I Can’t Decide!
Posted on September 18, 2008
15 Comments
I’d like to enter the sub-notebook space this fall. I want one of those light-weight and super portable laptops. Sure, I have a great laptop for work, but it is a desktop replacement. Super powerful – and super heavy. Not something I can just toss in a bag and go without planning (and grabbing a power cord!).
I want to be able to quickly hit web pages, email, connect to VPNs and even run Remote Desktop. I can do all these things on my HTC Mogul, but for long sessions that little keyboard goes quickly from convenience to pain in the butt. I want something a bit larger for sustained efforts.
There are some interesting choice these days and that’s what’s giving me pause.
For instance:
REDFLY
Celio corp’s REDFLY (I hate all cap. names) caught my attention earlier this year. Now that I can actually get one I’m having a hard time not impulse buying it.
What is it? They call it a “smartphone terminal.” It has no OS, no CPU or storage. It has a keyboard and 8” screen, looks like a sub-notebook and uses your Windows Mobile smartphone as the brains. Everything you could do on your phone, you can do on this – just bigger and easier.
What do I like about it?
- Small and light
- Long battery life (claimed 8 hours) – and if connected to your smartphone via USB (instead of Bluetooth) it’ll charge the phone too.
- No OS to license and manage. Heck, no additional office apps to install.
- Nothing installed means I can loan it out to co-workers with Smartphones. Or we could get a few of these and just grab one when needed. No profiles to worry about.
- Connectivity – by this I mean that everything my phone can do (wifi / EVDO / Bluetooth) this leverages. If there’s a signal you’re online.
- Huge geek quotient
What might concern me?
- The web browser experience. Pocket IE is tolerable, but I’d want more. Opera Mobile beta is awesome, but shows the “beta” by how often it runs out of memory… Not redfly’s issue, per se, but a “platform concern”. I live in a browser when remote…
- Will my WinMo remote desktop and VNC clients scale to the higher resolution?
- Price. At just under $400 we’re in the Dell Mini 9 / Asus Eee PC territory.
I’m very intrigued by this gadget.
Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Speaking of being intrigued, I’ve had a wee bit of geek-lust for the Dell Mini 9 since I first saw it announced last month. I like the options of Ubuntu or XP Home (no XP Pro though?).
Connectivity is one wrinkle I’d need to sort out before I could choose an OS though. While I lean towards Ubuntu, I’m not sure how easily I can “tether” my Mogul to use it for wireless broadband. With XP, I just use USB Modem to handle that (I once found a way to do it without 3rd party apps, but boy was that a pain to redo after each flash). And no, I’m not going to pay Sprint over $30/month for the phone as a modem plan.
What I like:
- A full featured laptop for under 2 lbs and under $400? Awesome.
- Bigger screen and higher resolution than the Redfly
- SSD for storage is nifty.
- Connectivity options (if XP) are right on par with the Redfly option
- XP or Ubuntu, either one has more features and flexibility over Windows Mobile 6.1. Not even a contest.
Concerns?
- More software to license (if applicable), install and maintain
- Battery life? Not sure on the Dell, but I’ve read reviews on other players in this space mentioning 2 hours. Not enough.
- Intel Atom proc. Just how fast is that thing? On a Smartphone there’s not much going on… but these may be running XP.
So…
Which would you go for – or what others should I consider? The newer Eee’s seem nice with the bigger screens in the same price range… I guess first I need to decide between Redfly vs. notebook before I decide which notebook.
Tags: Dell, HTC-Mogul, laptop, portable, Redfly, sub-notebook, windows-mobile
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15 Responses to “I Can’t Decide!”
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Haven’t tried it with SP3 here. My...
Welcome to the club. My SO wants to get a netbook to haul back and forth to class and rehersal because her laptop is too heavy. I dragged her to BestBuy and she played with the 2 they had there and determined that she needs something in the 10-12 inch screen range, as the 8″ keyboard was too small for her to type on.
I’m still on the fence about what to tell her to get, I’m leaning towards the 10″ EEE but am unsure about it.
You might want to goto http://jkontherun.blogs.com/ and read some of their reviews.
Funny that you should write about this… I just purchased a new Asus 1000h and it arrived yesterday. I got it with the XP option, as I have some must have Windows apps.
So far, this is what I like and don’t like.
Likes:
– Battery life is fantastic, at least 4 hours with fairly steady use.
– Screen is clear and bright
– Nice fit and finish, very solid feel to it.
– Very good performance, considering it has 1GB of RAM.
– Heat, not bad at all compared to most laptops these days. I can easily have it on my lap for an extended time.
– Price - paid only $440 off Ebay for a new unit with a 1 year warranty
Dislikes:
– Although the keyboard is easy to use even with my fairly large fingers, I absolutely hate the placement of the right shift key.
I’m hoping I can get used to the right shift key, as it really slows down my touch typing… Other than that, I love this machine. It will make my daily lugging of a computer to my client sites so much easier.
Bob
That’s a tough one. I would want to play with both of them before i bought one. it will be tough to get your hands on the DELL as I am guessing it is only available online. The DELL is pretty sweet isn’t it. I think they sell the EEE at some big box stores, so you could play with it there.
They may start selling the DELL with a 3G contract which would be an interesting option too.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/do_you_want_a_notebook_with_that_order
@Dave - good idea on checking out jkontherun. I’ll do that.
@Bob - you and @dave should talk! Thanks for your thoughts on the Eee 1000h. That’s a model I was looking at earlier today as well. It’s a bit over my arbitrary $400 price point… but I like it.
I’ll have to look closer at the keyboard layouts though!
@Nate - I can get a 30 day trial with the Redfly, so I might just start with that when I’m ready to buy.
One thing I didn’t think to mention in the article: I have a Sprint USB key & data plan that’d work with a netbook. I just can’t always count on having it as I lend it out at work as folks travel…
That Redfly is awesome. I have never seen that before. Does function as a full laptop would?
I’ve got the REDFLY and really love it!
It doesn’t have Norwegian symbols though, and that annoys me big time, but perhaps you don’t need that?
What about USB connectivity ? Without a DVD Drive you would need USB for a thumb drive of course. I know Dell would have it, not sure on REDFLY.
@Jason - the Redfly does indeed have USB ports for thumb drives.
Can’t say I’ve ever had the desire to connect a DVD drive to my phone, so I think I’d be ok without it on the redfly as well.
One important thing about the WinXP option on netbooks…MS tied XPHome to netbooks…if the HW is a netbook, it can onlyhave XPHome, nothing else (from MS)…so..you won’t find a true netbook with XPPro.
As for what to get…I’d go with the largest netbook I could afford/find, something in the 10″ size…8″ kboards don’t match to my big fingers too well
On the other hand…I have iSSH for my iPhone, so…I don’t need no stinking netbook 
good point about XP Home, Vox. That is indeed a bummer.
And trust me, if you read back through the blog you’ll see that I have all the tools I need on my WinMo HTC Mogul. I can vnc/hamach/vpn/RDC/SSH/etc. The tools all rock (and I might note that I’ll take the “physical” keyboard over that iphone travesty ANY DAY of the week
).
However, If I need to do anything of substance for more than 10 minutes the small screen/keyboard combo becomes annoying… my mitts are a bit too big to get hardcore on that keyboard!
More on that soon though. I have an experiment cooking that might be worth writing about.
So what sort of battery life are you seeing on your Mogul?
@Dave - for “casual”/daily use I get 2 - 3 days between charges and I tend to toss it on the charger at 50% or below (not sure why…). That’s with a fair amount of web browsing, texting and just a few phone calls.
If I’m actually on it, moving data for hours at a time, I can drain it in a day.