Just when I was getting used to the idea of having two computers at home (the trusted desktop and the new laptop), I heard that vendors will soon convince us to buy a second laptop. While some may think this is more than required, laptop vendors believe it is justified. In fact they are looking at an entirely new category, already being referred to as ‘Net top’, ‘MID’ and some other names.
The lightest and sleekest laptops always compromise somewhere and reviewers are quick to point out deficiencies. The MacBook Air for instance, (reviewed in CHIP, April 2008) is featherweight at 1.36 Kg. However, it lacks an optical drive. It’s rival, the Lenovo X300 does not have an internal hard drive (it has a 64 GB Solid State Drive).
Users have got to start accepting the fact that it is a huge challenge for manufacturers to fit in all the essential features into such small form factors. Instead, we need to ask ourselves what do we really need? And what features are we actually going to use?
If you surf the Web on-the-go, then the small screen of a smart phone may not give you a satisfying experience. These are good enough for reading short e-mails, stock quotes and news clippings. I wouldn’t be comfortable reading PDF documents or viewing PowerPoint slides on tiny screens. Typing reports is out of question (even with a slide-out keyboard). A UMPC or ultra-portable might suffice for such tasks, but their high cost puts these out of reach for many. And a full-featured laptop is just too heavy and delicate for students or sales executives to lug around. That’s why the industry believes there should be a product that falls somewhere in between.
So here’s what the new product should ideally be like. We need a light, robust device with a screen size (8 – 12 inches) that is comfortable for reading text. It should have decent battery life (at least 2 hours) and it must run our favorite applications (preferably on Windows). It should have built-in Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity and enough USB ports.
A few months ago, Asus representatives were in our office to brief us about their new products. When business development manager Francis Kao pulled out a little white notebook, I thought it was just another ultra-portable. When he booted this device and explained all the features, we got thinking. Perhaps this was the device that fulfilled all the requirements stated in the previous paragraph, after all. And when we enquired about the price, Mr. Kao said it would be below Rs 20,000. That device was the EeePC.
After the success of the EeePC, other laptop manufacturers are rushing to introduce something similar. MSI will launch its sleek Wind device in Q2. Also watch out for Fukato’s low-cost Datacask. HP already offers a range of mini-notes. The HCL MiLeap MVO2 (reviewed in CHIP, April 2008), is another fine example. It is a tablet PC that runs Windows Vista. It has a 7-inch display, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB hard drive and built-in wireless networking. It costs approximately Rs 33,000. Last year, a device of this kind would cost Rs 1.5 lakh. And at just 960 grams this one is really light!
If you just want to surf the Internet on-the-go, consider Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) with Intel atom processors (expected at the end of this year).
So maybe, you are going to need a second laptop, after all.
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