Clicky for an interesting piece on why a netbook with OS X on it does not a cheap Mac make.

With the OS aside, that is exactly why I don't understand why anyone would want a netbook...Aside from wanting cheap...I bought a ThinkPad from eBay a few months ago, same size as the 12" iBook. It's light, it's small and it's portable, good on battery life? No, it's got a five year old battery in it and still gives me two and a half hours!

My MacBook takes up hardly any space, and if I were going up to uni or anywhere else where I might take a computer with me, I'd take a bag, so problem solved, my MacBook suddenly becomes portable, it's not that heavy either, certainly not close to being strenuous...
I saw a Dell Vostro (I think) which had a very similar profile to the MacBook and I was very tempted, I just wouldn't go for less than a 13" (12" at a push) screen, even if it does high enough resolution it's still a tiny screen, which leads to a tiny keyboard and so on...

Congratulations, your netbook lasts longer than my MacBook, but seeing as I'm next to a power socket anyway, I'll plug in...And while I'm typing comfortably your getting cramp in your fingers!

The major difference is surely cost. The cheapest macbook is, what, 700 quid? My Samsung NC-10, which is notionally a netbook - cost less than half that and is pretty serviceable for 'light duties' - wouldn't want to write a novel on it, no problem writing an email on it. Although i think the idea of a 'netbook' has been completely blurred at this point; the original EeePC is a genuinely different product but most 'netbooks' on sale today are actually just low spec notebooks.

Jon

I love my HP 7" mininote.

The keyboard is just as good if not better than most laptops.
The screen is 1280x800
It has 120GB HDD and 2GB RAM, as well as SD and express card slots.
The touch pad is as good as any I've used.
It has BT which actually works
It cost £180

It doesn't suffer from any of the problems in that article, and it was cheaper.

Note, I've not tried running OS X on it. I've also never used a macbook. I'm sure they're lovely, but I want one that's less than 10" and costs less than £200. And an iPhone is no good because it just doesn't have the connectivity or usability, in addition to costing more.

I think for most people the defining characteristic of a netbook is the low cost. Look how many people say "and it only cost me X" when they talk about one. For that single reason I don't think Apple will do a 'netbook' as there's just no money in the low-rent end of the market, so why bother going there?

I'd say it's more likely that the iPhone represents where Apple is going with the netbook concept. Not the iPhone itself, but I think you need to look at that and the iPod Touch for clues as to what an Apple 'netbook' might be like, rather than the laptop end of the product range.

Absolutely. Loads of netbooks are being sold but no-one is making any money, apart from manufacturers of cheap components. Apple has always stayed well away from the low-price, low-margin end of the PC market; what indication is there that it will change its mind now?



Right again. Tim Cook, Apple COO, chose his words very carefully last week, when he said a netbook is not something Apple wants to put the Mac brand on. Note he said Mac, not Apple, leaving the company open to approach the “netbook” as a high-end iPod touch/iPhone rather than a low-end Mac.

I bet if they did that, they could charge £500-£600 for it. Ironically, if they made a Mac netbook, they would probably have to charge less.

Well, I used to run Hackintosh on my old Laptop (with a 1.6ghz Pentium M and a gig of RAM) and that was perfectly usable. I could multi-task with ease, and even buy Mac software from shops and install it.

But the biggest problem I found was the fact that I couldn't update it properly. I had iPC 10.5.0 installed on it, and when 10.5.1 came out (IIRC), I couldn't update to it properly without it breaking the installation ,as it did something to the bootloader.

Other than that, it was pretty brilliant.

I only reformatted after I got pissed off when it refused to like my Belkin Wifi dongle.