Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Per ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
On 6 Sep 2008, at 18:09, P Witte wrote: After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Hi Per, I agree that the 701 is too limiting; this is why I favour the Acer Aspire with 120GB HD. It's £229, so still well within the cheap end of the spectrum (compared to £300+ for the 901/MSI Wind) and is very small and efficient. Do try one. The 1024 x 600 resolution over the Eee 701's 800 x 480 is a massive advantage. Richard ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Hi Per, I agree that the 701 is too limiting; this is why I favour the Acer Aspire with 120GB HD. It's £229, so still well within the cheap end of the spectrum (compared to £300+ for the 901/MSI Wind) and is very small and efficient. Do try one. The 1024 x 600 resolution over the Eee 701's 800 x 480 is a massive advantage. From what you've said, it seems that the cheaper systems aren't much good for regular use. What about someone like me who has an occasional need for a portable QL away from home, where weight and small size might be important? Or would I be better off (even for occasional light use) to save my pennies and wait until I can afford a more expensive machine? Or would you go as far as to say that I'd be better off with a traditional laptop PC? -- Dilwyn Jones ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
Hi everybody, I was able to use the Wind for a short while (Andrea bought one for herself)... Excellent machine: large display, harddisk, WinXP, Bluetooth, WLAN, no noise and very fast. QPC runs very well :-) And the resolution is fine for QPC. For Windows programs, I miss more lines on the display (you have to scroll a lot!) but Andrea says you get used to it. She replaced her 17 (well working!) Acer laptop by the Wind... weight and no noise are worth trading in the resolution for, she says. She's missing the keypad,though... but that hardly fits into THAT size ;-) Jochen Dilwyn Jones wrote: After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Hi Per, I agree that the 701 is too limiting; this is why I favour the Acer Aspire with 120GB HD. It's £229, so still well within the cheap end of the spectrum (compared to £300+ for the 901/MSI Wind) and is very small and efficient. Do try one. The 1024 x 600 resolution over the Eee 701's 800 x 480 is a massive advantage. From what you've said, it seems that the cheaper systems aren't much good for regular use. What about someone like me who has an occasional need for a portable QL away from home, where weight and small size might be important? Or would I be better off (even for occasional light use) to save my pennies and wait until I can afford a more expensive machine? Or would you go as far as to say that I'd be better off with a traditional laptop PC? -- Jochen Merz Software - Kaiser-Wilhelm-Str. 302 - D-47169 Duisburg Tel. +49-(0)203-502011 Fax +49-(0)203-502012 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage: http://SMSQ.J-M-S.COM ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
Evening Jochen, just a quick word, I received the documentation upgrades safely. Thanks. Cheers, Norman. ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
Wind? Cheers...Ralf - Original Message - From: SMSQ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2008 9:34 PM Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook Hi everybody, I was able to use the Wind for a short while (Andrea bought one for herself)... Excellent machine: large display, harddisk, WinXP, Bluetooth, WLAN, no noise and very fast. QPC runs very well :-) And the resolution is fine for QPC. For Windows programs, I miss more lines on the display (you have to scroll a lot!) but Andrea says you get used to it. She replaced her 17 (well working!) Acer laptop by the Wind... weight and no noise are worth trading in the resolution for, she says. She's missing the keypad,though... but that hardly fits into THAT size ;-) Jochen Dilwyn Jones wrote: After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Hi Per, I agree that the 701 is too limiting; this is why I favour the Acer Aspire with 120GB HD. It's £229, so still well within the cheap end of the spectrum (compared to £300+ for the 901/MSI Wind) and is very small and efficient. Do try one. The 1024 x 600 resolution over the Eee 701's 800 x 480 is a massive advantage. From what you've said, it seems that the cheaper systems aren't much good for regular use. What about someone like me who has an occasional need for a portable QL away from home, where weight and small size might be important? Or would I be better off (even for occasional light use) to save my pennies and wait until I can afford a more expensive machine? Or would you go as far as to say that I'd be better off with a traditional laptop PC? -- Jochen Merz Software - Kaiser-Wilhelm-Str. 302 - D-47169 Duisburg Tel. +49-(0)203-502011 Fax +49-(0)203-502012 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage: http://SMSQ.J-M-S.COM ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
