For Christmas 2010, we got my youngest daughter Em a Samsung NF210 netbook. She's a budding nerd and has been hacking away on some Python scripts and I really enjoy working on this together with her. She had previously been using a hand me down Powerbook but its best days are now long gone. I didn't want to spend a bucket of cash and she liked the funky shape of this particular model (girls really!!).
The hardware
This Sammy comes with a 1.66 GHz Atom process, 1 GB RAM and 250 GB hard drive. I'm not sure of the weight but it seems much much lighter than my Macbook. The screen is bright and battery life is quoted as up to 14 hours. Even taking out the usual marketing spin the battery life is awesome. Anything better than 8 hours is dynamite IMHO. In addition there's a built in web cam which is unnecessary for me but Em thinks its pretty cool.
The software
Ok so here's a bit of a negative, the shipped OS is Windows 7... Starter!! I had to hide my natural bias and told Em we'd see how it worked out. Em was excited because she'd be able to run all those programs that she couldn't run on the Mac. In actual fact, there really wasn't anything in this category aside from ridiculous smileys and other .exe malware. Em was disappointed that one of the unnecessary features removed from the Starter edition was the ability to change desktop backgrounds.
So within 24 hours, Win 7 Starter was gone and Linux had been installed. We tried a bunch of different flavours, Meego, Moblin, Smeegol, Mint (XCFE), Ubuntu UNR. Meego and Moblin in particular have a beautiful interfaces for portable devices. Initially I couldn't get wifi working as the netbook uses proprietary Broadcom drivers (although I'm told these are now open). After much mucking around I finally got the drivers installed and it worked really well. I'd have to say that one of the big pluses for Meego is the community. It took a long time to get the wifi problem sorted but there were people willing to help on IRQ and twitter. (Particular thanks here to Andy Bleaden @andybleaden for his assistance). However I needed to get VLC working before the young one goes away to grandma's house and this involved a whole new round of pain. We've settled on Ubuntu UNR as the best fit between usability and functionality at the moment. I'm not particularly keen on the Unity interface and we'll sure have another look at Meego in the future.
Ubuntu runs well but so far we've not found a solution for the non functioning brightness keyboard controls and the annoying trackpad which moves the cursor when bumped while typing. I'm sure there's a fix out there for that one somewhere though.
The Verdict
Its terrific and I want one. The screen is small but perfectly usable for web surfing on knocking up a script or two. While its no desktop replacement its perfect if you're on the road or want to have web access with you wherever you are. I've not used an iPad but can't see why you'd want an iPad when you could get one of these for so much more bang for your buck.
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