Netbooks Their Smallish Screens

I remembered a time when I had the Sony Viao subnotebook.  2000-2002.  I think it was 505VN or VX.  It was a really well designed laptop.

By today's standard, it may be considered a netbook given the supposed size of the screen, 10".  Well, the $2500 price tag would not cut it today as a netbook.  But it was a fast Pentium II 333Mhz.  It ran everything I threw at it.  It even has a Firewire port, a port that is sorely missed in today's netbooks.

However, the resolution on the Viao was 1024x768.  Today, you get a weird 1024x600.  You essential lose 22% of the former real estate on the screen.

I took my MacWind out for a test-run at Starbucks last night.  It worked great.  Fast even only 1GB running OS X.  But back to the screen.

I had some issues with it earlier.  But after really sitting there on the couch and really got to know it better, I got used to it.  Now, I imagine a lot of folks who come from a world of 15" LCDs or, if you're like Dave the Mobile Warrior, who is trying to adjust from a 17" Macbook Pro, it can get a lot of getting used to.

I did some web dev last night so it was nothing something where screen size was an issue.  Rather it was Microsoft (that's a story for another day).  I'm going to go back and try it this time and do some artwork using Inkscape and see what that's like.

For anyone looking to pick up a netbook, go with at least a 10".  The Wind is excellent because of the long battery life with the six-cell battery.  I also like the new Dell's new 10" Mini.

Note:  Go to Best Buy and play around with it a bit.  I highly recommend doing that if you're considering using a netbook to do a major bulk of your mobile computing.  Get used to the screen size.