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Posts Tagged ‘Computer’

Installing Kalyway Leopard 10.5.1 on my Hackintosh with EFI: System Specs: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz G0 Micro Star P965/ICH8 Mainboard (MSI P965 Neo2) 4GB 800MHz DDRII-RAM TSSTcorp S-ATAII DVD Burner 500GB S-ATAII Western Digital HD 250GB S-ATAII Samsung HD 120GB IDE Seagate HD XpertVision Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB Xilence 600W Power Supply 7 Auto Throttled Fans (3 12cm) (4 7cm) Mac OS X is installed on a GPT drive (the Samsung one) Drivers: Azalia Audio: forum.insanelymac.com ALC888 Driver: forum.insanelymac.com PC EFI GFX strings This is my old installation i currently use Leo4allv3 and i updated it to 10.5.4. It’s running smoothly with PC EFI GFX Strings and ACLinject.

Mini laptop or net book computers are generating all the buzz about laptops these days!

Why all the interest?

Mini computers are smaller and lighter than your standard notebook computer and have a better battery life… but you could say that about a pencil and a piece of paper. In many ways a mini notebook (or if you prefer, a mini laptop) is a throw back to the bad old days when the terms notebook computer and laptop computer weren’t interchangeable.

How Are They Different Now?

In order to power the MIDs, Intel developed the Atom processor. Atom processors are currently only available embedded in an Intel motherboard.

What Are The Advantages Of A Mini Laptop?

Expect the mini laptop to weigh approximately 2.5 pounds, including the battery. A good battery life should be at least 4 hours or more. Compare this to a 15.4-inch laptop, which will generally measure about 10 by 14 inches and weigh about 6 pounds. The weight savings alone may persuade you to think more about choosing a mini laptop.

Mini laptop computers are listed as less expensive than other portable computers. These mini laptop computers installed with Intel Atom processors are generally powerful enough to run Windows XP and Microsoft Office without fail.

What Are The Disadvantages Of A Mini Laptop?

The standard drives that you most likely will find on common on mini laptops are relatively small, only 16GB or less. Windows XP, Windows Media Player 11 and Microsoft Office Professional 2002 are well over 4GB, so this would be the area where you will most likely want to upgrade.

The displays generally have lower resolution than laptop computers. But this should not be a deterrent, unless you will be working with digital graphics. The graphic cards generally are not as good as notebook computers, but if you are just surfing the web or downloading music, you will probably not notice much difference.

The least expensive mini laptop computers run a version of Linux, not windows, as their operating system.  I added an external CD/DVD burner and upgraded the hard drive from 8 to 16GB to the mini computer that I recently purchased. The final cost of my mini laptop was $524. Without adding the CD/DVD burner, this system was $439.

Let’s Compare A 15 inch Laptop To A MiniLaptop

The least expensive 15 inch laptop from Dell includes a 120GB hard drive, built-in CD/DVD burner, and runs Windows Vista. Both minis and 15 inch computers have wireless g network cards.

If you add mobile broadband hardware to each of these computers the mini notebook is a bit pricier than a standard the laptop.

Asus has been the driving force behind the development of the netbook market. MSI has also been a market leader. Just about anything less than $330 runs Linux or has a processor slower than the Intel Atom or both.

Are You A Candidate For These New Minis?

A mini laptop is marginally suitable as a primary computer for someone who doesn’t use his or her laptop computer at work or school. If you mostly use a notebook to download music and load it onto your mp-3 player, e-mail your friends, and surf the net you might get by. They are not the best choice for games or for doing any number crunching or complicated word-processing.

What Is The Comparative Pricing?

A mini laptop, a netbook, a mini notebook, or mini computers are in the same price range as i-phones. In one review it was reported that to surf the net, it was a clear advantage to have the bigger display and keyboard of the netbook, and the downside was that you couldn’t make phone calls.

Netbooks are a popular, cheaper alternative to full size notebook and desktop computers. While some netbooks ship with Linux, most consumers are opting for Windows XP-based netbooks. What makes a netbook different from a notebook or desktop computer? The primary difference is size – netbooks fall somewhere between the smallest notebook computers and a large smartphone. Netbooks are also less powerful PCs – to reduce the cost. As a result most netbooks can’t run Windows Vista and ship with Windows XP (and in a few cases Linux). To save even more money some consumers install OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. Netbooks are available from many manufacturers including Acer, Asus, HP, MSI, Dell, OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), Medion, Kohjinsha, Lenovo, Toshiba and others.

Netbooks have even caught the attention of Google – the search engine company – who are working with computer manufacturers on a next generation netbook based on Google’s Android platform.  And Microsoft is looking for Windows 7 as its sequel to Windows XP for netbooks.

So where does that leave consumers? Should you race out and buy a netbook today with Windows XP or wait until later this year or 2010 for the Android / Windows 7 based netbooks? Or should I instead pay a bit more (likely $100 – $150) and get a full-size notebook?

Here are some things to think about:

Speed – if you are planning to run anything beyond email, basic Internet browsing and basic text document creation you should get a laptop; for the basics a netbook is good enough.  And pretty much forget about gaming on a netbook – and likely most high quality Internet video.
Power Typer- if you are power typer take some time to type on a netbook in a store – are you really going to put up with the smaller keyboard? If you are just tapping out Twitter updates or email messages you’ll be fine – but if you are writing your next novel the netbook’s smaller keyboard might be frustrating.
Vista Experience: if you like or are used to the Windows Vista experience, look and feel and features then you only have two choices – get a full-size notebook now or wait until Windows 7 enabled netbooks come out later… and heres a catch – Windows 7 may be limited to basics for netbook use (details from Microsoft still pending).
Compatibility: Linux-based netbooks have pretty much disappeared from the shelves of retailers because Linux doesn’t allow you to run popular applications like Microsoft Office.  Google’s Android-based netbooks will likely have the same restriction.  So if you use Microsoft Office at all stay clear of netbooks that aren’t running a Windows-based operating system (for now that means XP, later this year Windows 7).

One thing that isn’t different are problems.  At support.com we deal with thousands of computer problems every day including netbook and laptop problems.

Netbook computers can be affected by the same problems as a full-size notebook or desktop computer. Because netbooks aren’t as powerful, anything impacting computer performance (like a virus or spyware, or too many installed programs) will be even more noticeable.

Common problems include:

Slow startup and/or shutdown time
Frequent crashes or lockups
Help getting printers and other devices / peripherals to work
Problems upgrading netbook BIOS to the latest version
USB devices are not accessible after being plugged in
Problems transferring data to my used computer
Unable to synchronize an iPod, iPhone, Treo, Centro, Windows Mobile or other portable device
Problems accessing media content (pictures, videos, music) in Windows Media Player
Windows Update errors preventing the latest security updates from being applied
Errors with Flash, Java / Javascript, ActiveX
Help connecting a used computer to a home network
Frequent pop-ups and/or warnings that my PC is infected with a virus
No audio or choppy audio / sound problems
Problems installing and configuring anti-virus / anti-spyware software
CD-ROM drive unavailable error

My advice is don’t jump out and buy a netbook just because it is $100 – $150 cheaper – it may be a great deal if you are the right kind of user.  Take the time to really use a netbook in a store, understand how you will use it at home and make sure you can live with the limitations.  If you can, netbooks are a great deal – if you can’t, you’ll just be returning the netbook and, at some stores, paying a restocking fee.