Jorg's Ultimate Netbook
I’m a real Internet nerd, I have my complete digital life stored in the cloud. Some people will start arguing that that is not something very smart, or that it’s dangerous and I could give you my whole list of actions/thinking’s what I did to make it ‘safe’. But that’s not the point of this post.
Last week when I was on vacation, I thought thinking what was not yet in the cloud yet on my laptop. I opened my laptop and started looking what I had installed on it. Thanks god, it was a very short list. I remember the days that when I clicked on Start my whole page would fill up with lists of stuff I had installed on my pc. Here’s is the complete list:
Windows XP,7-zip, Belastingdienst (Software for sending my taxes directly to the dutch ‘IRS’), Dropbox, Evernote, Filezilla FTP-client, Foxit Reader, FTD, Google Chrome, Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Talk, ID Software Quake Live plugin, K-Lite codec pack, Mozilla Firefox, Imageburn, Network Associates McAfee, Newsleecher, Picasa 3, Videolan VLC, Tweetdeck, Openoffice
Windows XP and McAfee came pre-installed on my new laptop 1,5 years ago and the rest of the software I use is all free. So all in all I say that 95% of the time I’m working on my laptop I do this in Google Chrome. My non working time mostly consists of using my laptop as a media player for my movies, music and photo’s. If my laptop gets stolen, or falls down the table and it breaks it hard disks… no problem. Everything I have on hard disk is back upped by dropbox the minute it is created or changed.
So instead of a big clumsy laptop I need a new and smaller Internet device/media player. I recently got myself a G1 android phone and I’m very pleased because of the easy OS and great functionality the phone has. If only it had a big screen and keyboard, I think it would already be enough as a laptop replacement.
My ideal Internet device would have the following features:
- Connectivity: WiFi, Blue-tooth, Giga-Ethernet, HSDPA
- Battery Life: at least a 6-cell battery that last for 8 hours or more. A whole working day without recharging.
- Good keyboard, nothing strange or too small
- Good screen that is viewable in every condition. Also directly in the sun. Think 1280 x 800 as minimum for ideal working environment. Think 9/10 inch max. Touchscreen would finish it to make it a good media player as well.
- Hardware that does the job: working in the cloud and acting as a mediaplayer. Oh and of course the mandatory web cam for videoconferencing.
- Good expandable solid state memory options, USB ports and HDMI.
- Doesn’t look like a toy! In other words: I can bring it as a business device to customers.
- Custom Linux OS: Android would do the trick for me. The tight Google integration is ideal for my needs.
At the moment the yet to be released Asus Eee PC T101h is the closest thing coming to it, but many other manufacturers are releasing new netbooks every month that come closer and closer. I still have a few months before I must buy a new device, so I keep an eye out to some new and interesting netbooks that come out and update about it here.
I don’t expect Android to be available on any netbook before the end of this year, but some people already made it possible to run Android on a regular Asus Eee PC. I just love open source and its enthusiastic community.