On 6 Sep 2008, at 19:47, Dilwyn Jones wrote: From what you've said, it seems that the cheaper systems aren't much good for regular use. What about someone like me who has an occasional need for a portable QL away from home, where weight and small size might be important? Or would I be better off (even for occasional light use) to save my pennies and wait until I can afford a more expensive machine? Or would you go as far as to say that I'd be better off with a traditional laptop PC? The Acer is £199 with 8GB and £229 with 120GB. It's 1024 x 600, 1.6GHz and fully capable of running Windows XP or various flavours of Linux. What I'm saying is that for the saving for the very cheapest machines - £169 for the Maplin, or the Eee 701 - the Acer represents the genuinely lowest price point you will get something useful at. The 800 x 480 screen on the 701 is limiting for modern web browsing (though I reckon it would be fine for an emulated QL environment; it looked fantastic running Atari 800 emulators), the Maplin's insanely limited CPU (not just performance, but third-party support) - for the sake of a £40 saving? Not worth it. Likewise, if you wanted to add a memory card, the Acer has an SD card slot to expand the built in storage AND a memory card reader; and buying SD cards for the Maplin to go from 2GB to 8GB would eat up a reasonable amount of the cost saving too. The instant you cross into the £300 needed for the MSI Wind or upmarket Eee models, then you can get a dual core 13 laptop from Currys or elsewhere for £280ish. Unless you REALLY want the tiny form factor, it's not worth the effort. I certainly don't think you should save your pennies if all you want is occasional light use and are already interested in this class of machine; I just think you should not spend more than £200 (I count the extra £29 for the 120GB version of the Acer as a very cheap extra memory card I'd have bought anyway - it's less than I paid for the no- name brand 16GB SDHC card I use) and should get the absolute best specification you can for that money. The Elonex One - the mooted £100 laptop - is more interesting as the One+ with 256MB RAM and 2GB SSD, but it's still 800 x 480, 300MHz weird 'barely supported' CPU, and in that form costs £119. Another few quid for a decent capacity SD card, and you're into 1.6GHz Atom territory. Commodore brand have just announced one, too. It's £325, which is already insane given the current marketplace, and uses of all things the VIA C7-M CPU, which is basically a Cyrix. Anyone who remembers Cyrix back in the Pentium days will already have shudders running down their spines, but the truth is, the C7-M is chosen for battery life; Intel have leapfrogged them AND don't need to cripple the CPU's performance to do it. Richard ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Richard Kilpatrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Hi Richard, Thanks for detailed explanation - below. There is no doubt that these devices are an interesting development that we will all get involved with. The 1.6 Ghz Atom processor is an example of that. On 5 Sep 2008, at 19:52, Malcolm Cadman wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Richard Kilpatrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Hi Richard, Esus seem now to be pushing the 900 series and the latest 1000 series in their new advertisements. Which are obviously more capable. So, that is why the 700 series is being discounted. It's just natural price erosion. It's not being discounted, it's being reduced in price as the competition and technology improves. Asus' model range was always intended to be more than just the 700 series, but a more capable 700 would be an upgrade; the 900 and 1000 are 9 and 10 screen variants. They have yet to upgrade the 7 model to a 1.6GHz CPU, but that's probably because they're judging the marketplace to see if having a 7 variant is worthwhile when the form factor is not really significantly smaller (the keyboard dictating the smallest usable chassis for what they see this market wanting). What is significant is that the Eee 701 is the same price as the Maplin/Elonex Onet netbook device, but instead of insufficient RAM/ SSD space to handle modern applications, it's quite a handy little device and capable of running XP (the XP shipping with various SCCs is not drastically crippled, it's just XP Home - however, many users prefer to install an 'nlite' installer packaged version of XP with non- essential and cosmetic aspects removed. Bear in mind that XP was developed when 4GB HDs in laptops were commonplace, it's more than capable of surviving on a 2GB or 4GB machine. It's the size of the applications and the media we work with that presents the real issue with storage). All of these machines bar the Elonex derivatives are full PC hardware. The 1.6GHz Atom CPU is perfectly capable of running fairly serious apps; I have a device called a FlipStart which is a 5.6 1024x600 display based pocket PC, with a Pentium-M CPU at 1.1GHz and Windows XP. I've used Adobe CS3 on it, Lightroom and even played World of Warcraft on it, despite the meagre 512MB RAM. The Atom is certainly comparable with that CPU, though I've yet to test Lightroom's performance on one of the Atom based machines. The original 900 with 900MHz CPU is no more capable than the 700. It simply has a larger screen and SSD. Richard -- Malcolm Cadman ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], P Witte [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Hi Per, I think that you are right. The mini-laptop devices are interesting, yet still developing in capability ... which is changing all the time. Which is why the MSI Wind U100 has been seen as a successor / rival to the Eee PC range. After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Per -- Malcolm Cadman ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
