Computers The once niche, book-sized devices are going mass market

B3

Steve Makris
For Canwest News Service

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EDMONTON - The notion of portable computing on book-size laptops, half the size of the ordinary variety, is starting to catch on.

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Steve Makris/Edmonton Journal

Set against a traditional 15-inch laptop, four new NetBook PCs with 8.9-inch screens are smaller and lighter and do most things that people want to do when on the road. From left: The Asus EEE PC, The HP Mini-Note PC, the ACER Aspire One and the Dell Inspiron Mini 9.

Originally spurred by niche companies like ASUs, with its hot-selling EEE PC, the mainstream consumer market will soon be flooded by NetBooks, Net PCs and Mini PCs. Computing giants like HP and Dell are jumping into the new computer category.

These miniature laptops, starting at $300 and running as high as $800, feature seven-inch to nine-inch diagonal screens with high resolution. This means sharp, picture-like detail, but smaller onscreen icons and text that took me a while to get used to.

With one of these models, you'll soon find out if you need glasses.

NetBooks typically use solid-state memory ranging from four to 16 gigabytes, but are now including larger hard drives at the expense of battery life and higher prices. They also include a slot for additional SD memory, now readily available up to 16 GB, for transferring files to and from other computers.

They also run on smaller chips from Via or Intel's newest Atom battery-miser processors, and most come in Windows XP (not Vista) or cheaper Linux flavours. They all have wireless and Ethernet Internet connectivity and don't include optical drives. You may want to take advantage of free online applications readily available in the Linux world, or use Google's free online word processor. Most also have webcams.

Although they can manage to run more than one application at a time, the standard one-GB of RAM memory runs out soon if you run several simultaneous applications. This isn't powerhouse computing, folks.

"Their advantage is small size and light weight, less than one kilogram, with full Internet and PC software capability," said Lee, noting that more seven-inch screen models will be replacing the original nine-inch models for more comfortable viewing and typing. I installed and ran Photoshop, and although it ran a bit slowly on larger files, it showed how these mighty wonders can handle most of your computer applications.

Shopping tips:

- New models are coming out every month, with design improvements and better performance for your dollar, so beware of sudden stock-clearing sales of older models (although these may be good enough for you) and read up online for the latest models.

- Despite their size, most won't run continuously for more than three hours on one battery charge, compared to better but pricier full-size laptops that can last twice as long. An extra battery for long trips is useful.

- Try typing on them on both a table and your lap. If you are tall, some models don't allow the screen to open far enough for best viewing. They all have standard QWERTY keyboards, but the arrangement of the extra F1-F12 keys varies, as does the placement of the left/right click buttons on either sides or the bottom of the mouse touch pad.

- For full-screen default view of most websites, look for a minimum 8.9-inch screen.