It used to be “cool” to own a netbook a short while back but now it’s just “cheap”. Cheap however is not always a bad thing. With the festive seasons coming up, you might be thinking of buying a netbook for yourself, your spouse, your kids or even your grand kids. With the top-of-the-line machines selling below RM 1K, buying a netbook would be cheaper than buying a so called SMART phone or PDA. What’s really so smart about paying thousands of ringgit for a phone when you can buy a slightly bigger in size computer for hundreds. This apparently great deal however does have its catches (like all cheap things in life).
A netbook by definition is built to browse the internet, listen to music and interact on twitter or facebook. However this seemingly ‘light’ machine (both in weight and in power) can do quite a bit of work if you know how to ‘juice’ it up. I have to be honest in saying that the Intel Atom processor is no Ariel Atom, which can go from 0 to 60mph in less than 3 seconds (http://www.cargurus.com/Cars/Overview-c21387-2009-Atom.html), when it comes to speed but how many of us drive hyper cars these days? Being the successor of the atom processor which was first made popular by the failed O2 Atom PDA, the new Atom processor provides enough power to navigate the congested cyber space on the new millennium. Unless you want your PC to be the Suzuki Hayabusa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Hayabusa) of the portable computer, a netbook would be quite economical just like a reliable scooty.
Currently, at around RM1K, you are paying the netbook manufacturer (Samsung, Dell, Acer etc.) for the hardware and also Microsoft for the Operating System. However within the next few months the Open Source Android OS will be available on Acer and Asus netbooks which will (hopefully) eliminate the cost of the OS. This would mean that the netbook of next year would be ridiculously cheap considering what it would be able to do. Having said that however, at present 1K would only get you the stock version of a netbook. If you want it to do anything properly, the sales person would be quite happy to buy software online and install for you. This will cost you an additional 400 to 500 just to get MS Office and Virus protection installed. It baffles me however to find that a netbook built to browse the net by definition does not come with inbuilt anti-virus software.
However you can always juice your computer up for free. That means you can get it to do almost all of the things your current laptop or desktop does at almost (and I do mean almost) the same speeds. Here’s how to do it.
Browsing the Internet: Forget the inbuilt Internet Explorer. It’s slow, unfriendly and prone to more attacks. Download FireFox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html) from Mozzilla which you should use for all your online banking and secure transactions due to the strong security features. You can use Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome) for your Facebook, twitter and YouTube. It will be much faster for social networking than IE or FF.
Downloads: Due to the fact that netbooks come without a DVD ROM, you would have to download almost all of your applications. If you are using a wireless broadband service, like myself, you would have noticed that these connections are not by any means reliable. Imagine how you would feel if you spent 5 hours downloading 95% of something and lost it when your internet decides to quit on you. To avoid this, install Download Accelerator Plus (http://www.speedbit.com/) from Speedbit. This will allow you to resume your failed downloads from where it stopped. It will also look for multiple sources for downloading which means it will download faster. You might also want to install Video Accelerator (http://www.videoaccelerator.com/) from the same company which will pretty much do the same thing to streaming videos. i.e. watching YouTube becomes much more enjoyable without the waiting of 20 seconds to see the next 5 seconds of a video.
Antivirus: You all know the big names and you all know the big price tags for a 1 year subscription. Why not use Open Source ClamWin (www.clamwin.com) which will do the same thing for free without annoying you by letting you know how good your antivirus is through constant pop-ups.
Office: No need to stress on how Open Office (www.openoffice.org) will save you hundreds of ringgit and do the same things as Word, Excel or Power Point. In addition it will also let you convert files to .pdf and edit .pdf. I’d like to see MS Office do that for free.
However if you have already bought a three license MS Office 2007 pack and were wondering how to install it on your netbook as it is no longer available for download from Microsoft and as there is no DVD ROM on your netbook, you can find all the older MS Office versions for download at Softpedia (http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Microsoft-Office-Download-58321.html ).
Web2.0 :To ensure that all your favourite websites, streaming video and online gaming works, install the following components. Flash player (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/) and Shockwave player (http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/) by Adobe; Java Runtime Environment (http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp) by Oracle; .NET framework 4.0 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992&displaylang=en) by Microsoft.
Music and Video: Winamp (http://www.winamp.com/) by Nullsoft.
PDF converter: CutePDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp) by CutePDF.
Email Client: No need to pay for Outlook or Groupwise. Use Thunderbird (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/) by Mozilla.
Battery life: Netbooks will give you the exact battery life mentioned on the tin. However what they fail to mention is that you will achieve these long hours only if the Wifi and Bluetooth radios are switched off. So for long battery life switch off Wifi and BT when not in use.
Many other interesting and useful applications can be recommended but at the end of the day it is only a netbook. I have tested the use of the above listed software on a netbook and I can recommend it knowing that the configuration works well without slowing down the machine.
Hope this would be of some use.
