AT&T would like to sell you a computer to go along with your phone.
But don’t look for any really good deals. The carrier will be selling netbooks on contract, but the purchase price will remain close to what you’d pay for a netbook without a contract.
Unlike in Europe, where some netbooks are nearly free with data plans, AT&T says it does not intend to fully subsidize netbooks in the United States. Instead, it will introduce session-based prices, day-pass and weekly data-access plans for customers who prefer to buy their netbooks at full price. At the same time, it will continue partially subsidizing netbooks when combined with a two-year wireless-data contract.
“We want to give customers a choice in how they use their netbook,” says Glenn Lurie, president of AT&T emerging devices. “But free netbooks from AT&T on contract is not part of the plan.”
Netbooks have become one of the fastest-growing categories in the PC industry. They are largely used for social networking, surfing the internet and checking e-mail, so telecom carriers such as AT&T bet they can piggyback on netbooks to attract more customers to their data plans. AT&T, for instance, is offering netbooks with two-year data contracts, similar to how it sells cellphones.
Currently AT&T offers netbooks such as the newly launched Nokia Booklet 3G, Samsung GoTM Netbook and Acer Aspire One.
It’s a strategy that has worked in Europe. In Germany, for instance, T-Mobile launched the Acer netbook for 1 euro plus a 35-euro-a-month, two-year data contract.
But U.S. consumers are unlikely to find such deals. Take the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 that AT&T offers for $150 with a two-year contract. Customers can pay $35 a month for 200 MB or $60 a month for a 5-GB data limit. That means a total cost of ownership of $990 to $1,590 over two years. By contrast, you can buy the same netbook without a data contract for $450 on Dell’s website.
That comparison may not entirely be accurate, says Lurie. “This is not just about having a computer, it’s about having a mobile computing device,” he says.
For instance, subscribers who pay $35 a month or $60 a month on a two-year contract will also get free access to AT&T’s 20,000 Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide.
That’s a deal that daily or weekly pass customers won’t have, says Lurie.
The Nokia Booklet 3G is one of the nicest netbooks you can buy, with a build that aspires to be a 10-inch MacBook Pro. But it’s still just a netbook, and therein lies the problem.
Price
$300 with 2-year AT&T contract, $600 à la carte
Verdict
Nokia has built a great netbook, but they’ve done nothing to redefine the genre. Their 10-inch Booklet 3G has your typical 1.6GHz Atom, 120GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. Running Windows 7, that means the performance is just passable. I’d be this close to pounding my head against the wall when a program would begin installing or a video would load.
That’s typical.
What’s ever so less typical is the sharp, sub-3lb unibody-esque construction (complete with sweet MacBook-like under-hatch battery and a hinge that bends nearly 180-degrees), HDMI output (not that you can really playback HD videos smoothly on an Atom) and, of course, solid integrated 3G and integrated GPS (though Nokia’s bundled Ovi software apparently requires a phone or PC to activate, and after 30 minutes of fiddling, I honestly gave up on mapping.) The battery life is impressive, too. In nonstop 3G browsing and app running with the screen at 80% brightness, the machine’s svelte 16-cell battery ran for a bit over 6 hours and 30 minutes. That was a strenuous test, and dimming the screen and/or browsing through Wi-Fi should truly be enough to get you through the workday sans-recharge. (For instance, CrunchGear’s John Biggs reported a pretty remarkable 10 hours of movie playback.)
But alas, even for a nice netbook, the Booklet’s price is a bit too opulent for what you’re really getting: an ever-so gussied up version of the same machine you could buy from Acer, Asus, HP, etc, for half the price (before subsidies). Meanwhile, there are plenty of ULV systems in the $700 range with bigger screens, better performance and portable-minded design (of course, they’ll mostly require 3G dongles).
Give me some rhinestones and a bit more power, and we’ll talk. Or just hand me back my iPhone.
Quality build
Long battery life
Plastic monitor back makes whole thing feel cheaper
Apple’s latest Snow Leopard update breaks compatibility with netbooks hacked to run the Mac operating system. But it’s unlikely that the move signifies the company’s future plans to clamp down on the “Hackintosh” community, observers say.
