Coding .NET on a Netbook

I would say you have to go with solid state drive... faster.... uses less energy.

Ive been dreaming about using a netbook as a portable phone with skype in and out.

I mean really... why pay iphone prices for little bitty apps and bad phone service?

let me boot up to a stripped down O.S.

where i can make and receive calls and when im not connected save my voicemails to be uploaded to outlook when I finally get a connection

put a screen on the outside of the netbook that just allows me simply management of my emails and phone calls and light web browsing and document creation.

while the real OS is in hibernation.

when i open the netbook let me have my full blow OS.

dont even set up computer stations at public places.. just install a screen i can wirelessly and securely connect to.

including inflight on airplanes and trains.

i purchased the iphone and returned it before the 30 days were up so i could see the big hoopla...

its really just eye candy... the dev tools and dev environment is not that great.

at the end of the day its was still a phone that let me do various things when i was bored or lost.

i like the GPS enabled apps where you can find stuff and it has the best webbrowsing but non of this is ground breaking stuff

there are many websites that still break.

its only innovative cause everyone else is concentrating on other things.

its just a social status symbol actually.

I think windows mobile 7 will come with something better thann iphone...

but who cares about any type of iphone.

just add some phone capabilities to a netbook like i said and maybe a little pocket controller so you can keep the netbook in the bag

and a blue tooth headset man.  thats all you need.

we should be WAY past this stage already.

IPhones rock, the best gadget on the planet, seriously.

dude....

what would you rather have... a phone with the capabilities of the iphone

or a phone with the capabilities of a windows ( or Mac ).

im not hating on Apple man.. thier stuff looks pretty.

whatever.

but if i had a lightweight machine the size of a kindle or netbook.

with the full capabilities of an operating system like Mac or Windows

with a detachable keyboard to expose more screen real estate

touch screen that can convert into a tablet

and on the reverse side of the screen a cheapo interface to phone/texts/email/google or bing searches

when my regular OS is in hibernation.

then a small little pocket thing i can use as a handset

note taker

dictation device

and a blue tooth ear piece

with a monthly data connection,cloud account

and skype account

you pretty much cover all the possible bases at bargain basement prices.

who cares if its a mac or pc.

the iphone sucks.

its only because companies havent gotten thier act together

and consumers dont have the information to demand this type of scenario.

they just keep buying incrementally better things until either they broke or they run out of time

i used the iphone for 30 days man.

and all i did was the same things i did before .. call, text, and take pictures.

like i said the only thing different is the apps that are location aware and the speed at which they appear.

its like a tom tom or nuvi with phone capabilities.

and the phone service sucks too.

we should demand more

like Don Box says... these problems are not really that hard... just point the engineers at the problem. 

Dave, talking about performance of win7 and developer tools on the netbook - how is battery life? I'm asking this as browsing the web it seems people using netbooks are either sticking with xp or going back to it because of the drastic time loss of the netbook running on battery under win7 (most report a 30-40% drop in battery life compared to xp home sp3).