Netbooks
I Love the Nokia Booklet 3G
This has been a long overdue post. Anyway, back in June 2010, I looked into the WOMWorld/Nokia website and sent a request to trial a Nokia Booklet 3G. I was excited on seeing and getting my hands on this product since I am a Nokia fan. I’ve owned several Nokia phones before and have been impressed by them, so I was curious to find out if this product (which is something new for them as they only normally make phones) would be a good one as well.
The Nokia Booklet 3G is about the size of a netbook, however Nokia doesn’t refer to it as such. They refer to it as a mini laptop.
When I first unboxed the product, I was impressed with how it looked. I fell in love with it at first sight. It had a sleek shiny black top exterior. Then when I opened it, I liked the 10.1-inch HD glass display, and the matte aluminum chassis which measured at only 2cm thin. It was also very lightweight as expected (2.7lbs).
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This product has Windows 7 running on an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor with 1GB DDR2 memory and a 120GB hard drive. The expected battery life is about 12 hours. When I tested it, I think I had it running for about 10 hours and I only had a couple browser windows open. I would say that’s really pretty good. I could have tried playing a movie on it to see if it would make a big difference on the battery life, but I was too busy to test it out like that.
One thing I liked about this mini laptop was that it was capable of running on a 3G cellular network just by inserting a SIM card in it. I have a Rogers SIM with a data plan so I tested it out with this. It worked really well right away, no need to configure anything! (See screenshot below). It is capable of download speeds up to 10.2 Mbps.
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It has three USB ports, an HDMI output port, and comes with the usual Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, which is good. It also has an integrated A-GPS which I didn’t really get to try out. The A-GPS works with the Nokia Ovi Maps. Amazingly, the Booklet 3G ran very quietly, especially since it had no fan.
The Nokia Booklet 3G isn’t available in Canada although it’s been released in the US since last year. Retailers sell it for about $600, which I think is a little bit pricey. If it was in the $400 range, it’ll probably be worth buying it.
The overall rating I would give this product is 4.5 stars out of 5.
Netbooks… I Want One, Too.
The Netbook, a small version of the notebook computer, has been quite popular lately. Especially now that the economy has been suffering, some people are turning to buy these less-expensive (~$200-$400ish) small-sized computers instead of the regular laptop. If what you mostly need is just to be able to use email, surf the web, and create documents, then a netbook would surely suffice.
It was Asus who first released the netbook called the Asus Eee PC in 2007. However, the roots of the netbook can be traced to Psion’s discontinued netBook line, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and the Palm Foleo.
After Asus, other computer manufacturers followed suit, including Everex, MSI, Acer, Dell, and HP. Initially, it was only the Linux operating system which was used, but now, Windows XP based models have also been released.
The Top 10 Netbooks listed by PC World on March 6th, 2009 are as follows:
- Asus Eee PC 1000HE
- Acer Aspire ONE AOD150
- Lenovo Ideapad S10
- Acer Aspire ONE
- Asus Eee PC 1000 XP
- HP Mini 2140
- Asus N10Jc
- HP Mini 1000
- Dell Inspiron Mini 9
- MSI Wind U100
Ever since the Asus Eee PC was released, I’ve always thought of getting one (the pink one specifically) so I could use it on the go. And now, I’m glad I have more options. Unfortunately, I don’t have the money to spare right now. I just love gadgets and this would surely be a lovely addition, as soon as I have the extra bucks. I can’t really make it a priority right now though. [Sigh]
Photo Credit: zieak
Tech-Life in Pink 
