred from the OEMs to Microsoft and it was all for naught as Linux, with the face of Android, became quite successful in mobile via phones, and Microsoft began to lose the crown as the platform one uses everywhere, and the crown as the choice OEMs make to profit. It also meant that as soon as Microsoft lost its motivation to carry the sector, the products disappeared.

Not enough power sockets?

Why not just chuck a power strip in your bag?

Netbooks were/are toys

Netbooks never made much sense but that never stopped marketeeeeers.

We didn't throw them, Intel&Microsoft did

Hats off to Intel for insisting on its incapable graphics junk and Microsoft for being lazy to shave off a modern Windows for netbooks.

If you ignore PR, you can still buy a proper AMD netbook with up to spec ATI gpu. Install either win 7 or stable Debian, there you have a real portable computer.

An idea: daft or not daft?

Hmmm.... What's the largest downside of netbooks? The screen (not enough vertical pixels!). What are ever more people buying? Tablets- some with lots of pixels.

How about a 'screenless netbook' -an x86 machine with keyboard, designed to use a tablet as its monitor? I appreciate that tablets don't usually work as dumb (USB) monitors, and that setting it to work as a wireless monitor using software would present challenges (if the x86 base doesn't have its own screen to setup this configuration) ... but still, it would be nice. Hell, if Brand X offered a tablet, and Brand Y offered a similarly specified machine but with the option to use it as a dumb monitor, I would buy Brand Y- if only to extend my normal laptop's desktop on occasion.

The x86 base would give you access to legacy software, choice of OS and allow all the usual connections and storage options. The ARM tablet / screen would give you instant-on checking of emails and whatnot.

Netbooks not attractive for regular users

Netbooks were always a niche market for geeks only. For a little *less* money you could get a notebook PC with much more power running an OS and applications most people already used. Almost every post here is how somebody modified the BIOS or changed the OS or installed more storage or more RAM. Most people aren't that geeky. Netbooks tried to price themselves cheap but even geeks had to modify what was being sold to make them more attractive.

I really wanted to buy a netbook, as I liked their size. But I realized that it was too little product for too much money, and I too would have to spend a lot of time tweaking it. In the end I simply couldn't justify it.

Did you know that the best current 11.6" netbook is the HP-dm1?

"Best" here used as a price point that commentators seem to be preferring, but the commentators here seem oblivious of the HP-dm1.

Probably because HP describe it as a laptop, rather than a netbook.

The description "Netbook" and its limited specifications were made by Intel and Microsoft, the 2GB maximum RAM, 1024x600screen, and special-edition 32-bit OS. In practise the initial production runs included b/g WiFi.

It is obvious that a small portable computer should have moved on to be dual-core (in the region of 1.6GHz+) running a 64-bit OS with a 1366 x 768 screen (11.6" popular size makes it cheap) have b/g/n WiFi, and although supplied with a HDD, should be able to be readily converted to a SSD (when the HDD then becomes used for an image back-up) with 4GB RAM to run Windows 7/8 that can be easily upgraded to 8GB (speedier for multiple applications running simultaneously).

In addition to 1920p HDMI out, the APU should flawlessly handle BBC iPlayer at HD specification if your Internet connection is up to it.

The above "netbook" exists - currently on sale at £299 from HP-UK as the HP Pavilion dm1-4341sa Laptop. It is now supplied with Windows-8 64-bit OS that I guess most of the users here might want to change with an app to have the "Start" appearance of Windows-7. Using WiFi /n makes the most significant difference to Internet use compared to the first generation netbooks. And it's HP- there's a maintenance manual and readily available parts.

I still have my Dell-910 (Mini-9) with built in 3G running XP - but it's a thought about how prices have moved that the 32GB SDHC card that is now permanently in place, and the 32GB button-USB stick, both used as if extra drives, would each have cost more than the initial selling price of the Mini-9, if they had been bought at the launch. Although the Mini-9 SSD was notoriously slow and also upgraded to 32GB - it's the dual core CPU running at about the same speed and the wireless/n that makes all the difference to the latest netbooks - my upgraded Mini-9, based on comparison with an MSI Wind U180 2GB Atom N2600 running Win-7 starter (also recommended if 10" size wanted, and the 1024x600 screen is acceptable).

Gonna miss netbooks...

Lenovo x120e. I have this little AMD Fusion-powered netbook, 4GB RAM, cheapest 64GB SSD I could find running Win 7, and 1366x768 11" display with extended battery. Totally usable as a road warrior. Has been all over North America with me for work and family vacations and works brilliantly for what I need. Charges devices. Long battery life. Plenty of performance for office apps. Usable screen resolution and keyboard to get actual work done, especially when RDP'ing back into work machines. Runs all my tools. Got it for about half the cost of an Air, including extended warranty and the SSD.

They just hit a sweet spot for a lot of people, they have enough performance to play movies on long flights and enough grunt to get "work" done without being tied to a power source for any significant period of time. And they're small enough to go into a laptop bag sideways, saving room for important stuff like my son's LeapPad.