That’s because Apple’s Mac OS doesn’t support non-Apple products to begin with, so it would be misleading to say the latest update (10.6.2) “pulls” that support. In fact, Apple might not have even been aware that it was “breaking” support for hacked netbooks with this update at all.
“Apple doesn’t have any hardware that relies on the Atom processor, so making sure that OS X supports the CPU probably isn’t just low on the priority list; it’s probably not even in the same zip code as the priority list,” said Brad Linder, writer of Liliputing, a netbook enthusiast blog.
Still, Mac clones should be a touchy topic for Apple. For a brief period in the 1990s — when Steve Jobs was still exiled from Apple — Apple CEO Michael Spindler licensed the Mac operating system to several manufacturers. The move did not fare well for the company: Apple was near bankruptcy when Jobs retook the helm in 1997. One of the first items on Jobs’ agenda was to destroy the clone program, closing the gates to the Mac OS.
More recently, Apple has also been in a legal battle with Psystar, a startup selling computers hacked to run Mac OS X. But that legal pursuit is a move to protect Apple’s intellectual property against other companies that could threaten the Mac marketshare.
Thus, although the latest Snow Leopard update seems to disable “support” for netbooks, it’s likely Apple still doesn’t care enough to take action against consumers hacking away at their netbooks. A more simple, and probably true, explanation is likely that Apple is cleaning up Snow Leopard and optimizing code, said Michael Gartenberg, an Interpret technology analyst.
“People are always ascribing these nefarious Oliver Stone-like notions about Apple, but they’re often wrong,” Gartenberg said. “If Apple were really serious, there are a number of ways to make it impossible to run OS X on any system.”
Apple’s lack of a netbook offering doesn’t appear to affect the company. Last month, the company posted earnings results for its most profitable quarter ever. Apple also set a record for selling more Macs in a quarter than ever before, with 3.05 million units sold.
“The financial results show that Apple’s not feeling any hurt from not having a netbook,” said Jason Snell, editorial director of Macworld magazine. “It just keeps selling more laptops, and making more money on them.”
We haven’t even seen the Zii EGG make its long-anticipated consumer debut yet, but Creative is already building up steam for its next Zii venture. ZiiLABS’ ZMS-08 is a third generation mobile media accelerator / system-on-a-chip that boasts its predecessor’s 1080p playback and 24fps encoding, and HD video conferencing via simultaneous 720p encoding and decoding, while adding all-new OpenGL ES 2.0 support, an integrated HDMI controller, X-Fi audio and Flash acceleration. Paired to a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8, and running a custom flavor of Android alongside Plaszma OS, the new Zii chip will look for homes in “web tablets, netbooks, connected TVs” and the like, but seemingly not smartphones. ZiiLABS has already signed up a number of clients, who’ll start receiving shipments in Q1 of 2010. Full PR and an architectural diagram after the break.
Like Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, a new dual-screen device has two faces to match its double identity: It promises to be an electronic book reader and a netbook at the same time.
The Wi-Fi enabled device, called eDGe, will fold like a book and can be used as an e-reader. It will also serve as a digital notepad you can use to write notes or highlight text, send e-mails and instant messages, browse the internet and run apps, say the device’s creators. Under the hood, eDGe will be powered by Google’s Android operating system.
The left half of the eDGe will have a 9.7-inch E Ink e-paper display. Users will be able to read e-books in PDF and EPUB format and take notes or draw diagrams using a stylus. The right side of the device is a 10.1-inch LCD touchscreen that can be used to check e-mail and surf the web.
The $490 eDGe won’t be available until February, 2010, says its creator, Entourage Systems, a startup based in McLean, Virginia. But the company is taking pre-orders for the device.
Currently, e-book readers and netbooks are among the fastest-growing categories in consumer electronics. Not surprisingly, companies are trying to find ways to meld the two. Netbooks pioneer Asus, for instance, is also working on a dual-screen e-reader. Asus showed a prototype of the device at the CeBIT trade show in March and plans to unveil it at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Asus’ e-reader will likely have two color touchscreens, a speaker, a webcam and a microphone, along with the capability to make inexpensive Skype calls.
