Category: Netbook

The Twin Bait and Switches of Jolicloud

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There has been a lot of buzz around Jolicoud on the Internet for some time now. This west coast based start-up has been promoting a new ‘Social Operating System’ for the rising population of Netbook computers around the world. They’ve been teasing with their screenshots, showing off their social dashboard for application installs and generally rather luscious graphics. My invite to the limited numbers beta came through recently and I set about making a USB key to try it out on my Netbook. Now a word of warning to anyone trying to get me switching to an alternate Operating System on

Liveblogging My Flight To The US

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Well I say liveblog, more notes that I’m making on the EEE as I fly, hence thenewer posts are at the bottom of this one. I’ll uploaded them when I get somewhere that’s not 6 miles up in the air, free Wi-fi enabled planes this 777 is not. (All times PST). 0500: The American Airlines cabin crew on this flight have never tasted Thornton’s Continental before now. And they like them. Lucky me… 0700:Scribefire might be the best option for blogging on the Ubunutu powered EEE, but it’s not a patch on Windows Live Writer… probably the finest bit of

Some Thoughts On The Nokia Netbook

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Interesting to see the number of comments and discussion on my thoughts on Nokia producing a netbook sized device over on All About Symbian. Here’s one of my key points: If Nokia are going down this route, I’d suggest doing what the majority of other manufacturers are doing and use Linux, probably with a custom theme on top of Ubuntu. While Maemo is kicking around, it’s again for a small pocketable device with limited functionality (go on, argue with me). A Nokia netbook is going to need a decent ‘proper’ operating system. The magic sauce from Nokia would be two-fold.

Insert Digg-baiting Apple Netbook Headline Here

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Not every company will fill every obvious gap in their product line-up. And that’s for regular companies. Look at Apple and you’ll see an irregular company that won’t always fill in the gaps in the market. Yet again the buzz around an Apple Netbook continues to ebb and flow. This must be an up-week. The Guardian says that the best thing Apple’s interim CEO should do a “damm the torpedoes, here comes a netbook.” Look, it’s not going to happen. To be honest I think there’s more value for Apple in keeping the gap there, partly form the buzz and

Of Course Netbook Sales Are On The Rise

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Is it any wonder that sales of netbooks are on the rise? The Guardian posted this at the start of the week and I’ve had the tab open in Firefox since then to write about this. The features race on the regular desktop market has been over for a while. The increases in CPU speed and memory don;t affect the average consumer any more. Storage is one area that is growing given the requirements of digital media, but really we should be teaching people to buy a new hard drive rather than a whole new desktop. There will always be

Why Windows 7 Will Kill The Netbook Market

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It’s fascinating watching people come to terms with the craze for netbooks. As the costs of the units drop to commodity levels, the space for profit is being squeezed both by the retail price target of £200, and the generic components being used in the machines. Even with a 20% profit on all components, that means there’s only £40 to be shared round all partners on a typical netbook. So anyone getting involved in the space is going to have to hope for either a massive volume of sales, or the customers happy to put up with an increase in