What to Seek in an Older Subnotebook?

cyclomedia writes "I'm looking to buy a subnotebook. For those who think that this form factor was created by the Asus EEE (as, seemingly, does Wikipedia) it might interest you that the current forerunner in my search is a 190MHz,64MB,640x480 256 colour beastie known as the Psion Netbook, circa 2001-ish. Basically, I have a desktop, a server and an Xbox and so truly only want it for surfing, email and the odd bit of SSHing home on weekends away. The aforementioned Psion is, however, of the StrongArm processor variety, which nudges it down on the desireability meter, but the fact that there exist Wi-Fi cards for its 16-bit PCMCIA slot does score it extra points. So, anyone here got any suggestions of what to look out for on ebay? So long as I can play Doom II on it too, that is." Any other suggestions for wireless capable subnotebooks with better battery life than things like the EEE or HP's 2133 Mininote?

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously stating that you're considering a 190mhz machine, with 64MB of RAM, with a 640x480 8-bit display, as a web browser? Do you use the same web I do? Even applying CSS rules would crush that machine.

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

what do you have against the eee or 2133 mininote? you sound like you're purposely making this hard for yourself. are these old junk laptops stupidly cheap? is the eee really unaffordable for you?

Why not just get an EEE?

[Squarewav]

You'll be hard pressed to find another subnotebook that has better specs that is cheaper, new or used. They can even run some games that are a few years old (with the windows verity)

in terms of "classic" subnotebooks that are x86 that you still might be able to find is the toshiba libretto line. I think they ranged from 90Mhz to 133 and ran win95. But you'll be hard pressed to find one that the battery still works. Thats really the problem with old laptops is they tend to be broken in someway normally the batteries

Re:why?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Personally, I'm looking at stupid cheap computers for some cluster computing research. For that purpose, yes the newer ones are too expensive. If I could get four @100 instead of one @ 400, that would obviously be better.

batteries

[pbjones]

if you are buying an old machine and you want to travel, look carefully at battery life and replacements.

Re:why?

[jay-be-em]

Why wouldn't you just get a semi-decent machine and run a bunch of virtual machines on it? Seems a hell of a lot more practical and easy to administrate, not to mention economical in terms of power usage.

Advantage of the Eee PC

[blind biker]

The Eee PC has an advantage over the competition: Asus sold the shit out of them. And because they ran Linux first (and WinXP later), there's a ton of various Linux-for-Eee projects going on. And considering all the software that runs on Linux, I'd say the Eee PC is better equipped both in terms of software available for it, as well as replacement hardware (because there are so many of them by now in the world).

Re:why?

[ozmanjusri]

I'd add the Nokia N800 to that list. I picked one up for AU$330 brand new, so second hand versions would likely be cheaper.

Re:Seriously?

[SanityInAnarchy]

A completed KDE 4 would be better. The current "release" (calling it a beta would be generous) would have severe problems at that resolution.

Re:why?

[vux984]

No. It's 100% CPU, with each VM taking 25%. You can only get as much CPU power out as you put in, and virtualisation doesn't magically generate CPU from air. As the GP said, "virtualisation is not the answer to everything".

And that matters why? if you are doing 'cluster computing research', presumably you are interested in how the cluster works, not how absolutely fast it is. If it runs at 25% what it would run on 4 dedicated machines, how often does that matter?

And even if you if DO care how absolutely fast it is, throwing one modern 1GHz CPU at 4VMs is still going to outperform 4 190MHz CPUs from the 90s, which is what the OP is suggesting having a preference for.

As the GP said, "virtualisation is not the answer to everything".

That's true. but nobody has made a good case for why it isn't an acceptable answer for THIS.

Re:Seriously?

[SpooForBrains]

"How about you stop and think what specs PC's had at the beginning of the 90's, and still people somehow managed to get their stuff done. Apps haven't changed that much in between, we basically do most of the same stuff now that we did back then."

No, apps haven't changed a lot in that time, but the internet certainly has - rather a large amount. Most sites now rely on DHTML/AJAX/CSS/whatever to render properly, and are significantly larger (in terms of amount of rendering code, number and size of images, etc.) than they were even in the late 90s. Add to that the fact that most web designers take a 1024x768 screen and a broadband connection as a benchmark to design for, and suddenly browsing the internet on a low-powered device becomes a lot more problematic.

Re:Seriously?

[genderbunny]

A man after my own heart. Though I have to point out that while a 900c (or a 790, which was a bit more stable and easy to use in my experience) should do everything required of it by the OP, there are a couple of drawbacks:

While it's a lot easier to find ARM programs than it was to track down MIPS-compatible binaries for my old 790, they're still pretty few and far between, as most programs will be written for the PocketPC, and some of them don't port over to an H/PC gracefully. Also, it's not very portable. At all. While it's not bulky, it's a far cry from being pocket-sized, and the problem is made worse when there's a WiFi card sticking out the side. (Not to mention that it's getting harder to track down 16 bit WiFi cards with CE drivers these days.)

That said, there's a reason I still keep my 900c around despite the brand new laptop charging right next to it at the moment.