Conservation of Processing Power is in effect, Gordon Moore would be happy. Processing power on the user end may be going down, but it's just transferred over to the servers. Stronger servers, weaker clients, more bandwidth...
The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time
21–22 of 22 posts
Re: The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
DVDs and CDs still exist? Oh. Anyway, the point of the 9" screen and 8GB flash drive is that it makes the machine easier to carry around with you. You can pick it up and shove it in your bag without worrying about whether the disk spun down or not. The battery lasts 6 hours, so you don't have to constantly wander around looking for an outlet. You just open the thing up, and can work for as long as you like. It's not…
You don't need to spin down laptop HDD, you can dropkick a modern laptop without doing any damage to the HDD. Also 6 hours of battery life is fairly normal for non gaming laptops these days. I think Netbooks are a solid replacement for a PDA if it's with you, but IMO they tend to be a poor compromise between a primary machine a portable one. They don't fit in my pockets and if I have a bag I only really care about we…
They don't fit in my pockets and if I have a bag I only really care about weight at that point.
Maybe, but I find the eee a lot easier to carry around when I am at conferences. Sometimes you need to move pretty quickly, and the eee makes that easy. A big laptop has to be closed and stowed away in your backpack. The netbook just floats around with you. (It's hard to describe, so try it sometime.)
Many "normal people" tend to have a web browser (word processor etc) and a IM client open at the same time so Netbooks resolution is still a fairly large sacrifice for most normal people.
That's why the non-Windows netbooks go for a GUI that uses virtual desktops (or rather, all the apps are full-screen). This works very well; the notification tray gets your attention when your IM window needs you, but otherwise you just keep the browser maximized.
(This is not how I use my netbook, FWIW, but I am not a "normal person". I do my IM-ing from inside emacs; so I usually have 3 xmonad desktops; emacs, an xterm, and a full-screen web browser.)
Anyway, the reason why people need 1900x1200 on a laptop is because they don't know how to manage windows properly. Learn that, and you can do fine with a 9" screen.