mini-notebook

Earlier this month, we spoke with Gerry Carr, marketing manager at Canonical, about the upcoming Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a specialized version of Ubuntu aimed squarely at the mini-notebook market. In the interview, Carr said that Ubuntu Netbook Remix would have a boot time of 5 to 10 seconds, but it appears that may have been in error. Carr contacted us this morning with this statement:

In our interview, I inadvertently gave you some misleading information with regard to potential boot times in upcoming Netbook products running the Ubuntu Netbook Remix or derivatives of it. I spoke about 5–10 second boot times, which is way off what we are seeing right now and was based on a misinterpretation of some data I saw in a very early spec for these category of machines. In short, I was plain wrong and we don’t want to set expectations we are ultimately going to disappoint in market.

We are working very hard to reduce the boot times we are currently seeing, which we think are too long. Right now we can’t give accurate estimates but it will be longer then 5–10 seconds for sure. When we have more accurate estimates, I will be happy to share it with you and your readers.

So there you have it folks: the real deal on Ubuntu Netbook Remix’s boot time. Much thanks to Gerry Carr for clearing up the situation.

I have to admit that I was a bit shocked when I saw the tentative price for the Asus Eee PC 1000H. And sure enough a lot of people agreed with me. If you looked at comments made by our readers and elsewhere across the Web there was a similar refrain: “$649?! For that kind of money I could get a real notebook.”

This kind of response is to be expected when you can nab a Dell Inspiron with a Pentium dual-core processor, 15.4-inch widescreen, 120GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and a DVD burner for $100 less. Or for the same price as the Eee PC 1000H you could pick up a 15.4-inch HP Pavilion notebook with an AMD Turion 64 X2 processor, 3GB of RAM, a DVD burner, and a whopping 250GB hard drive. The problem with this line of thinking is that it completely ignores what makes mini-notebooks compelling–the “mini” part.

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Acer sure moves fast. This morning, a little over a week after the company announced its first entry into the mini-notebook space, the Acer Aspire one (Linux version) arrived in our offices to much glee. We couldn’t wait to test Acer’s answer to the Eee PC, HP Mini-Note, and MSI Wind NB.

However, before we began testing, we talked to our Acer rep who informed us that ours is a pre-production model that has a handful of known bugs (primarily inconsistent Wi-Fi and video playback issues), which are being fixed before the system ships. We kept that in mind as we dug into the system and evaluated its potential.

Design and Aestheics

Upon getting our hands on the Acer Aspire one, one of our first thoughts is that this doesn’t look like a budget machine. Our system sports a glossy white lid on the outside (it will also be available in black and blue), and a glossy black bezel on the inside which frames the 8.9-inch, 1024 x 600-pixel resolution display Unfortunately, it was a bit of a fingerprint magnet.

What we didn’t like is that the Acer Aspire one has a gap between the bottom of the display and the base of the machine, which reminds us a little bit of the Everex Cloudbook, a mini-notebook we want to forget. Whether or not you like a gap between your screen and your notebook body is totally subjective so we won’t hold that against the Aspire one. Overall, it’s a nice look and one that we’d gladly whip out at a coffee shop without fear of pointing and giggling.

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Timed perfectly with the deluge of mini-notebook news coming out of Computex, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, announced its new operating system: Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Set to arrive preinstalled on mini-notebooks later this year, the Ubuntu Netbook Remix will feature some of our open-source faves such as Firefox 3, Thunderbird, Pidgin, OpenOffice, Rhythmbox, FBReader, Lifrea, and F-spot.

We sat down for a conversation with Gerry Carr, marketing manager at Canonical, to discuss the new Atom-powered OS that’s designed to make Ubuntu the face of the mini-notebook space.

What is Ubuntu Netbook Remix and how does it differ from other Linux distributions?
It’s not a distribution. Those are products with daily builds for end users to get the ISO and put on any PC. This isn’t. We’re calling it a remix, so basically it takes the core elements built into the desktop edition and it’s optimized for the Intel Atom processor. It’s built for small-factor machines and is fast-on, fast-off. It’s all about getting on the Web quickly, as that’s the primary user experience on these machines. It’s built equally for touch as it is for mass driven.

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As we mentioned before, the mini-notebook craze could be even hotter than the proverbial egg on a summer sidewalk. Face it: hot notebooks hurt—especially during shorts season. No one wants a burn on their legs from a laptop, a keyboard that heats up your fingers, or a mini-notebook that might cause a hot tub–like effect. So, does the MSI Wind keep its cool compared to other mini-notebooks? Let’s find out.

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All week long, the light sound of clicking has emanated from the Mini-Dome–the battle ground for LAPTOP Magazine’s Mini-Notebook Type Off. Our typing gladiators have faced missed keys, cramped hands and punctuation frustration as they furiously typed Hamlet’s soliloquy on three mini-keyboards.

Avram “The ESC Artist” Piltch, Emily “Key Crusher” Kizer, Jeffrey “Hands of Steel” Wilson and TJ “Furious Fingers” Fink took on the ASUS Eee PC, the HP 2133 Mini-Note and the CTL 2Go PC to determine which keyboard is the best for typing.

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Welcome to the third day of LAPTOP’s Mini-Notebook Type Off! To quickly recap, our four typing gladiators are pounding out the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the Eee PC, the HP Mini-Note, the 2Go PC and our control laptop, a ThinkPad with a full-sized keyboard. We are filming and posting their results throughout the challenge for your viewing pleasure.

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Welcome back to the Mini-Dome! In case you’re just joining us, LAPTOP searched all over our office for four typists who were brave enough to take on the ASUS Eee PC, the HP Mini-Note and the CTL 2Go PC in the ultimate type-off challenge.

Yesterday, our typing gladiators took on the ASUS Eee PC with varying results. Emily “Key Crusher” Kizer came in first with 57 words per minute (wpm); Avram “The ESC Artist” Piltch and TJ “Furious Fingers” Fink tied for second with 42 wpm and Jeffrey “Hands of Steel” Wilson took third place with 38 wpm.

Today, our typists enter the conference room with their fingers stretched and ready to conquer the HP 2133 Mini-Note. With a wear-resistant keyboard that’s only 8% smaller than a full size keyboard , the Mini-Note looks like it’ll be a walk in the park compared to the Eee PC.

Check out how our contestants fared and how they scored in the video below and come back tomorrow as our keyboard warriors risk hand cramps to take on the 2Go PC.

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Like everyone else, we here at LAPTOP are enamored with mini-notebooks, but we’re concerned about the size of the keyboards. While the HP Mini-Note sports an almost full-size keyboard with much more finger real estate than the Eee PC or the 2Go PC, it still has those awkward side-mouse buttons.

As we sat around the conference room mini-bar with our mini-notebooks, we thought, “what better way to test our notebooks than with a knock-down, drag-out mini-notebook type-off?”

We searched the far corners of our office for the fastest, the slowest and the fiercest typists to take on the challenge of typing Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy on a mini-notebook. Our four challengers and their typing scores on a regular-sized Lenovo Thinkpad are below:

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