Chris Lott

[image by viagallery.com]

I’ve been searching for the perfect portable computer (laptop, then notebook, now netbook) since 1985 when, courtesy of a program at school, I got my hands on a Tandy Radio Shack 100. The new Samsung NC-20 (aka MINI-ME) comes so, so close but for a couple of completely unnecessary changes from TINY-MC, my previous favorite Samsung NC-10.

I don’t intend that a netbook replace my primary computer (at the moment the Dell Precision M4300, which I’m incredibly happy with but for the caveat that the build quality in mine was poor), but to excel at the kind of tasks I spend my time away from that machine doing, primarily: writing—including long documents, surfing—including the requisite amount of video and audio, using Skype, some web development, and some sysadmin tasks using SSH and VNC.

Because I need to integrate fully with others in the office, running Microsoft Office and Windows (XP for now, Windows 7 soon) and Adobe products adequately is also a necessity. Nothing against Linux, which I love in my own way, but the pragmatic reality makes it impractical in this situation.

The NC-20 has pretty much everything I’ve been looking for. The good-great features:

• Powered by the new Via Nano chip, the NC-20’s performance is more than adequate for my use, essentially indistinguishable from the NC-10, with 5-7 hours of battery life without significantly compromised settings
• With integrated graphics and hardware acceleration, video performance is quite good and the 12” screen is bright and runs at 1024*800 resolution, which is perfect for my primary task. The extra 200 pixels in height over the NC-10 makes all the difference in the world
• The keyboard is full-size—or very close—with better feel than the smaller NC-10, which I could already type on at full speed. And unlike many other netbooks, the ENTER, RIGHT-SHIFT, and ARROW keys have the proper relationship to one another
• 160g hard drive
• Onboard 3-in-1 multi-card reader
• 3 USB ports
• Wireless (Atheros 802.11 b/g) and Wired (10/100) LAN
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• 1.3mp built-in web cam

The two things that keep it from being perfect, changed for no good reason from the NC-10:

• The glossy screen. Glossy screens are great on larger displays that don’t see out of doors or bright-light use very often… but MC-TINY’s matte screen was definitely better.
• Two keyboard problems: I can deal with the `/~ key being moved to the bottom row, but why put it right next to the space bar where the ALT key should be? And even worse, there is no LEFT-WINDOWS key, which has been replaced by the wholly useless APPLICATION key. I’ve had no luck remapping a switch between these two keys. This is highly annoying, but not a showstopper since these flaws don’t interfere with normal typing (they get in the way because I use ALT-TAB switching and WINDOWS-Q for the absolutely indispensable Slickrun launcher, which now must be accessed with two hands unless I use some Steve Vai on the fretboard style contortions.

There are many smaller netbooks with even longer battery life and many more powerful netbooks that are significantly more expensive, but the NC-20 is the best of all that I’ve tried, right in the sweet spot for the way I want to use it. Size-wise it is near full-size notebook territory, but with much better battery life and of course a price-point that makes it nearly a commodity. I can’t recommend the NC-20 (and its smaller NC-10, which whups all the 10” competition) highly enough.

This entry was posted on July 25, 2009 at 4:12 pm and is filed under stuff. Tagged: netbooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.