What to Seek in an Older Subnotebook? 250
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?
consider... (Score:4, Interesting)
its got a fairly good battery life; hours on the web (I think I get over 5 doing normal stuff and a little less watching stuff on the BBC. It can do emails in a similar way to thunderbird and you can stick ssh on it fairly easily from a hack from 1.1.4 using ziphone
No surfing without a real machine (Score:4, Interesting)
For Email, SSH, and Websurfing using a text browser you could consider something like the Psion Netbook.
The thing that bugs me is that noone seems to have come out with a "new" Psion Netbook. Same configuration, but up to date. With Windows CE (aka Windows Mobile) or Linux, or some other proprietary os. A notebook with very low power and a bad screen that lasts more than 10 hours, but has a full keyboard. But you couldn't play Doom II on that one anyways. Though I wouldn't want to. SSH, email, word processing and organizer with a large screen and a full keyboard would be plenty for me.
The answer may be Nokia N800 or N810 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can find one, an old Sony 505-series is an excellent option. You've got options for a fast P1/MMX or a first-gen P2 (depending on specific model), 128-256MB of RAM and a 8-10GB hard disk is common. It's roughly a 10" screen and about 3 lbs.
What you DON'T get is an optical drive or built-in wifi. You'd need to source those separately, though booting from a USB disk and using a PC-Card or Cardbus wifi card isn't terribly difficult.
Because they're late-90s vintage, they're getting harder to find. However, because of their age, they're also much cheaper than current sub-compact models.
Re:why? (Score:5, Interesting)
sub-notebook- $75
specific ram upgrade to 512 MB- $75
battery replacement- $50
PCMCIA 54g card- $30
Total= $230 + 4 hours time to reformat upgrade, etc.
I would think the EE @ $299 looks like a better buy because you also get a warranty. Let's face it notebooks are commodity goods now.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No surfing without a real machine (Score:1, Interesting)
It can also run Quake3
Check out the Nokia N810 (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently got a Nokia N810 "Internet Tablet", as they call it. It's pocket-sized, much smaller than an Eee for instance, and a little bigger than a Palm TX, but it has a 400 MHz TI OMAP CPU (an ARM with a DSP core glued on), an 800x480 screen, a very usable slide-out mini keyboard, and built-in Wi-Fi, all for $400 (street price). Oh, and it runs Linux. (It's not a cell phone, though it will do VOIP over the Wi-Fi.)
Battery life is excellent: several hours of active use, and several days at idle (you don't really turn it off, you just lock the touch screen and it goes into low-power mode). I recently used it to take notes at a seminar -- in 3 or 4 hours I don't think I used more than 1/3 of a charge.
The Web browser it comes with works very well. Some of the other software is a little rough (the email client doesn't work well in IMAP mode, for instance). It runs SSH and a VNC viewer. I don't know about Doom II, but it plays video pretty well (doesn't always keep up with the frame rate, but it's adequate for pr0n).
These things are all tradeoffs, of course, but I'm happy to take the mini keyboard and the small but hi-res display in exchange for a device that's just barely small enough to carry everywhere, clipped to my belt.
Re:why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
Its a ARM so it has more oomph than a Pentium running at 190mhz.
Using a browser like Konqueror would work fine.
I've run Seamonkey and KDE 3.5 on a Pentium 1 laptop before.
Perfectly acceptable for surfing the net and using SSH.
KDE 4 would be even better.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The MobilePro is a great example. It has a WiFi connection and a wired one (thanks to PC cards), solid state storage (CF card), I get to surf the Web, it doubles as a book reader and manga reader, I can listen to streaming online radio or MP3's (got speakers and headphone jack), I play games, edit and view office docs, see PDF's, I have SSH, Total Commander, email, Skype, YM, IRC, remote desktop and VNC, runs Python, got all kinds of file tools (search and so on) etc.
Basically, with the exception of playing movies (although it can do that too with some limitations) or big-ass games or P2P, it's everything a regular desktop is. All that in under 10x5 inches, a regular keyboard, touchscreen, 400 MHz CPU and 64 MB of RAM. Did I mention it has a 16bit screen (65535 colors)? Or that it's a USB host and can use USB printers and mice?
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
Second the iPod Touch (Score:3, Interesting)
- apt-get (with Cydia, a rather nice GUI)
- full BSD subsystem (available through Cydia) -- note: this is not the same as the stripped down one on the device, or the one available through Installer.app -- it's a full-fledged toolset, akin to that on desktop Mac OS X
- full OpenSSH port (both client and server)
- usable as a drive, with contents shared via both AppleShare and Samba
- 420Mhz ARM w/ 128 MB RAM
- really light
- portable: its as thin as a pencil
- cheap ($229 for 8G refurb from Apple -- that includes a 1 year warranty)
- real-world battery life of around 5 hours using WiFi (my best for surfing, etc is around 5:05)
- real-world battery life of around 8 hours for non-WiFi "desktop replacement" stuff (typing, mucking about on the command-line, etc.)
- real-world battery life of around 16 hours for music playback
- kick-ass browser (likely better than you'll be able to do on an old subnotebook)
There is one downside: DOOM isn't in a playable state yet, although there is a port in progress. Still, I think SCUMMVM and Frotz make up for that
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
only the poorly designed sites do this. All the correctly designed sites still render on older or lass capable hardware.
Just because the current crop of trendy webdesigners cant pull their heads out of their rear and make their sites work for low bandwidth or low power machines does not mean that the entire world does this.