Smartbook... A What?

[archer6]

New Form Factors & Devices at the Speed of Light...

http://www.gosmartbook.com/

[killer]

Is this just another Blackberry?

BTW, blackberries are what we pick out of the hedgerows here in autumn. We mix with Bramley apples to make a wonderful Blackberry and Apple Crumble. Served with custard it is the best thing in the world ... apart from unpasturised cheddar and a glass of Lebanese wine.

So who needs electronic blackberries?

[GomJabbar]

It looks larger than a Blackberry. Kind of an oversized PDA. Might be a hit with some users.

[archer6]

Here's a bit more about this emerging category:

http://gigaom.com/2009/05/28/qualcomm-t ... smartbook/

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/2 ... martbooks/

[GomJabbar]

The Smartbook looks to be the Smart Fortwo of notebook computers [still a car - more than a motorcycle].

[tomh009]

It's really just a netbook with Qualcomm's cellphone CPU (instead of a proper one) and Qualcomm's CDMA mobile networking (which is pretty much useless outside North America).

With CDMA usage waning and the future of mobile networks looking more like Wi-Max, Qualcomm needs some other revenue sources -- it's basically a patent company. (Though they do make the power-sucking CDMA chipsets for Blackberries ... ugh.) Personally I doubt this will be anything significant beyond netbooks.

[RealBlackStuff]

blackberries are what we pick out of the hedgerows here in autumn. We mix with Bramley apples to make a wonderful Blackberry and Apple Crumble. Served with custard it is the best thing in the world ... apart from unpasturised cheddar and a glass of Lebanese wine.

Go to Gozo (next to Malta) and have some goatcheese-in-brine with local bread and tomatoes, and a glass of local red wine.
You will want to leave the UK and emigrate there!

[mattbiernat]

hmm 8 hour battery life and cheaper than netbook. if it is true i am not going to complain....

[tomh009]

hmm 8 hour battery life and cheaper than netbook. if it is true i am not going to complain....

If true ... my old Qualcomm-chipset CDMA Blackberry (no, not the hedgerow kind) had half the battery life of the GSM ones (which have RIM's own chipsets).

And it's vapourware until at least the end of the year. I'll believe it when I see it.

[mattbiernat]

I am just tired of companies trying to shovel up the most powerful and the fastest laptops to people like me who don't use those things for anything but word processing and I am tired of newer OSs being so hungry for power and RAM. What happened to 100mb installation of MS word or windows 95 which was only like 300mb in size. I mean seriously today's computers are having more and more bloatware and manufacturers are making them more powerful to keep up with that crap. I like this new netbook and smartbook idea, maybe somebody finally woke up and figured out that some people have no need for flashy and blinking apps and they just want to get things done. maybe MS word is going to finally decrease in size from 2gb to something leaner and much cleaner otherwise my future new toy will run linux or whatever other OS that is not as bloated. end of complaining...

[archer6]

I am just tired of companies trying to shovel up the most powerful and the fastest laptops to people like me who don't use those things for anything but word processing and I am tired of newer OSs being so hungry for power and RAM. What happened to 100mb installation of MS word or windows 95 which was only like 300mb in size. I mean seriously today's computers are having more and more bloatware and manufacturers are making them more powerful to keep up with that crap. I like this new netbook and smartbook idea, maybe somebody finally woke up and figured out that some people have no need for flashy and blinking apps and they just want to get things done. maybe MS word is going to finally decrease in size from 2gb to something leaner and much cleaner otherwise my future new toy will run linux or whatever other OS that is not as bloated. end of complaining...

Well Said!.... I could not agree more. After all there are some of us that need the power and some of us that do not. Why push all that processing power down our throats? Corporate greed comes to mind. Setting that aside, I think we may see the pendulum swing back into a more neutral position as the economy crushes the buying power of so many people. As a result, we may find that there is a new focus on the "middle ground" as well as entry level computing. Frankly I'm amazed at all I can do with the very modest Atom processor in my IdeaPad S10, and a mere 1.5GB ram. And if nothing else, this entire "Netbook Craze" is shaking up the industry, which is never a bad thing. The two new "computers" (to use the term in it's broadest sense) that I'm truly looking forward to are 1) IdeaPad S12 and 2) IdeaPad U350. Both have ideal full sized keyboards, displays in the "middle ground" size wise, and a wide enough gap between the components and performance to truly be centered within their own niches as a Netbook and a Notebook. How these two are received by the public will be very interesting. And best of all, we are not going to have to wait long to find out.