The eDGe will have an ARM processor, 4 GB storage, an SD card slot and 2 USB ports. Weighing about 2.5 pounds, eDGe’s dual screens will work together, the company says. That means a user will be able to highlight a word from the e-paper screen and drag it to a browser on the LCD screen in order to do a Google search on it. (See a list of eDGe’s specs.)
As with many hybrid devices, eDGe runs the risk of not being good enough as either an e-book reader or as a netbook. Also, eDGe doesn’t have the kind of integrated access to an e-bookstore that companies such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble can offer with their e-readers. However, because eDGe uses the EPUB format, its customers can access the 1 million free, public-domain books digitized by Google. To get the latest Dan Brown bestseller, Entourage says it is building its own e-book store and inking deals with publishers.
Still, the eDGe packs in some appealing extras. The device will come with a text-to-speech function and a 1.3-megapixel webcam. It will offer about 16 hours of battery life in e-reader mode and up to 6 hours when running the LCD screen, says Entourage Systems.
We’ve already seen plenty of Windows 7 laptops and desktops up for order, but it looks like we’re now finally starting to see how things will shake out on netbooks as well. After much confusion in the early days of Windows 7, it appears that Windows 7 Starter edition will indeed be the standard issue offering on the majority of netbooks, and it looks like it’ll also demand a slight premium over otherwise comparable XP-based systems. In most cases, Windows 7 Starter seems to add $30 to the cost of a netbook (as with the Dell Mini 10v pictured above), or $50 in Canada if the first few listings on Future Shop are any indication — which, as Digital Home Thoughts points out, would appear to be quite a bit more than the license fee manufacturers are paying. Of course, there are also a few netbooks that break the mold with Windows 7 Home Premium, and it unsurprisingly appears to be the standard offering on low-cost thin and lights that eschew the netbook moniker altogether. Hit up the link below for a rundown of some of the options already available to order, which is sure to grow considerably in the next few days.
Fujitsu has just announced two “stylish” P Series LifeBooks, and we have our hands on the PR drivel to prove it. This affable pair of machines come in “charming” colors that “endow both notebooks with a premium yet snazzy feel, for standing out effortlessly in a corporate jungle or a social playground setting.” To be honest, we’re more interested in things like the 11.6-inch (1366 x 768) display, battery life (6.7 hours under normal use, 7.2 hours in power saving mode — which can be selected by hitting the ECO button), multitouch, the DVD Sharing application for glomming onto optical drives over your LAN, and the fact that they’re both a mere 3.5 pounds light and just over an inch thin. The Fujitsu P LifeBook P3110 features a Pentium SU4100 (1.30GHz / 800MHz / 2MB L2 Cache) and is available in Glossy Black, Glossy Silver, and Glossy Ruby Red. The Fujitsu P LifeBook P3010, however, sports an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 (1.6GHz / 512KB / L2 cache) and is available in Glossy Black and Glossy Ruby Red. No word on a release date, or on a price — but, to paraphrase Godard, whenever someone mentions “style,” we reach for our checkbooks. PR after the break.
The Booklet 3g, Nokia’s new offering in the red-hot netbook space, tries to blur the line between smartphones and notebooks — not a surprise, coming as it does from the world’s largest handset maker. And while it may be a late arrival to an overcrowded party it does have a few things going for it, including a sleek design and the promise of an epic 12-hour battery life.
The Booklet 3G is the first PC from Nokia, and it’s a head-turner. Smooth as silk, the netbook has an aluminum chassis and a glossy mirror-like finish. The device is slim (about 20mm thick) and weighs in at just 2.76 pounds. It has nicely rounded edges that give it a sleek, polished look and is available in three colors: blue, black and white.
The Booklet’s keyboard is well laid-out with keys that offer excellent tactile feedback and a trackpad that’s not overly sensitive.
