Windows 7 Pro A Little Netbook Experiment — Globa

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Tech Evangelist Joey deVilla on Windows Phone seven, computer software advancement, tech news and also other nerdy stuff
Just a little Netbook Experiment
by Joey deVilla on January fifteen, 2010
“The Horror! The Horror!”

“d00d,” commenced the capitalization- and punctuation-free e-mail I obtained on Sunday, “coding horror atwood is totaly [sic] waling on ur azz”. Curious to find out specifically how Jeff was “waling on my azz”, I pointed my browser at his blog site, Coding Horror, a single of the “800-pound gorillas” from the tech weblog scene and found his most current write-up, titled A Democracy of Netbooks.
In A Democracy of Netbooks, Jeff rebuts an report of mine from late last May, Quickly Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck. The thesis of my post was that netbooks occupied an sad, “worst of each worlds” middle ground amongst smartphones and notebook personal computers: a tad too large to suit in your pocket, somewhat as well modest to perform plenty of operate on, and sadly underpowered. As I summed it up, “netbooks are like laptops, but lamer”.
Jeff argues that netbooks would be the opposite. He says that by virtue of their low expense Microsoft Office 2007 Key, they’re a democratizing force that give computing and communicative strength to all. As opposed to smartphones, you are not on the mercy of a mobile phone company’s month to month service fees or contracts (and keep in mind, I’m in Canada, the only nation within the globe wherever 3-year mobile contracts exist). “Netbooks aren’t an alternative to notebook pcs,” he writes, they would be the new computer systems.”
Unfortunately, Jeff missed my follow-up to Quickly Meals Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck, in which I explained the motivation behind the write-up:
I feel that there’s somewhat also much excitement about netbooks at Microsoft. I think that part of it stems from the old company mantra, “a computer on every desktop and in every home”. The PC is the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, and the closer that a device is to the PC, the more Microsoft “gets” it. I feel that Microsoft sees the netbook as an exciting new space, exactly where I see them as smaller, less powerful laptops. I think that eventually, as technology catches up, netbooks will simply be considered “computers” – just on the little end with the PC size spectrum Office Standard 2010, and that Microsoft should treat them as such.
The article is also an open letter to Microsoft stating my concern that netbooks are a dangerous red herring distracting us from where the real potential in mobile computing is: the smartphone. It’s an area in which Microsoft had an early lead and dropped the ball. It’s an area in which I feel that Microsoft is showing a lack of vision, from Steve Ballmer’s ill-considered dismissal from the iPhone (“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”) to Windows Mobile 6, which feels as though it was half-assedly slapped together by PDA designers frozen in an iceberg in 2000.

Still, I’m glad that Jeff found my article worth writing about and happy to view that it’s started some discussion.
Ooh Office Enterprise 2007 Key! Totally free Netbook!
As the hardware sponsor with the Canadian version of Techdays – Microsoft’s cross-country, seven-city tools and technology training conference – Dell provided us with a number of pcs, including about a dozen of Latitude 2100 netbooks. They performed yeoman service as hosts for a rotating slide deck that we’d display between conference sessions, in each the presentation theatres as well as within the hallways.
Here’s what they look like when artfully posed by a photographer for the marketing material:
By the bye Office 2010 Professional Key, those bodies are rubberized and have a cross-hatched pattern.
Here’s a single from the netbooks in action, quietly working as Dylan Smith makes his presentation at TechDays Winnipeg:

…and here are IT Pro Evangelist Rick Claus, me and IT Pro Evangelist Rodney Buike striking a “Charlie’s Angels” pose with the three colours of netbooks we were provided:

On December 16th, 2009 at 4:00 p.m., the very moment that TechDays Winnipeg ended, the netbooks were retired from conference service and all the evangelists team got to pick one. Although I’d rather have been assigned the “Dellasaurus” – a 17” monster with quad-core chip and 16 gigs of RAM — I’m not the type to turn up his nose at being assigned another computer. I chose 1 of the Kermit-the-Frog-green ones.
The Experiment

Thus far, my netbook has been relegated to ebook-reading duty and little else, but in light of Jeff’s article, I figured that this might be an opportunity to put it to the test. What if I were to set aside a week to use the netbook as my one particular and only machine in my day-to-day work and life? Would I be pleasantly surprised, driven mad, or neither?
Starting on Sunday and continuing through to next Saturday, I will use the Dell Latitude 2100 exclusively. This should be an interesting test, as I will be working in a number of places:
At my home office At HacklabTO, the Toronto “hackerspace” where I’m a member and which I often use as a coworking space At a meeting with a client On the road: I’ll be flying to Montreal to attend CUSEC (Canadian University Computer software Engineering Conference) as a sponsor representative and host of DemoCamp. This should be a good test of the netbook under the conditions exactly where it’s supposed to shine.
By the way Windows 7 Pro, does anyone know what the Canadian domestic flight carry-on restrictions are inside the wake of the Underwear Bomber?
Here are its specs:
Processor: Intel Atom N270 running at 1.6GHz with 512K L2 cache and 533MHz bus Chipset: Intel 945 PM/GS Express Graphics: Intel Integrated GMA 950 Display: 10.1” WSVGA 1024 by 600 LED display Other Goodies: Integrated webcam Single-touch screen RAM: 2GB (1GB on-board plus 1GB from the memory slot) Hard Drive: 160GB, 5400 RPM Wifi: Intel WiFi Link 5100 802.11 a/g/n mini card Battery: 3-cell (there’s a 6-cell available)
When benchmarked using the Windows Experience Index, it yielded a base score of 2.0. Here are its Windows Experience Index subscores (the index rates components on a scale of 1.0 to seven.9):
Processor: 2.1 Memory: 4.5 Graphics: 2.0 Gaming graphics: 3.0 Primary hard disk: 5.three
Since the netbooks were being used as secondary PowerPoint machines for TechDays, they already had the following installed on them:
Windows 7 Enterprise, which includes Internet Explorer 8 Office 2007 (it’s a rare day when I don’t use Outlook or OneNote) Adobe Reader Windows Live Essentials (which includes my workhorse, Writer, a handy and under-appreciated weblog editor)
The computer software selection above is probably the sort of thing that most office workers (and students, the market at whom the Latitude 2100 is aimed) would use from day to day. In addition to these apps, I installed some of the tools of the developer evangelist trade:
Visual C# Express 2008 Visual C# Express 2010 Beta 2 Visual Web Developer 2008 Visual Web Developer 2010 Express Beta 2 SQL Server Express 2008 SQL Server Management Studio Express Browsers: Chrome Firefox Opera Safari Adobe Fireworks CS3 (my primary graphics tool) PHP 5.2.12 Ruby 1.9.1 Notepad++
I’ll report on my experiences using the netbook as my primary machine regularly and tell you about the good, the bad and the ugly (or beautiful, because one never knows).
I have only one particular question: Jeff, do you want to try the same thing?
This report also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tagged as: Coding Horror, experiments, Jeff Atwood, mobile, netbooks, road warrior, The Netbook Experiment