I have been looking at getting a netbook for some time, specifically the Samsung NC10. I have been looking around for a netbook with the best performance and noticed that the “best” netbooks from all manufacturers seem to have the same specifications (at the time of writing):
- 1.6GHz, N270 Atom processor (single core)
- 1GB Ram
- 10.2″ LCD (no touchscreen)
- 160GB magnetic/16GB solid state storage
- Windows XP Home
Have the manufacturers gotten lazy and all ended up using the same reference design? A little bit more research and found out that this is related to Microsoft’s reluctant extension of the XP availability. Microsoft has agreed to provide OEMs with very cheap ($32, $26 for developing countries) XP Home licences for “ultra-low cost PCs”. The downside is that ULCPC’s hardware specifications cannot exceed some guidelines set by Microsoft which include the list above. On one hand, these XP Home licences are every affordable thus making netbooks affordable for those who want to run XP, however, ULCPC licensing definitely caps performance for all netbooks across the board. I would rather get one with 2GB of ram and use FreeBSD or Linux.
In the end, I decided to hold off on getting a netbook and upgrade my home theater system instead. I am looking forward to CES 2009 (1/8/2009-1/11/2009), hopefully there will be some announcements of netbooks that are not bound by ULCPC standards. I would really like to see a machine with the forthcoming dual core atom chip, 2GB of ram, and 5+ hour battery life for about $500.
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