But here’s the real stand-out feature: The Booklet has a 16-cell battery, which means a whopping 12 hours of usage time — enough for a European flight from San Francisco.
The battery is where, Nokia says, it has leveraged its design expertise. Sixteen cells is the most we have seen in a netbook so far, and on the Booklet the extra heft doesn’t show. The user-removable battery is slim and blends into the netbook beautifully.
The Booklet 3G is one of the few netbooks available on contract with a telecom carrier. AT&T will offer it for $300 with a $60-per-month data contract for two years. If that’s too much for you, Best Buy plans to offer an unlocked, unsubsidized version for $600.
Under the hood, the Booklet runs an Intel Atom Z530 1.6-GHz processor on a Windows 7 operating system. That will make it one of the first few netbooks to ship with Microsoft’s latest OS.
The Booklet 3G also comes with 1 GB RAM, a 120-GB hard disk drive and a 10-inch display. For connectivity, the netbook features an HDMI port, three USB ports, a headphone/microphone jack and a slot for SD card readers.
Since it runs the Windows 7 operating system, which launches Oct. 22, it’s likely the netbook will release around then. The Booklet also includes Nokia’s Ovi software for easy synchronization between Nokia phones and the netbook.
Overall, we would say Nokia nailed the design and the battery life. But the cost makes it more expensive than Dell, HP, MSI and Asus or any of the other devices out there.
Top photo: Nokia. Additional photos: Priya Ganapati.
Avast! There be a mighty tempest rocking the good ship Gadget Lab. OK, it’s just raining really hard in San Francisco and most of the Bay Area. But what better time to check off all those do-it-yourself gadget projects you’ve exiled to the bottom of your to-do list?
Sure, copious sunlight makes it hard to concentrate on backing up your data. But when it’s pouring and there’s nothing better to do than geek out, tasks like beautifying your iTunes library, turning your Mac Mini into the ultimate media center, or hacking your netbook can be a dorktastic blast.
Even if the skies are clear in your city, here’s a list of tech-centric activities you can take on when the weather is being a harsh mistress. Trust us — they’re a lot more fun than playing Monopoly or constructing a magical butterfly garden.
1. Straighten Out Your iTunes Library With TuneUp
Anybody with a sizable iTunes music collection is bound to have a bunch of albums with incorrect or ungrammatical song tracks (e.g., Track 01, Track 02, “here comes the sun,” etc). TuneUp is an awesome plug-in that hooks into an online database and analyzes your incorrect track titles and automatically renames them for you.
The TuneUp plug-in automatically launches with iTunes, and you drag a list of incorrect song tracks into the TuneUp menu to begin automatic renaming. The only drag is that it takes about 5 to 10 seconds per song, so if you have a ton of improperly named tracks, this can take a pretty long time.
Other than renaming songs, TuneUp can also identify any albums in your iTunes library that are missing cover art. Then, it will download that art from its database and automatically tag it onto the respective album.
TuneUp isn’t 100 percent reliable, especially when it comes to dealing with super-indie tracks, but it successfully fixed up about 80 percent of my iTunes library, which contains about 5,000 songs. Not bad. TuneUp costs $20 for a one-year license, or $30 for a lifetime license.
2. Turn Your Mac Mini Into the Ultimate Entertainment Box
Ever dream of a TV set-top box that offered every type of media you can imagine? An ultraversatile media machine doesn’t really exist yet on the market, but if you own a Mac Mini, you’ll like this solution. Sporting a gorgeous UI, Plex Media Center is a Mac app that serves your movies, TV shows, music and even content from websites such as Hulu and Netflix. It supports a large number of file formats, so even digital pirates will be pleased. Just install Plex on a Mac Mini, hook up the Mini to your TV and you’re gold. You can access and control Plex with your Apple remote, so forget about that shoddy keyboard-and-mouse experience.