Cheers...

[mattbiernat]

one question thou, how is the S10 touchpad? i can't live without a trackpoint. the only touchpads that seem to be working out for me are those on apple notebooks, they seem to be much bigger and more sensitive. if only smartbooks would come out with trackpoints, i would have one in no time.

[archer6]

one question thou, how is the S10 touchpad? i can't live without a trackpoint. the only touchpads that seem to be working out for me are those on apple notebooks, they seem to be much bigger and more sensitive. if only smartbooks would come out with trackpoints, i would have one in no time.

I too (used to) detest touchpads, even though I've have had them on other brands of laptops.

Well I must say the touchpad on the S10 is truly fantastic... something I thought I would never say about a touchpad.

Especially since I'm such a hard core ThinkPad TrackPoint lover. So much so, that I'd turned off the touchpads on my T series that had them. Silly as it sounds, as soon as I got the IdeaPad S10 and found the touchpad so useful, I turned the one on my T500 back on. Now I use it as an alternative during a long day of computing just to take a break from the TrackPoint.

Cheers...

[pianowizard]

My Palm Centro smartphone is getting old (got it in Nov 2007) and I just started looking around for an upgrade, which was how I found this old thread. I wish to get a super-sized smartphone that's very similar in form factor to the HP Jornada 720, a handheld PC that was somewhat popular 10 years ago. It's just small enough to fit in a pants pocket, and the keyboard is just big enough to type on. With a Jornada-like smartphone that runs a versatile OS, I probably wouldn't need a laptop ever again. I thought the "smartbooks" would be something similar to this hypothetical phone, but unfortunately they are just netbooks with smartphone capabilities, so they are way too big.

Right now, the smartphone that's the closest to what I want is the HTC Touch Pro 2, which has a 800x480 screen (almost high enough res to replace laptops) and runs Windows Mobile 6.5. But the keyboard is too small to be typed like a laptop keyboard.

[GomJabbar]

Right now, the smartphone that's the closest to what I want is the HTC Touch Pro 2, which has a 800x480 screen (almost high enough res to replace laptops) and runs Windows Mobile 6.5. But the keyboard is too small to be typed like a laptop keyboard.

Was just reading this morning in the January 2010 issue of MaximumPC that the Android 2.0 OS phones are the ones to possibly give the iPhone a run for it's money. They mention the Motorola Droid having this. They say that the HTC G1 does not have enough internal memory for an upgrade to Android 2.0 (except by hacking it). Android 2.0 brings multitouch to the table along with other things.

[pianowizard]

Was just reading this morning in the January 2010 issue of MaximumPC that the Android 2.0 OS phones are the ones to possibly give the iPhone a run for it's money.

In my view, lots of smartphones are already better than the iPhone. They are just not marketed as aggressively as the iPhone, so they are less popular.

They mention the Motorola Droid having this. They say that the HTC G1 does not have enough internal memory for an upgrade to Android 2.0 (except by hacking it). Android 2.0 brings multitouch to the table along with other things.

Thanks for the info. I really should compare the Google Android OS with Windows Mobile 6.5 more closely. The main reasons I prefer Windows Mobile are: 1) Besides the phone and internet, the main task that I need the phone for is Microsoft Office and I suspect the Windows Mobile OS would be better for this purpose, and 2) my phone plan is the Sprint Employee Referral Offer ($30 per month for everything), which is compatible only with smartphones using either the Palm OS or Windows Mobile, so if I get a phone with Android, I would need to give up SERO and upgrade to a different plan that would cost at least $60 per month. With these criteria, the best phone I can get from Sprint is the HTC Touch Pro 2, which is probably the most expensive smartphone right now ($350 after mail-in rebate and with 2-year contract renewal), and so it should be quite powerful. I played with one at Sprint Store and liked it.

But like I said above, I really hope to have a Jornada-sized smartphone. I will wait and see whether something like that will come out in the next several months.