ABC of Netbooks

netbooks

They are small, smart and cost less than Rs 20,000. But what does one get after buying a netbook? we answers the 6  most important questions that should come to the mind of every person before taking home a netbook.

1 Are netbooks notebooks as well? What is the difference?

By looks alone, there is little to distinguish netbooks from small notebooks, i.e. the so-called subnotebooks. However, the price tags are a proof of the huge difference between the two. While netbooks are available from Rs 16,000 onwards, it is normal for a mid-range sub-notebook to cost around Rs 1,30,000 or more. This is because the sub-notebooks are high-tech notebooks in mini sizes. The manufacturers are always trying to minimize the weight and the dimensions of the notebooks without affecting their performance and equipment. As opposed to this, netbooks are a leaner combination of inexpensive and low performance components. They therefore have small displays with poor resolutions, fewer ports for connections, and low computing power.

2 Who requires a netbook?

Netbooks are used essentially to write emails and letters, maintain blogs, bid live in online auctions or just to check Wikipedia real quick. If you have to do much more than this and want a certain desktop size, memory and hard disk speed or a significantly higher computing power, forget buying a netbook.

3 Which accessories are useful? Can I compensate for all the limitations of a netbook using accessories?

You can easily compensate for most of the inherent limitations of a netbook by using accessories. For instance, an external USB hard disk helps in case of limited memory. A USB DVD writer replaces the missing optical drive. If you want to use your notebook outdoors along with the Internet, it is advisable to buy a USB data card. With this you get decent speeds while surfing and so you do not have to compromise at least in that regard. However, the accessories cannot compensate for basic restrictions like poor computing power or a small screen, which is why netbooks are so cheap.

4 So what can a netbook do? What are the limitations of its performance?

Netbooks are not power machines. If you think you can process photos or even videos using a netbook, you are mistaken. Their working RAM amounts and processors are normally quite weak. Thus, if you load a huge image fi le or a complex animation, even unproblematic office applications like PowerPoint begin to falter. So generally speaking, a netbook is not advisable for those who have to work everyday with a notebook. On the contrary, it is ideal to have a netbook as a spare computer.

5 Can netbooks display videos? Is it fun watching movies on a netbook?

It is hard to get a movie theatre feeling on a screen size of seven to ten inches. But there are some people who watch full-length movies on their cellphone displays, so compared to that, watching the movies on a seven inch screen is actually like watching them in a cinema. In most cases, the discussion over the display format or even the screen size is superfluous because the processor and GPU of a netbook are not at all capable of decoding the video stream. Still, all the devices should actually support MPEG 2 videos (DVD format) from USB drives. Things get a little difficult in case of MPEG 4, i.e. DivX and XviD. Some notebooks can play these movies, while some cannot, depending on their resolutions and CPU strength. H.264 encoded movies appear quite clearly. It does not matter if they are in HD format or normal PAL format. The codec is so demanding that every netbook is inevitably brought to its knees. However, it is not just the films that are problematic. Recently, Flash animations have been compressed with computation-intensive codecs. Even here, netbooks fall way behind. They cannot play this type of Flash animation. So it would be better to avoid netbooks for watching videos.

6 Displays and storage options

Netbook buyers are frugal. Why else would they come up with the idea of buying mini notebooks for less than Rs 20,000? However, it is not just the price. A certain screen size is indispensable to actually enjoy a netbook. We found a seven inch display way too small and advise you to buy netbooks with screens that measure 10 inches and off er a resolution of at least 1024 x 600 pixels. That is still not much and many netbook users will need to learn functions like the [F11] key that activates a fullscreen display while browsing. The answer for storage is not so easy. Flash drives in netbooks have little to do with the exorbitantly expensive SSDs off ered by Intel or Samsung. They are so slow that the even a Windows installation causes problems. The picture changes completely with Linux, which needs fewer hard disk accesses. Thus, Linux SSD netbooks leave a smooth or even a zippy impression. So if the system runs Linux, an SSD is fine but in the case of a Windows system, an actual hard disk is a better option.

Post By Sarvanshu from TechPaparazzi.com

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