Netbook India

• Netbooks and Nettops, both can handle multimedia apps pretty nicely. Photoshop CS4 runs without a hitch on the new processors
• Same architecture is used in both netbooks and nettops
• The N450 and D510/D410 – all these CPUs consume less than 20W of power
• Low TDP (Thermal Design Power) = Less heat generated = Cool systems
• Good enough for video watching and youtube
• Could be your primary computer until and unless you are into gaming

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We have seen flood of mini-laptops in India this year. We saw active participation in the netbook market from many big companies like HP, Dell, Acer and ASUS. Even SONY finally released a decent netbook, the SONY VAIO W.

With so many options out there, but which is the best netbook available in India? Well, I know many of us are fanboys of some company or the other. So, here is the list of the best netbooks, arranged company-wise:

1. HP

The best netbook that HP offers in India is the HP Mini 2140. It has a 10-inch screen and 1024×576 resolution which should be enough for basic web surfing. However that is not its strongest point. The fact that it has an excellent keyboard is the reason we are recommending it. Read HP MINI 2140 revew

2. SONY

We highly recommend SONY VAIO W. It is being available at under Rs 23000 at many places. It is one of the few netbooks that has a chiclet keyboard. It, by default comes with a 3-cell battery which won’t last more than 2.5 hours

SONY VAIO W review

3. ASUS

ASUS has rolled quite a lot of netbooks this year. We saw the launch of EEE 1000HE this year. ASUS soon phased it out and unveiled its seashell range of  netbooks in India. Best one and most bang for the buck is the ASUS EEE 1005HA. If you love ASUS, go for this one. You won’t regret a bit.

4. ACER

This year, Acer launched two netbooks. One is D250, which now comes loaded two OS: Android and Windows XP Home. This makes it certainly one of the most exciting netbooks out there.

The Aspire 751H is one of the few 11-inchers that are available in India. This ones is a bit slow when compared to other netook available in the market, but in return you get extra-ordinary battery life of 7 plus hours too.

5. LENOVO Ideapad S10-2

HCL MiLeap MH 04

HCL is one weird company. They claim that they make these laptops, but in reality, THEY DO NOT. This MH04 is just a rebranded MSI WIND U100. Read   HCL MiLeap MH 04 review

Also,Stay clear of Wipro Ego netbook. This is actually produced by a local Chinese company and it not wipro made. Stupid Wipro, lying to people that they have made it. What a shame!

Acer recently unveiled their first netbook with Android OS and many more netbook manufactures will launching their own Android netbooks soon. However, whether Android netbooks will be popular is certainly a tough question to answer.

Aricent is  a company that is current working with many chipset manufactures and vendors to synchronize the Android operating system with their chipset and to enhance the user’s experience

According to Sajal Gupta, Vice President of Aricent, Android is still considered as mobile OS and is not tailored for the bigger devices such as notebooks and mini laptops. Device manufactures are looking forward to use Android OS on bigger devices too. He further said that chipset in mobile phones have limited processing power and Android OS is not fully optimized for bigger devices, yet.

Interestingly, device manufactures are looking into the possibility of using the Android OS for car entertainment and hybrid television. 

"With new chipset and device manufacturers showing their interest to develop new devices using Android, there are high chances that we may see presence of Android on many devices, apart from mobile phones and netbooks," he added.

There is a huge demand for Android, coming from foreign operators. Demand is less in India as people are not much cognizant of Android OS.

SONY launched its first netbook mini-notebook in India a couple of months back. Even though SONY has entered a bit late into the netbook game, it still had the *courage* to launch their mini-notebooks at a pretty high price of Rs49,900 (~$1000) for the entry level model of VAIO P (VGN-P15). All the models comes with Vista (except for one model) and 2GB RAM as standard.

The entry level model (VGN-P13GH/Q) comes with a Hard Disk (60GB) and Vista Basic. It also comes with a slower Atom processor (Atom Z520 @ 1.3GHz) as compared to the processor that comes in the usual netbooks ie Atom N270 or Atom N280. In India, it is available in white and black colors and costs Rs49,990

Another model that SONY has introduced in India is VGN-P15G/R, which is similar to the previous model, but comes with Atom Z530 processor that runs at 1.6GHz. Vista Home Premium comes installed instead of Vista Basic. It uses a 64GB SSD instead of 60GB Hard Disk. It is available in black, green and red colors. It costs Rs64,000.

Another model that was later launched in the month of July is VGN-P25G/N, which sports the zippier Z540 that runs at the clock speed of 1.86GHz. Other than that, it sports the same 64GB SSD and comes with Vista Home Premium. It comes in gold, red and black colors. This is most expensive VAIO P costing Rs69,990.

Along with the launch of VGN-P25G/N, SONY also introduced a Windows XP version, known as VGN-P23G/W, which comes with Atom Z530 CPU that runs at 1.6GHz and comes with 80GB Hard disk and just 1GB RAM. Why 1GB RAM? Blame Microsoft for that as it does not allow manufactures to sell Windows XP computers with more than a gig of RAM. Sad part is that the RAM is soldered on-board on all VAIO Ps and thus, you cannot upgrade the RAM at all. This model costs Rs49,990 and comes in black and white colors.

Screen of VAIO P is both good and bad. ‘Good’ in a way that it has great resolution of 1600×768 and ‘bad’ in a way that all those pixels are squeezed into a small 8-inch display. This requires you to have perfect eyesight.

Keyboard is the heart of VAIO P. It features a great chiclet keyboard which resembles the ones found on the recent Macbooks and some other Sony VAIOs. The keyboard feels great although you may a get a little annoyed with that small right shift key. It takes some time to get used to small shift key, but after some time, you won’t have problem typing on it.

Performance

The entry level VAIO (P13) is barely able to run Windows Vista due to its week processing power. It is so low powered that it can barely run full screen video without any hiccups. Anyway, the VAIO P is not meant to be gaming machine. It is a great device to carry around. Since, it is so small, it can be taken anywhere with you.

[VAIO P official webpage]

Windows 7’s release is just around the corner. Soon, it will be released in India and we Indians will be able to enjoy the next generation of Windows OS. Here are the prices of Windows 7 compared to Windows Vista. It is clear from the following table that Windows 7 upgrade is going to cost less than the Windows 7.

Windows 7 runs way better than Windows Vista OS on netbooks. Windows Vista made the lower end netbooks to crawl. That said, it runs pretty darn fine on ASUS EEE 1000H and ACER ASPIRE D250. However, Windows 7 runs even faster than the Windows Vista, almost like XP.

I hope that Windows 7 debuts at an affordable price, which will certainly help more of us  not to go in for pirated stuff

[via GadgetMix.com]