Gonna hang on to this one. My wife has mostly taken it over anyways, such a small footprint it easily fits in chair pockets so she can get the latest celeb gossip and Youtube idiocy without moving too much and her 8-month pregnant belly makes a perfect table for it since it's so small and gives off almost no heat.

Netbooks were never given a chance to succeed.

Netbooks needed 2GB RAM with Windows Home and a 120GB SSD. I can live with a 600px high screen. But with 1GB Ram, a slow HD, and a crippled OS the user experience was pretty poor.

I'm using a old Gateway LT2016u (aka Acer Aspire One D250) in which I installed the above upgrade and I now find myself without an upgrade path. It's hard to find anything with similar specs at a reasonable price.

Had the user experience been better I'm sure Netbooks would have been much more popular.

R.

I have an answer for you - laptop with battery life of 16 hours (!) for $700

Few month ago I bought Acer w510 - 10in tablet on Intel Clover Trail processor, and I also bought keyboard-dock it plugs into. When plugged into keyboard-dock it becomes essentially a mini-laptop with 10" screen.

Tablet itself has 9 hours (realistically-8) of battery life on typical office apps, keyboard dock has second battery and doubles the battery life to 16 hours. Because it is a standard x86, all applications work fine.

This is the first time I have a laptop with this kind of battery life, and it is amazing - when you use it whole day and at the end of the day you find 50-60% battery left - this is unheard of. And it is not expensive - just $700 or so.

Perf is pretty decent - not as fast as Core CPUs, but more than adequate for office apps, web browser (easily open dozens of tabs), video, games.

Honestly - this is the best portable device I ever had (and I have iPad and many other devices).

"I had some devices to choose from for my journey. I could have taken my Alienware MX18, my first-generation Samsung Galaxy Tab, my Asus Transformer, my Samsung NF210 Netbook, my Acer Aspire 5110 or my ageing 2006 silver Macbook Pro. Which to choose?"

Any, who cares? How did journalists cope 5-10 years ago? Write stuff on dead trees. Netbooks were great, but marketing told people to go out and buy tablets, zero productivity but lots of (limited) fun.

Random thoughts

"have a spare USB port to charge my phones" - problem is, the power taken to charge a phone is less power for you to use. Could you not plug 'em in overnight?

"Office packages for Android are embarrassingly terrible." - it is hard enough to find a text editor worth a damn. I think it speaks volumes that an ancient Psion 3a outperforms Android in nearly every office-like application. Useful word processor, useful spreadsheet, workable (if a bit crappy) database....why is something like this not available for Android out of the box? I need a rudimentary word processor that understands basic formatting a hell of a lot more than I need a Facebook "share my music" app. I guess I'm just not the usual target demographic.

"Bad for us because it cripples the OS in order to achieve this goal." - which is one of the reasons I will never touch it. Living out in the country, you get used to eccentric broadband. Plus travelling etc. A good OS will use connectivity to supplement itself, not be reliant on it in order to do anything. Before anybody replies to this point - contemplate using an EDGE network running at ~12Kb/sec flat out. Wait, ADSL you say? Well that kills portability then doesn't it? Not everywhere has 3G/4G...

"I hope that by the time this netbook of mine is ready to give up the ghost, the answer is yes." - I also do not understand why the netbook is hated. I'm writing this on an eeePC. It is my "main" computer. On my lap in bed, on a table, in the living room, out in the garden on a sunny day, even in the car - it is there and ready and does what I ask. I don't need a 21" monitor, I just hold the ~9" one a little closer (being short-sighted helps blur the picture so you can consider it to be biological anti-aliasing). For its age it is quite a capable machine. If I was in the looking for a replacement, I would want something similar but more modern. Running Windows would be preferable (most of my software...) however I could be tempted. I also don't want something big, or a dopey tablet. I write stuff, I code, I "play" with a MIDI sequencer, I watch videos, I do internety stuff. I want a small friendly device with good battery life, respectable connectivity (one lame USB port doesn't cut it, even a Raspberry Pi offers better), a usable keyboard, and most of all something I can take with me and just put it down and start using it. My eeePC fits the bill. I will cry buckets when it is time to retire it and replace it with something that isn't a netbook 'cos they won't exist by then...

Battery life isn't a selling point in the consumer market

Once battery life isn't a design consideration, why would the ordinary consumer choose a low power cpu instead of a faster one for just a few bucks more? When you can get an Asus notebook with an i3 processor and 4GB of RAM for $400, it's a lot harder to sell an Atom based system for $300. (The netbook that you got 3 years ago for $300 never dropped much below $300, somehow).

Road warriors have specialist requirements, but want to pay mass market prices. Sorry, they only way to pay mass market prices is to buy what the mass market is buying, and that's not a $3-400 machine with a 9 hour battery.

Atom N2600, 1G RAM, 1024x600 for $244, or i3-2377M, 4GB RAM, 1366x768 for $400?

