High Speed Internet Access (HSIA): Mobile Broadband

Reasons to Buy a Netbook?

Netbooks are much cheaper than a full size laptop. Typical prices are between $300 and $800 dollars and yet you can accomplish a lot of the same things that you can do on a laptop. They’re small and light which makes them ideal for carrying around. Manufacturers are scrambling to get a share of the market as the interest in them has exploded over the last 12 months so they are getting better and cheaper.

What Can You Do With Them?

You can browse the web and keep up with emails. This is what was envisaged to be their primary use but really the power of netbooks has grown so that the usage has extended to playing music, watching videos, downloading photos and keeping up with social media sites. For business users there is access to office applications such as word and excel. They can also be secured with anti-virus softare and put on a network.

Who Do Netbooks Appeal To?

Netbooks appeal to anyone who finds a need to access the web, have a portable entertainment device or conduct work whilst on the move. Initially they were developed for business people who travel frequently and also students who spend a lot of time on campus and need access to a computer. However, the concept of mobility is now being extended to mobility within the home or office environment. Netbooks can be carried around easily from room to room which makes them ideal for accessing the web anywhere within the house or watching entertainment.

What Are The Downsides of Netbooks?

The small size and weight of netbooks means that there has to be trade offs. In terms of ease of use, the keyboard is smaller than that of a full size laptop. It can vary between 85% and 95% of a full size keyboard. This can be a real downside for people who find it hard to adapt to typing in more cramped conditions. However, keyboard design for netbooks is getting better all the time. Manufacturers are finding ways to maximise the keyboard size within the overall limitations of the chassis size. There have also been inroads made into improving the keyboard design to make the experience of using a slightly smaller keyboard as user friendly as possible.

The screen size is smaller as well. Netbooks typically have an 8″ to 10” screen.

The third main drawback is battery power. Netbook batteries currently last between 2 hours and 7 hours on average. This can mean that being away from mains power for any substantial length of time is a problem.

Netbook Features

Most netbooks have a common set of features which include USB ports, built in wi-fi, a web cam and card reader. Some, but not many, have built-in 3G mobile broadband. Nearly all of them run on the Intel Atom platform and most have 1GB of RAM. Windows is the most common operating system. Hard drives are either solid state drives, which are more durable but more expensive, or spinning hard drives. Hard drive size is between 60GB and 160 GB. Typically the battery is a 3 cell battery but some netbooks have a 6 cell battery either as standard or an optional extra. This is an overview of features with more focus on the main issues in the following paragraphs..

Netbook Platforms

Most netbooks run on the Intel Atom platform and it has been hugely successful. Intel are currently working on a second generation platform codenamed pinetrail or pineview. This platform will have a version specifically for netbooks codenamed pinetrail-m. The delivery date is scheduled for the second half of this year.

The platform is expected to deliver a 50% drop in power consumption and a 70% reduction in size. The benefits will be longer running time which should help the problem with battery length, faster speeds and faster boot up and shut down times.

Netbook Operating Systems

Windows is the most popular operating system for netbooks although some models offer Linux as an alternative. Linux is a much cheaper option than Windows but hasn’t gained the wide acceptance from the netbooks user base.

Windows 7 is due to be released later this year and will run on netbooks. The benefits according to Windows Consumer Product Marketing will be a smaller OS footprint, faster boot-up and shut-down times and improved power management for enhanced battery life.  There will also be other benefits for mobile broadband that having been fully enumerated yet.

The other latest contender for a netbook operating system is Google Android. Android was developed for the mobile market and is optimised for web browsing. It is open source which is seen as a big selling point over Microsoft Windows.

Netbook Hard drives

The alternatives for hard drives in a netbook are currently a solid state drive (SSD) or a spinning hard drive. The advantages of SSDs are that they use less power thus extending the battery life. They have no moving parts and so are more shock resistant, and they boot data faster. The main disadvantages are that they tend to bump up the price of the netbook although costs for SSDs are coming down. Also they have less storage capacity. SSD hard drives in a netbook are typically 64GB whereas spinning hard drives are often up to 160GB storage capacity. There are some hybrids on the market which combine a solid state drive and a spinning hard drive in the one machine.

Batteries in Netbooks

Battery length is a big issue with netbooks. It’s a catch 22 that netbooks need to be small and light in order to be ultra portable. Portability is needed for when you’re on the move without access to mains power and yet the tiny design of netbooks means that battery power has been lacking.

Netbooks come with either a six-cell battery or a three-cell battery and, of course, the six-cell battery outperforms the three-cell one. Battery life currently ranges from about 7 hours to about 2 hours. Of course it depends on what you do. Watching movie clips will use more power than processing emails. We should see improvements in batteries over the coming months with manufacturers working on ways to reduce power consumption.

Which Netbook to Buy?

Here’s a list of the best netbooks to buy online at the best prices. We update this list frequently with the top deals around and the latest models.