EirePreneur

Mr. Arrington, I challenge thee to a duel...

.. a typing duel. Michael Arrington is so set on linkbaiting in his rant against netbooks (I know, I'm a sucker) that he completely forgets to make a coherent argument. In fact he could hardly have picked more moot targets for the titular three reasons why 'netbooks aren't good enough'. Let's take them one at a time -

Keyboard

Arrington says, "Any normal adult can’t type fast on it without constantly hitting the wrong keys because there is no space between them."

I say, "Last time I checked I was a reasonably normal adult and I'm 95% as fast a touch typist on the Dell Mini 9 keyboard as I am on the full-sized external - I know because I've tested myself"

And for the doubting Thomases among you I'll be giving 'demonstrations' at OpenCoffee Limerick next Thursday. In fact I'll buy coffee for anyone who beats me in a speed test on their regular sized laptop. So there!

Too Little Horsepower

Arrington says, "If you have an email application open and a couple of tabs in a browser, there’s a lot of slow down. One Vista machine I’ve been testing tends to crash after a few minutes of use."

I say, "Vista!?! So he got his hands on the only netbook (the HP 2133 Mini-Not) that uses Vista and decided to base his impressions on that. Now that's just ridiculous"

"My Dell Mini 9 runs XP with greater speed than the Inspiron 510m (full sized) laptop it replaced. I rarely have fewer than a dozen Firefox tabs open on it and yet never notice any sluggishness. Besides, these are netbooks, not desktop replacements - the whole point is quick and convenient access to web apps, checking email, Twittering and so on. Not the mathematical modelling of the stock market!"

The Screen

Now this one's the real kicker. Arrington says, "These machines have screens ranging from 7 inches on up. The worst thing about the screens is vertical resolution, which is generally 600 pixels.... the iPhone or iPod Touch, with a tiny 3.5 inch screen, has a vastly better browsing experience than any Netbook"

I say, "Huh? What planet is this guy living on? The resolution of the iPhone is 320 x 480. On the Mini 9 it's 1024 x 600. Michael's problem isn't with the hardware it's with software settings. Someone needs to show him how to change the font size on his browser and view full screen with F11. Hey, you can even rotate the display if you just must read in an iPhone-ish portrait mode."

Which is a long winded way of saying Arrington you're full of s**te. But Don Crowley says it more eloquently --

"Netbooks are for those with a small budget or those on the move (In which case it is the second PC). You won't use photoshop on a netbook. Its surfing, email and office docs - preferably stored in the cloud. I smell a PR conspiracy here."