They both weigh about 3 lbs. Do you want 8 hours of battery badly enough to give up the usable screen and faster process?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215667

Acer Aspire V5-171-6675 Notebook Intel Core i3 2377M(1.50GHz) 11.6" 4GB Memory 500GB HDD

1366 x 768

11.22" x 7.95" x 0.82"-1.09"

3.05 lbs.

1 x USB 3.0

2 x USB 2.0

4-cell Li-ion Battery (2500 mAh)

Up to 5 hours

$399.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215442

Acer Aspire One AOD270-26Dkk Intel Atom N2600(1.60GHz) 10.1" WSVGA 1GB

1024 x 600

10.1" x 7.2" x 0.9"

2.87 lb

3 x USB 2.0

6-cell Li-Ion (4400 mAh)

8 Hour

$243.99

Kubuntu

You do know that unity/gnome are not the only option you have with ubuntu right? Just grab the kubuntu version.. it's linux, you _do_ have a choice ;)

Lamenting the eventual death of my netbook...

I'm lamenting the eventual death of my Asus Eee PC 1000HE netbook because there is simply no substitute in the same price range nowadays. I purchased it in spring 2009 and expected to use it just for traveling, but I instantly got hooked. It quickly became my primarily machine both at home and work, and it sees between 12-16 hours of use every day. It is still running stunningly well to this day on WinXP--what a nice and lean OS! At both spots, I just plug it in to a 24" monitor, and use wireless, full-size keyboard+mouse combos, and voila, a perfectly capable computing environment. For certain, it is slowish, but for 98% of my activity it is perfectly sufficient. I am a scientist, and do work with large data sets and images occasionally, so when I need to do really heavy number crunching I do it offboard. But to be honest, this is very infrequent--I usually prefer to just do everything onboard even if that means seeing the hour glass icon a little more frequently. Sure, I could do the same thing with an ultrabook, but at 3-4x the price!!!

"Is there a manufacturer brave enough? Is there a hardware maker brave enough?"

It's not a matter of bravery. It's a matter of profit. These are businesses.

The problem is that we're now locked in a circle: the companies provide sub-optimal devices designed fully for their own, and not the user's, advantage. And since they're all there is, and they're usually nice and shiny, we lap them up as they are.

And while I'm sure most people reading El Reg could quite easily manufacture their own ideal device using a two matchboxes and a spring, and then create the ideal efficient, compact, capable and secure OS, the vast majority of users wouldn't know where to start. So they'll keep buying the overpriced, under-functional, privacy-threatening, just-about-passable tat; which means the companies have no motivation to venture into the expensive and risky territories you're talking about. After all, what if another company has a better idea than yours? You might lose customers. Far better to lock the buggers in and keep them distracted with pretty.

(Written awkwardly and very slowly with lots of deleting on my overpriced, locked-in piece of shiny tat.)

ipad

You didn't really say what you are trying to achieve, but an ipad with a bluetooth keyboard case, sounds like it fits the bill. I realise it may not, but like I said, you didn't really tell us why it might not.

So... you want a Surface RT with a Type Keyboard then?

All that hardware and no backup power devices? I have a couple of Tecnet 4000mAH batteries that keep me going while I am out an about for about 5 days. Galaxy tab 2 turned on for a couple of hours a day and HTC smartphone on all the time.

Not saying that there are other criteria for what you take but power doesn't have to be one of them.

Personally I'd like to see a version of the galaxy tab three times as thick and heavy that would keep going for a few days between charges. I think the slimness thing has got a bit silly.

Transformer

Is a bloody good device I love mine but you're right about the Apps available for android. It seems that android is Phone only as far as development goes which is a real shame.

You do have more options than just thin client, Google Docs is reasonable for most needs, but Android really needs a better offline G-Docs to work really well.

Fix that and it would be superb.

Yes, Gnome3 is awful

Thankfully (unlike win8) there are alternatives

Take a look at http://www.mintlinux.com - ubuntu with a fairly lightweight cinnamon interface that's perfectly functional on netbooks and old hardware.

My wife loves it.

Think I'll stick with my Psion 5mx.... too many choices!

On THIS Planet...

Dear editorial person posing as a news-writer,

The entire premise of your article is invalid. I'm not sure about your planet, but here on Terra, one is allowed to purchase a spare battery. Problem solved, take whichever crappy Chinese electronics you wish to - assuming that it has not been designed by and for halfwits and therefore has a user-replaceable battery - and just pick up an extra battery.

Have a nice day.

Acer Aspire One still going strong

Typing this on my trusty Aspire One which has been going strong for over 3 years now. Paid £150 for it on Amazon, upgraded the battery to the nine-hour version, and it's just about perfect. Agree with the author about Unity, but that was an easily rectified mistake. This brilliant little machine (8.9" version) has served as temporary desktop replacement for my parents, home browsing device for my kids, emergency machine for work colleagues whose laptops died, long battery life video viewer on flights and almost-daily-use email and browsing machine on 3G when I'm locked in on a corporate network. I have considered upgrading for a larger keyboard and screen but just not worth it. I'm sure an upgraded spec is possible for sub-£100 now, if the manufacturers wanted to do it.