All You Need To Know About Small Notebook Computers

Hardware has surely come a long way. I remember my first experience with a “typewriter”. It was connected to a TV set and had to load programs from a tape. Then, during high-school, I saw for the first time a Coral computer. It came with an impressive floppy drive. Then the first PC showed up with smaller floppy discs and a faster processor…Then came the 286, 386, 486, Pentium era. Things were picking up speed. Eventually, I saw a laptop for the first time. A little “bricky”, but portable. Later I learned that PDA stands for “Personal Digital Assistant” and a PDA has no moving parts. Then I saw bigger PDAs and smaller laptops. After that, I heard that the world of PDAs and laptops would merge eventually. And this is the way we came across small notebook computers.

The keyword here is “miniaturization”. Did you ever get caught with your laptop in the rain? No such problem with a phone or a PDA. You simply hide them in your pocket. Or perhaps you were traveling somewhere and could not take your laptop with you. Maybe a PDA would be perfect for taking your contacts with you and perhaps something to read or listen to. But then you couldn’t really take notes. PDAs don’t have a keyboard and use the touch screen as an input device. It sure looks fancy, but is not productive.

Here’s when manufacturers and consumers started considering something in-between PDAs and notebooks, perhaps “mini notebooks”? Something mobile, powerful enough and small enough to carry around and pull out of your bag and put it back in at the drop of a hat.

If you are going to look into this new world, you need to be aware that a mini laptop still comes with limitations, although it has more features than a PDA. A modern mini laptop can come with a Wi-Fi connection, a webcam, Bluetooth, a solid state drive and last, but not least, a keyboard. Still, no optical drive, since they are big and bulky and these are big energy consumers. Considering this, a mini laptop battery life will last significantly longer than the one of a normal laptop (nowadays, some last longer than 20 hours).

Besides size, another reason that might make you chose a mini laptop over a standard laptop computer is the price. The little ones are usually cheaper, some are $250 and lower. They are also cuter. I’ve seen business people using them at airport lounges, but also pretty girls in nightgowns chatting away in their bedrooms.

If you consider purchasing one, a few things to consider are: speed, memory, permanent storage and screen size. I usually look at the screen size first, because it’s what strikes the eye first. Just look at how wide is the frame around the screen. The slimmer, the better.

Some significantly smaller machines showed up on the market as early as 1989 with brands such as Compaq, IBM, Apple, Sony, Toshiba and HP. Nevertheless, the company that had the first major success in this market is Asus. The product was the Eee PC and it ran Linux. The Eee was cheap enough for people to afford. After this model, all the others came out with similar products.

Nowadays, the 7” Eee PC is the size of an A5 paper and weighs some 900g. It “knows” Windows XP and Linux, Wi-Fi, has half a gig of RAM and an 8GB solid state drive. At the other end there is the 12” model, which runs Windows 7 and weighs a little less than 1.5kg.

Please be aware that the smallest is not necessarily the cheapest. In progressive miniaturization there comes a time when smaller is more difficult to make and, thus, more expensive. For example, A Sony Vaio W has a 10.1” screen and it costs some $450. A Vaio P has only 8”, but it costs double. With this comparison you might realize that small notebook computers can come more expensive than standard ones - a paradox. I guess it all depends on what you are looking for. At any rate, I wish you happy “miniaturized” computing!

Below is a short video that explains the evolution of the netbook computers and how laptops are moving towards smaller models similar to the size of PDA's and smart phones.