Smartphones, netbooks and laptops: a tale of three technologies

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you must have read or heard all about the netbook. This new product category is being championed by Intel (Intel’s Atom processor is going to provide the compute muscle for most of these devices) and pretty much every notebook vendor around. The initial success of the ASUS Eee triggered off a rash of netbook launches all of which look pretty similar. Broadly, a netbook has a smaller screen and often does away with the hard drive altogether to cut down the weight of a laptop from the conventional 2.x kg to sub 1 kilo. These devices can have as little as 4 GB of flash storage or up to 120 GB of hard drive capacity. Memory configurations usually range from half a gig to a gig of RAM. The processor is usually a Celeron or Atom.

Netbooks may seem like the solution to a harried traveler’s woes at first glance but there’s many a slip ‘tween the cup and the lip here. The lack of storage, small screens and cut down keyboards are all problems but the biggest drawback is the reliance on Wi-Fi for on-the-go connectivity and lack of inbuilt support for a GSM/CDMA SIM. Why a SIM? Simple, while you can always go in for an add-on card that’s an additional expense that costs about Rs 2,600-4,000. Considering that a netbook already costs Rs 21-25K, an add-on card bumps up the cost of a netbook by 12-15%. With a built-in SIM slot you can just get a regular connection with GPRS/EDGE enabled and pop in the SIM to stay connected on the move. Also with a built-in slot you don’t have an antenna protruding outside the netbook (this isn’t such a big deal on a regular laptop but on a shrunk down device like a netbook it mars the aesthetics).

Why not use Wi-Fi you ask? Well, wireless LANs are far from ubiquitous in India and unless you’re planning to use your netbook only in airports or a handful of coffee outlets, it’s not enough. There have been rumors floating on the Net that Dell will eventually include support for a 3G SIM in it’s netbook line but as of now it’s just a rumor. There’s an Advent netbook shipping with a SIM slot in the UK but it costs about as much as a regular entry-level laptop at $600. That’s another problem with netbooks. If you go for a fully-loaded model with all the goodies, you’re going to end up paying as much as you would for a regular notebook. It’s still lighter, but then you’re compromising on pretty much everything—display, capacity, processing power and battery life.

Until these kinks get worked out, netbooks will not amount to more than a profitable niche. This is not to discount the tremendous impact that the arrival of this category has had on mobile computing overall. Laptops were becoming moribund and the Eee was kick in the seat of the industry’s pants which I believe will spur the development of lighter laptops with smaller screens, SSDs et al.

Netbooks with hard drives or SSDs (next year, maybe) will cater to the youth and early adopters. They’ll have to bulk up on features, however, while staying lightweight. What we need is a category of laptops that mimic netbooks but add more storage, memory, processing power while keeping the overall weight of the package low by throwing in a 12 inch or smaller screen and dropping in a SSD in place of a HDD as the prices of the former go south. Meanwhile, smartphone screens will become bigger and better as can be seen by the iPhone and HTC’s latest Touch which goes one up on Apple’s pride and joy. Even Nokia’s bread and butter smartphones are starting to sport bigger screens (compare the n79/73 to e51 or the n96 to earlier n series phones). I expect 4-inch smartphone screens to be commonplace on high-end models and 3-inchers on mid-range models in 2009 by when these devices will be a viable alternative to netbooks for lightweight computing on the move.

Today, if you buy a netbook you either get Linux or if you want Windows (and you will, trust me on this) you get XP which, all said, is a seven year old OS. I can understand continuing to run XP on a machine that you’ve been using for a few years but buying a new machine with XP on it strikes me as a bit much. Vista SP1 is what you should be getting if you’re getting a new laptop/netbook/PC.

My feeling is that netbooks will be bought by folks looking for the first machine or by those who have to have a sub 1 kg device and don’t mind losing out on some functionality to make that happen (and can’t afford the Rs 70-80,000 that you’d have to fork out for an ultraportable). That said, netbook sales will never account for more than 5-10% of the notebook mart but they will generate a lot of buzz which will rub off on their larger brethren when shoppers storm into stores. The only thing that’ll change my mind is a netbook running Vista SP1 with a 160 GB hard drive and a SIM slot and 2 gigs or more of RAM for a sub-$500 price tag. Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to see one anytime soon.

prashant.rao@expressindia.com