I had a conversation last week with one of our support technicians here at the OHA, and he shared several things with me about mini-notebooks that I hadn’t heard previously. He saw I have an XO laptop so he thought I might be interested.
First of all, he said Intel’s Atom processor is really having a big impact on the mini-laptop market that will continue to be felt in the months ahead. It’s low cost, low power consumption, and high performance are making mini-notebooks much smaller, efficient, and affordable than ever before. He has a Fujuitsu Lifebook U810, an amazingly small laptop with full performance capabilities you’d expect from a computer with a much larger footprint. He bought it for about $1000, which is less than many other mini-notebooks sell for today. I had to include my own hand in the following photo I took of it with my iPhone, because otherwise I didn’t think my kids would believe how small it is!
The Vulcan Flipstart was another mini-notebook he considered but didn’t buy. Engaget reviewed it back in March of 2007. Apparently the company which manufactures the Flipstart has discontinued sales of the device, however, as the official website reports “The stock of FlipStart has been sold out” and does not indicate plans to sell new models.
Other laptops he considered but did not buy include the OQO Model 02 laptop, the Sony VAIO UX390, and the HP Mini-Note PC. He recommended the blog jkOnTheRun as a great place to stay up to speed on new developments with mobile computing and specifically mini-laptop technologies. I’ve added it to my feeds on Google Reader.
We discussed Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which I’ve been considering for personal backup use, and he told me about Mozy. In addition to offering commercial/for pay backup services, Mozy also offers “MozyHome Free…for personal, non-commercial use.” Anyone can get 2 GB of free online backup storage with this service. Wow. I am going to have to check that out, and recommend it to my mom who’s been needing an online backup storage option. I actually think I need more than 2 GB of storage backup for DVD media we have at home, but I may just back up our photos and then put DVD backups of our family movies in a bank safety deposit box. The tornado warning we had in Edmond, Oklahoma this past summer was a wake-up call for me: We had time to grab some things before we headed to our church to seek shelter in the basement there. What did I grab on my way out of the house in addition to my Macbook laptop? My two firewire external hard drives, of course, which have our family’s digital life on them. What would happen if those hard drives crashed, burned in a housefire, or were destroyed by a tornado? I hate to consider those possibilities. With my media backed up online, however, such an event might be much less psychologically catastrophic in terms of a personal digital data loss.
On the topic of external hard drives and backups, I was amazed to see the following Maxtor 1 terabyte (that’s right, 1 TB = 1000 GB = 100,000 MB approximately) at our local Office Depot this weekend for just $200. Wow.
The last topic I discussed with this knowledgeable support tech was the lawsuit Apple has filed against Psystar who offered Mac clone computers for sale this past spring for $399. For more about this case, check out David Chartier’s July 15th post on ars tecnica “Apple finally sues unlicensed Macintosh cloner Psystar.”
Gary Stager tweeted me a question this past weekend about how I decide to blog about different topics. In this case, the reason is I want to remember these nuggets about technology and be able to refer to them in the future, if needed. I have a hand-scrawled page of notes with the information from this post which I can now throw into the circular file since those facts have entered my personal content management and knowledge management system, my blog! 🙂
Technorati Tags:
laptop, apple, psystar, notebook, mininotebook, atom, intel, amazon, mozy, s3, backup, storage
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Comments
4 responses to “Mini-notebooks and online backup storage options”
That’s a sweet little laptop, but as an educato, wouldn’t you want a Mac instead? I actually discuss this dillema on my own blog: http://www.understandmedia.com/blog/?p=309
I certainly prefer to use a Mac whenever I can. We haven’t seen Apple enter the market yet for mini-notebook laptops, however. The iPhone and iPod Touch are great mobile devices, but at least for the present they are still designed with a sync to a laptop or desktop computer required. You can download apps now on the devices directly, and the apps sync up with iTunes the next time you dock / sync, but they are not standalone devices. I hope we’ll see Apple offer a laptop in the not too distant future which will be in the sub-$500 range. I have no idea if they will, but I hope OLPC puts this kind of market pressure on Apple as it has other computer manufacturers.
I love the Asus EEE PC; $399 before tax, sold over a million units before Christmas 2007 and is one of many ultra notebooks available for the sub $400 price tag. 900 mhz; 512 MB Ram (1 GB avail); 3 USB ports (I use them all); 10/100 and WiFi Built in; webcam built in (901 model, not surf); Ext Monitor port; memory storage card slot, audio and video ports on board of course.
While it will run other operating systems (O.S.), better to get Linux (Linux runs in very little memory, therefore more memory available for applications) and avoid all the problems associated with the most popular – viral ridden – phished O.S. Not to mention, if I did buy 2 GB of RAM, that would mean more memory for my applications, not a greedy and hungry O.S., why let the O.S. steal it all.
Get a USB Mouse ($15-$19), USB Keyboard(<$9) and external monitor (love a 22″) and you will never know that you are on a subnotebook. When you travel, < 2lbs fits in a purse or small briefcase, so fewer luggage headaches with the airlines. (The airlines are getting worse aren’t they!)
That 1TB drive looks sweet, chances are it would plug n play as my Seagate 500GB (not advertised to work with Linux on the box, you have to take a chance) will plug and play with Linux, at least the version that comes with the Asus. Just ‘cancel’ the install (don’t let it mess up your system or your harddrive) on your Windows box and use the My Computer icon to copy all your files off. When you plug it in to the Linux box, the File Manager will load and the entire thing is available for you.
That 1TB drive looks great for that price. Amazing how small everything has gotten. The important thing, is just because it is small, does not mean you have to sacrifice what you can do with it. I remember when a Novell Server ran in 16MB and 32 MB of RAM. I remember when a 300 mhz computer with 256 MB of RAM was screaming. And now you want me to buy 2GB so the operating system will run correctly, I don’t think so! With a 900 mhz processor at sub $400, 512 MB is ample, that’s right more then enough; well the price is right!
Why would I spend $1000 or even $500 on a notebook when there are more than 4+ Manufacturers on the market for $399 or less that will do all I need and more. That is unless you enjoy wasting your money….
It’s pretty cool to voice activate and launch applications on my Linux box. And nothing better then Linux apps to allow for copy/pasting of ‘anything’: photos; music; video; text; Project Timetables, Calendars, PDF files, Database, Wiki and other web links, etc….
Yes Linux is MY Sharepoint and has been for over 5 years now. But then I was playing Video on an OS/2 desktop in 1988, when people thought you had to have a MAC to do that! Yes I owned a MAC IISE back in the day, it was fun to play with, but overly pricey because of the Apple business model. But Linux is the work horse for me! Marketing does work, doesn’t it! The question is how smart are you?
Oh Yes Linux is MY Sharepoint, it allows me to share everything with everything without worrying about rigid structures or formal formats, of course it will do that as well if I wanted it too.
I guess you have to ask yourself, are you getting the bang for your buck; or are you getting ‘forced’ to waste your bucks? (And I am not talking paying for gas, though we are wasting our money there as well, aren’t we!)
[…] was reading the following post from Wesley Fryers blog recently. The blog was about mini computers and as I am trialling the […]