Similar to TuneUp, Plex uses metadata from the internet to automatically retrieve art to accompany your media. In the screenshot above, Plex provides that slick Seinfeld background. One caveat: It’ll take some time to make Plex look just right. Plex can be pretty particular about just how you organize your files in order for it grab metadata for your media files. That means you’ll have to do lots of renaming of files and folders. Example: To load that Seinfeld menu, Plex required arranging the folders as such: Movies–>Seinfeld–> Season 3. Still, it’s worth the time and effort.
The best part? Plex is free.
3. Hack and Mod Your Netbook
Netbooks are popular not just because they’re so small and convenient to carry around everywhere; they’re surprisingly hackable. There’s a wealth of literature on the web that will teach you how to hack a netbook to run Mac OS X, or install mods such as an HDTV tuner, GPS or Bluetooth.
… the digital cloud that is the interwebs, of course. Indeed, cloud storage is the hip way to manage your data (unless you’re a T-Mobile Sidekick customer). By throwing your files into a cloud-based service such as Dropbox or Box.net, you’re automatically backing them up to protect against data loss. Not only that, you can enjoy access to your files from any computer with an internet connection. For example, on my office computer, I can listen to my entire iTunes library, which I copied into Dropbox.
The words “cloud storage” are pretty yawn-inducing, but once you get past that and start experimenting with the tech, it’s pretty fun. After trying out cloud backup services, you might consider throwing your notes into Evernote, an online note-taking service. Evernote has apps not only for the Mac and Windows, but also for several smartphones including the iPhone and RIM BlackBerry. When I find a recipe I like while browsing the web with my computer, I paste it into Evernote, hit Sync, and then on my iPhone I launch the Evernote app — and there’s the recipe. Pretty sweet.
5. Set Your iPhone Free
Apple plays gatekeeper for its iPhone, enforcing stringent control over what types of third-party software appear in its App Store. This, of course, has resulted in some questionable app rejections, most of which blew over after a short duration. But Apple crossed an invisible line when it rejected the Google Voice app, a service that enables users to rely on a single phone number to ring all their phones, while also delivering the gift of free text messages and voicemail service, as well as cheap international calls. Fortunately, there’s a way around Apple’s restrictions: Jailbreaking the iPhone.
Jailbreaking (i.e. hacking) the iPhone gives you access to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, which offers a Google Voice app among other wares Apple would forbid. Want to tether your iPhone? There’s a Cydia app for that. Want to download files larger than 10 megabytes on the 3G network? Yup, there’s an unauthorized app for that, too. Jailbreaking is also the first step you must take if you wish to unlock your iPhone to work on a different carrier, such as T-Mobile.
The drag about jailbreaking is that it just isn’t very convenient. Every time Apple releases a software update, you lose access to Cydia, and your unauthorized apps temporarily disappear. Then you must jailbreak and re-download those apps again. (If you paid for a Cydia app the first time, you don’t have to pay to download it again.) But if you actually have free time, having a jailbroken iPhone can be largely beneficial.
From our experience, the best tutorials on jailbreaking can be found at iClarified, and if you need more visual aids, plenty of YouTube users have posted tutorials as well. What are you waiting for? Jailbreak away!
What are the rainy day activities you enjoy with your gadgets? Post your suggestions in the comments below.
Hey, this is probably surprising to no one, but here we go. A new market research report from DisplaySearch says that the overall mobile PC market is down about 5 percent over last year. The main reason cited for this decline? The increasing popularity of netbooks, which average around $300, and are much, much cheaper than traditional laptops. Netbook revenue is up 264 percent from last year, and have contributed to an overall lowering of the average PC cost by 19 percent. While this is certainly bad news for the PC industry itself, hooray for all of us, right?!
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The battery life is impressive, too. In nonstop 3G browsing and app running with the screen at 80% brightness, the machine’s svelte 16-cell battery ran for a bit over 6 hours and 30 minutes. That was a strenuous test, and dimming the screen and/or browsing through Wi-Fi should truly be enough to get you through the workday sans-recharge. (For instance, CrunchGear’s John Biggs reported a pretty remarkable 
Quality build
Plastic monitor back makes whole thing feel cheaper
It’s still a $600 netbook
