A Small Report, Episode IX

In order to get going with the blogging again, I have decided to attempt to write several short posts next. I suspect they will be more of lists than actual posts. Additionally, being fresh into the new year and all, I think there will also be a somewhat longer post about 2009 coming up. And maybe some more text about D&D alignments; they've been neglected for long enough.

But first, something that I sort of left hanging in my previous post:

The Samsung N120

There are a few reasons why I would seriously consider the Samsung N120 as a netbook contender:

• The keyboard. I still tend to think that one year ago, the AAO had one of the best keyboards of all the netbook offerings available at the time (the HP Mini, or whatever its name is, is the only one I tested that I considered better (and YMMV), but it of course had other shortcomings). The only problem with the AAO keyboard, which I still consider to be excellent for a netbook, is that while it had larger keys than (most of) the competition at the time, they're still a bit too small for efficient writing. The N120 has a slightly larger form factor, and perhaps because of it, a somewhat larger keyboard.
  At first, I did not really believe it would make that much of a difference. Most buttons on the N120 are maybe 2mm larger or so in both dimensions, with the part of the button that you actually hit with your fingers being maybe half that much larger. 1mm can't make much of a difference, right? But when I actually got to try it out, it does make a difference, and personally I actually thought the N120 keyboard was significantly better than the AAO's keyboard. If I were to write significant amounts of text with a netbook (for instance, if I travelled a lot and wanted a netbook to use a lot on the road), I would pick the N120 in an instance for its keyboard alone.
• Screen size. The AAO's screen is big enough for me, but I readily admit that if the netbook's form factor would allow for more, I would take the 10.2" screen rather than the 8.9" screen any day.
• Screen resolution. While the N120 doesn't have better resolution than the AAO, there has been some netbooks lately with 1024x576 resolution rather than 1024x600. I already constantly find myself switching to Firefox's full screen mode in order to get as much vertical content as possible on the screen at the same time. Without it, I get about 384 pixels of content in the Firefox window; and of that, 24 pixels less is starting to be rather significant. In short, I quite prefer 1024x600 to 1024x576, and the N120 delivers...
• Battery life. Although I might not have an immediate need for it, I must admit that ten hours of battery life, as opposed to two hours, would open an entire new world of possibilities.
• Integrated 3G (optional). OK so this is a small thing, but I think I would prefer having it integrated as opposed to a dongle (which I now have). One thing less to keep track of...
• Other sweet stuff. The N120 also has Bluetooth, something that you didn't see in most netbooks one year back. And of course, as opposed to the AAO, it would have a bigger hard disk, a faster hard disk, the option of memory upgrade to 2GB rather than 1.5GB (probably without having to take the netbook entirely apart when upgrading), a better trackpad (the AAO trackpad gives me nightmares)... and so on, probably several other minor things as well. And it would have Windows included, allowing for dual-boot for any programs that don't exist under Linux.

So yes. If I got a netbook now, I'd probably get the N120. There might be an update coming up in the future... :-)