… is a screen appropriate for working on the Net (which is what Netbooks are supposedly for).
Most websites today are designed at a resolution of 1024×768, and guess what: there’s not one single (good) netbook on the market today that that can display that. All of the current crop, including the deluxe Asus S101 max out at 600 vertical resolution.
The only exception was the first version of the HP Mini, at a generous 1280×768 on a small screen, but while HP should be commanded for lowering the price on the second generation, they blew it by downgrading the screen to 1024×600. Dell’s new Mini 12 comes with 1200×800 resolution, but they blew it, too, by pairing the sleek machine with Vista: before it even hit the market the judgement was out: sleek, but slow.
So that leaves us with no decent notebook as of now. I’m joining Crunchgear’s call: Netbook makers, stop adding fluff (although up to 9 hours of battery life is more than fluff), gives us the one thing we need: decent screen resolution. Note: I’m just making the assumption that the new Asus is still limited to 1024×600, since none of the avalible sources mention screen resolution. Think about it: yes, Netbooks are becoming inexpensive toys, or fashion items for some, but how can they sell this thing without mentioning screen resolution? Utter nonsense…
Conference season is coming, I badly need a Netbook (see, Dennis, there’s my use case) but I want one I can actually use.
Related posts:
- Should You Redesign Your Website to 800×600 – Or Wait For Netbook Makers to Wake Up and Give Us Decent Screens?
- Asus eee PC: Size Matters
- ASUS Eee PC 1000HE: A Worthy Netbook Upgrade
- Asus Eee PC 1000HE with new battery, keyboard available for preorder
- ASUS announces new Eee 1000HE with N280 CPU and 9.5 hours battery life
- ASUS Eee PC 1000HE Arrives Boasting a New Keyboard and Intel Atom N280 Processor
I get 1024×768 on my ASUS EEE 901, maybe you need to recheck?
Zoli – I need one too – perhaps some nice vendor wants to have their product tested by the pre-eminent cloud computing blog???
🙂
Ben (Young) I did: Asus 901 specs: LCD: 8.9 inches, 1024 x 600 pixels.
I’m with you, Zoli. Vertical space is way more useful than horizontal space for most non-programmers (including me). Give me 1024 x 768, or give me…a bigger discount.
I’m also holding out for bigger SSDs. Given the current rapid rate of price declines (just saw a 1000HA with 160 GB HDD on sale for $300 w/ free shipping), I predict that by midyear (when I’ll want to pick up a netbook for a vacation trip), I’ll be able to get a netbook with 1024 x 768, 64 GB SSD, and XP for less than $300. At which point, it will have more power and disk space than my old ThinkPad, and thus I’ll have no more excuses left!
I picked up an Aspire One in August and I’ve had no problems with the screen size. It’s not unusual for me to work 3-4 hours in the browser. Some web sites may be “optimized” for a larger screen, but in my experience it doesn’t interfere with actually using them. If anything, I have the opposite problem — my eyes get tired, but a quick Ctrl-+ to increase font size fixes that right up.
I own a HP 2510 12″ Tablet notebook. I love it except for the screen resolution. Where it is a touch pad, it doesn’t have as sharp a resolution and I was working on it for long periods of time, it caused eye strain and headaches. I had to buy a different monitor and plug in when at home. Otherwise – wouldn’t trade it for the world. Powerful, and does everything I want and the Twistable screen is a great feature.
The new netbooks don’t hold a candle to my 2-3 inch bigger cousin and I can take this anywhere they go 🙂