System76 Launches Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook

Is it just me? Or do others find the resolution of netbooks to be pretty unusable? A 10" screen and a keyboard to match are fine, but 1024x600 (or in this case even less!) is not. If they made these things with a 1280x800 resolution I'd snap one up right away. My wife has an Acer Aspire One and I find the screen real estate to be just too little.

My Eee PC 900's resolution (1024x600) is fine for me. It helps to enable sub-pixel rendering.

I have no problem with the 1024x600 resolution of the net book. It makes a nice ultra portable replacement for my main machine.

It's not just you, Cabreh. My preference is that the screen has to be at least 1024x768, which with wide screen has meant a vertical of 800+ to be usable.

But that's just me. I certainly see the use in a small, light, high-efficiency system for short-duration work, but I would not try to sit in front of it for a full work day.

This Vaio from 2003 is 1600x1050, and I'm not replacing it with anything that doesn't have more pixels than that. Of course, I'm not in the market for a netbook, either.

I read books at night on a Zaurus that is 400x300, and it works, but it is like reading everything in newspaper column widths, ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS for PDFs.

My 1024x600 netbook is fine by me. My previous 800x480 netbook was also fine by me. Actually it was better in one respect: it was smaller and lighter weight.

There are tricks you can do to improve screen estate. I use the Littlefox theme in Firefox. You can use a panel that hides itself. You can use a tiling window manager so that multiple apps can share one window. You can use a smaller font size. It all works.

I'd rather have 1024x768, but I find 1024x600 is perfectly usable. Of course, you can always hook it to an external monitor when you're home. The limitation is the LCD screen, not the video chipset.

@Bob, it depends on the PDF. I read "Slaughterhouse 5" on my Palm T|X, which has a resolution of 320x480, so it's doable. Some other PDFs looked really bad, however, totally unreadable.

I agree with all those who are proponents of a small netbook. I too would love to have one like the System 76 or HP which come with a 10" screen. But when moving from a 8.9" 1024x600 screen up to a 10" screen why not at least offer an upgraded 10" screen with a higher resolution?

Then you get the small portable size and you aren't loosing the quality of display the smaller 8.9" screen had. Plus you get more height for documents and web pages.

I guess even the Linux OEMs are caught in the Microsoft netbook edict.

I am fine with the small screen size. One buys a netbook because you want something small, else one would buy a full size system, right?

I use the Tinymenu addon for Firefox to help with vertical real estate on my Aspire One. Nice display too, very crisp, like fresh lettuce.

It really wasn't that long ago when 640x480 was massive screen real estate.

Quoting:It really wasn't that long ago when 640x480 was massive screen real estate.

It still is.... on your phone. As for netbooks, I'd really prefer at least 800 pixels vertical as well, preferably more. I'd love to have a netbook to do some light surfing on the cough but with current screens I am really tempted to go for a 13" laptop like the Dell XPS instead.

I know I'm in the minority but my biggest complaint about my netbook is that it is too damned BIG. I still have my 10 year old Toshiba Libretto SS-1010 and it has a much smaller footprint. The 7" screen is just fine with me. Make a version that's as small and lightweight as possible. This is why I hated to trade up from the original Sylvania g Netbook. That is the smallest, lightest one out there right now. It's a pity Sylvania and gOS did such a crappy job with that one.

> I guess even the Linux OEMs are caught in the Microsoft netbook edict.

Since the hardware manufactuers want the flexibility to offer both Windows and Linux on the machines, yes.

jdixon is right and that really stinks. We could have much more powerful netbooks if Microsoft wasn't in a position to dictate to hardware manufacturers.

> jdixon is right and that really stinks.

Now Caitlyn, I know we sometimes don't agree, but... :)

I meant the situation stinks, not that agreeing with you stinks. Sheesh! I can't get away with anything around here.

> I meant the situation stinks, not that agreeing with you stinks.

I knew that, that's why my reply has a smiley face at the end. It's just that it could be read two ways, and I couldn't resist. I apologize that the humorous intent wasn't obvious.

> Sheesh! I can't get away with anything around here.

Would you really want it any other way?

I'm getting out of here before a group hug commences.

Right, tc, like you have room to talk.

jdixon: People don't get my sense of humor on here yet. Folks who know me know that my usual response to that sort of joke or sometimes an obviously sarcastic statement is to act like I'm taking it seriously. I probably should apologize for the lack of a smiley on mine :)

tc: We'll get back to our usual bickering presently. After all, we wouldn't want to disappoint you, would we?