MSI Wind ... Medion and Plus sold them recently ... same model, but without Bluetooth. Jochen Ralf Reköndt wrote: Wind? Cheers...Ralf - Original Message - From: SMSQ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2008 9:34 PM Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook Hi everybody, I was able to use the Wind for a short while (Andrea bought one for herself)... Excellent machine: large display, harddisk, WinXP, Bluetooth, WLAN, no noise and very fast. QPC runs very well :-) And the resolution is fine for QPC. For Windows programs, I miss more lines on the display (you have to scroll a lot!) but Andrea says you get used to it. She replaced her 17 (well working!) Acer laptop by the Wind... weight and no noise are worth trading in the resolution for, she says. She's missing the keypad,though... but that hardly fits into THAT size ;-) Jochen Dilwyn Jones wrote: After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Hi Per, I agree that the 701 is too limiting; this is why I favour the Acer Aspire with 120GB HD. It's £229, so still well within the cheap end of the spectrum (compared to £300+ for the 901/MSI Wind) and is very small and efficient. Do try one. The 1024 x 600 resolution over the Eee 701's 800 x 480 is a massive advantage. From what you've said, it seems that the cheaper systems aren't much good for regular use. What about someone like me who has an occasional need for a portable QL away from home, where weight and small size might be important? Or would I be better off (even for occasional light use) to save my pennies and wait until I can afford a more expensive machine? Or would you go as far as to say that I'd be better off with a traditional laptop PC? ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
MSI Wind ... Medion and Plus sold them recently in Germany... same model, but without Bluetooth. Jochen Ralf Reköndt wrote: Wind? Cheers...Ralf - Original Message - From: SMSQ [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2008 9:34 PM Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook Hi everybody, I was able to use the Wind for a short while (Andrea bought one for herself)... Excellent machine: large display, harddisk, WinXP, Bluetooth, WLAN, no noise and very fast. QPC runs very well :-) And the resolution is fine for QPC. For Windows programs, I miss more lines on the display (you have to scroll a lot!) but Andrea says you get used to it. She replaced her 17 (well working!) Acer laptop by the Wind... weight and no noise are worth trading in the resolution for, she says. She's missing the keypad,though... but that hardly fits into THAT size ;-) Jochen Dilwyn Jones wrote: After using the eeePC 701 for a while, I gave it up as too limiting for my purposes. The battery life is crap, the fan whirres incessantly because the thing produces far too much heat. It also seems stupid to put up with a 7 screen when the box is more like 10. So all in all, after the initial rush I find I need something a little more sophisticated to get by on the move whilst having a real PC at home. The 901 seems a lot more promising but theyre still flogging the inferior 900s here, so itll have to wait. On the other hand, a couple of hundred ££ more will get you a real sub notebook.. Hi Per, I agree that the 701 is too limiting; this is why I favour the Acer Aspire with 120GB HD. It's £229, so still well within the cheap end of the spectrum (compared to £300+ for the 901/MSI Wind) and is very small and efficient. Do try one. The 1024 x 600 resolution over the Eee 701's 800 x 480 is a massive advantage. From what you've said, it seems that the cheaper systems aren't much good for regular use. What about someone like me who has an occasional need for a portable QL away from home, where weight and small size might be important? Or would I be better off (even for occasional light use) to save my pennies and wait until I can afford a more expensive machine? Or would you go as far as to say that I'd be better off with a traditional laptop PC? -- Jochen Merz Software - Kaiser-Wilhelm-Str. 302 - D-47169 Duisburg Tel. +49-(0)203-502011 Fax +49-(0)203-502012 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage: http://SMSQ.J-M-S.COM ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
Re: [Ql-Users] sub-£100 notebook
On 6 Sep 2008, at 21:34, SMSQ wrote: MSI Wind ... Medion and Plus sold them recently in Germany... same model, but without Bluetooth. Also sold as the Advent 4211 in the UK, at £279. It's a 10.2 screen (so larger form factor), but still 1024 x 600; featuring built-in bluetooth is a bonus, but specification-wise aside from the size (not resolution) of the screen and the higher-res webcam (1.3Mp instead of VGA) it's much the same as the Acer but with a smaller HD for more money. However, the keyboard is larger, the cooling better, and it's got a much larger capacity battery. MSI are also intending to ship a more grown up Linux distro compared to Linpus Lite or Xandros. Richard ___ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
