Black Friday - Netbook - Dell Mini 10v / Inspiron 1011

Excellent Black Friday deal at Amazon.com: Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011) with Windows 7 and 6-cell battery for only $299 (USD) and of course with free shipping. Hurry up, for the same price you normally get the 3-cells version!
I got the same netbook, I can really recommend it!

Dell Inspiron Mini 1011 10.1-Inch Obsidian Black Netbook - Up to 8 Hours 8 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter), $299 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping

Some details, actually not listed (it should be in though... is Bluetooth support!)

Product Features

• 1.6GHz Intel N270 Atom Processor
• 1GB Memory
• 160GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
• 10.1" Display, Integrated Intel Media Accelerator Graphics
• Windows 7 Starter, Up to 8 Hours 8 Minutes of Battery Life

Netbook and Bluetooth - integrated vs usb dongle

Bluetooth is a feature that you rarely find in the cheapest netbooks, say below $320 USD.
For example Bluetooth isn't included in most of the Acer Aspire One AOD250 and in many Toshiba Mini NB205. While most of the Samsung netbooks and the Dell Mini 10v and Asus EEE PC 1005HA include Bluetooth.

I personally love Bluetooth you can establish a wireless link to your netbook for example:

• with a Bluetooth headset: you can listen to music and/or make Skype calls (VoIP)
  
• with your mobile phone: to synch data, contacs ot to use the phone as 3G modem for Internet connectivity

My suggestion: Bluetooth support in the netbook shouldn't be a go/not go criteria, you can simply add Bluetooth support using a Bluetooth USB dongle, there are many starting just below $10 (USD) and some of them are so tiny that you even won't see it.
Some USB Bluetooth adapters are so tiny that simply disappears in the USB port of your netbook, so you can plug it once and forget it. You won't notice it! No damage to break it!

Be careful in the choice of the USB dongle, be aware of the fact that some cheap Bluetooth dongles got limitations. Some examples:

• Many cheap dongle don't support A2DP, necessary to listen stereo music
  
• With Windows XP 32-bit you're fine, however please be aware that many dongles got operating system compatibility problems with MAC, Linux, and 64-bit Windows
  
• Some Bluetooth dongles got a very limited wireless reach (2-3 meters)
• Some cheap dongles got buggy/crap software

These two micro USB Bluetooth dongle seem to be very good, according to the user review I read there are no issue at all especially with Windows based netbooks. The IOGear may have problems with Ubuntu 9.04.

Why so many netbooks don't include Bluetooth? Bluetooth is kind of "premium" feature, many people don't neet it. People needing it are supposed to give out few bucks more.
As I said, the average price is falling and the netbook OEMs try to reduce the costs, every cent counts in the netbook market! Netbooks are essentially mini laptops with the absolutely minimum feature set, Bluetooth isn't definetly something everybody needs.

Netbook Bestseller: Cheap, Sub USD 300

A revolution in the Amazon Bestseller: the top 3 are all sub $300 (USD) netbooks of the 10-inch class, all with 3-cell battery, 160GB hard disk, 1GB memory and Windows XP. And of course all 3 with free shipping.

The actual 2nd position is actually the major news: a netbook approaching the $200 mark!!!

1. Acer Aspire One AOD250-1165 blue , $285.95
2. Gateway LT2022u 10.1-Inch Black Netbook, $229
3. Acer Aspire One AOD250-1116 - red, $285.95

The Asus EEE PC 1005HA priced in the range $350-370 (USD) has been #1 of the top ten for many weeks, of course we can't directly compare the EEE PC with the Aspire One and the Gateway, the actual top 3 netbooks are really the absolute minimum you can have from a netbook. I personally think that the 3-cells battery is no go... in any case the trend is clear: cheap netbooks! Now it is interesting to see when the first sub $200 netbook will appear, I bet it will be an ARM based netbook with Linux. Actuall if we consider about $30 for the Windows XP licence, a Gateway LT2022u with Linux could be already sold for $200...

Black Friday Deals (offtopic!)

A little bit offtopic to inform you about the Amazon.com Black Friday Deals: they start on Monday November 23rd and continue for the whole week, just visit this link every day next week and I'm sure you'll find at least a good deal for you and/or some good gift ideas at very low price!

Atom Pineview Netbooks 2010, Atom N450 to miss Christmas 2009

A netbook as Christmas present? Why not! In any case your present will have an Intel Atom N270/N280 on board, it means the first Atom generation.
About a year ago Intel announced the first Atom Pineview netbooks for end of 2009, now end of 2009 is approaching a xbitlabs.com news reporting that Intel Atom N450 (the first pineview Atom) netbooks are going to be presented earliest for the 2010 CES, it means that the new Atom is going to miss the Christmas 2009 market. Actually it is a smart way for Intel to give a final push to the Atom N270/N280, why to hurry with a new processor if the competition is basically not existent?

Some more details on Atom pineview processors

Cite from xbitlabs: "Intel Corp. will reveal more details about its next-generation Intel Atom platform for netbooks and nettops on the 21^st of December ’09 and computers makers will launch actual systems powered by Intel Atom N450 and derivatives on the 4^th of January 2010, just in time to show them on the Consumer Electronics Show."

Netbook Operating Systems Linux vs Windows - FACTS!

Follow up from Netbook Operating Systems Linux vs Windows

I got a few comments from people asking to show my source before stating that Windows got the vast majority of the netbook marked (as of today!). Actually in the previous post I mentioned that Windows got about 90% market share. Well.... if you continue reading you may think that the market share of Windows is close to 100%!!!!

Here you have: what best of the most used shopping portals?
Please look at Amazon bestseller: you'll find only Windows XP and Windows 7 netbooks you won't find a Linux netbook in the top 20!
Look at Expansys: you won't find a Linux netbook in the first 9 pages (about 80 netbooks)!

If this is not enough: how do you explain that none of the bestselling Samsung netbooks (among the best around) are shipped with Linux, at least in Germany!!!

Go to the EEE PC site : in the overview only Windows is mentioned, if you grab in the product specifications you see that a Linux option is possible.

UPDATE: Of course Windows doesn't have 100% market share, in any case Linux netbooks in 2009 got far below 30% reported by many blogs around.

UPDATE2: 30%, 20%, 10% or 0%, it's impossible to have a precise estimation of 2009 market share for Linux netbooks. What's sure is that in 2010 and 2011 we'll see a major espansion of Linux netbooks due to the first commercial ARM Netbooks and the big push from Google.

Netbook Operating System Linux vs Windows

I just saw the news "Linux owns 32 percent of netbook market, says study", of course I immediately wanted to read the study... forget it, if you read the news it's only a rumor, nothing in the hands.

"ABI did not publicly break out sales by specific segment or operating system, but a ComputerWorld story by Eric Lai quotes ABI analyst Jeff Orr as saying that the study shows that 32 percent (about 11 million netbooks) of this year's netbook shipments will be used with a Linux-based operating system."

Linux netbooks got about 30% market share at the very beginning of the netbook era. This number went dramatically down when customers recognized the compatibility and the usability problems. Linux isn't yet for the masses. This may change with the new Ubuntu and Moblin 2.1, on the other hand Windows 7 is a strong competitor and may kill the best Linux netbook distributions.

Again: don't get me wrong, I really look forward for a Linux success in the netbook market. On the other hand we must be realistic... great part (90% or more) of shipped netbooks in US and Europe is Windows XP based.