Comments on: Netbook Experiment Report #1

By: Steve Sharkey

Steve Sharkey — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:18:51 +0000

How’s the article coming along – it’s been nearly 2 months now, surely the netbook isn’t THAT slow ;o)

By: Joey deVilla

Joey deVilla — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:46:44 +0000

Andrew: I’m in the middle of writing an article that answers your questions, so watch this space!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:36:22 +0000

> I’ll post more updates as I have more experiences!

As VS2010 has been released, and includes a number of performance improvements over beta 2 – what’s it like on your netbook now (if you’ve tried it, that is). Also, are you running 1GB or 2GB or RAM?

I too am contemplating using a netbook as a primary VS2010 development machine and would greatly appreciate your real-world experience

Thanks,

Andrew :o)

By: BIG Day Today

BIG Day Today — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:39:54 +0000

You are seeing netbooks from the perspective of a power user and Jeff is trying to bring to the table big words like democracy near a trendy-fancy little hardware.

The truth is at my girlfriend: she wants a notebook just because it can feet on her shoulder bag …. ooo …. and because netbooks are sweet.

Nobody buys netbooks because are cheap. There are a lot of netbooks which are more expensive than a laptop.

By: Brent Ashley

Brent Ashley — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:36:52 +0000

Hi Joey! As you know, I use an Acer Aspire One with the Atom processor as my main machine. I have to agree with Jeff that it would be nice to have a beefier processor. It’s a shame that there aren’t more netbooks available with better specs – it’s not necessarily the form factor that’s limiting, it’s the (artificial?) cpu and memory design constraints. What is stopping manufacturers from offering higher-powered netbooks, I wonder?

While I do some Rails development with Aptana’s Eclipse-based RadRails IDE on the netbook, I use RDP to our development server to run Visual Studio, which would be too heavy for the netbook. My working style no longer necessitates that I have all the horsepower in my own hands as long as I can remote into anything I like. That’s a netbook design goal – it only falls into your zone of suck if you’re expecting your netbook to pull the weight of a workstation replacement laptop.

I also don’t use the builtin keyboard and display when at home or work – I have an external keyboard, mouse and monitor. We can have a number of these brainless stations at the office for anyone to sit at and plug in their notebook/netbook. This mitigates the form factor suckage.

Video definitely sucks with the Atom processor – not sure if the chipset contributes to this.

Bottom line, though, is that for the $2000 we used to have to spend on a single developer laptop, we can now equip 4 people with gear that will do the job. This is important in a startup environment. Financial suckage is a daily fact of life for those who don’t have whole departments dedicated to selecting the corporate laptop standard.