Greg Johnston, tech columnist

For those who don’t work in electronics, or aren’t serious electronics enthusiasts, it might be news that the biggest event of the year in electronics (in North America, at least) isn’t Boxing week sales, but comes a week or so later in January. CES, the Consumer Electronics Show trade show held in Vegas each January (7th-10th this year), is where manufacturers and suppliers of all manner of electronics debut their new or upcoming products. Big products premiered at CES in over the years include the original X-Box, the Blu-ray Disk, DVD, Commodore Amiga, the VCR, and many others over the 30-plus years the show has run.

Much like SEMA, the huge automotive trade show held in Vegas that I’d also like to attend (I’m a gearhead as well as a geek), CES isn’t open to the public, it being intended to connect suppliers of products, services, and software with the press and resellers/distributors. Maybe next year, I can scam press credentials for both – kidding!  The new product cycle that begins with CES is a big part of the Boxing week sales too – especially in computers, most products in the stores at Christmas is going clearance anyway to make way for the new.

CES is where a lot of cool tech debuts every year, and while with 7000+ exhibitors, I can’t begin to enumerate what this year’s show will bring, one big category promises to be new lines of netbooks (AKA minis or ultra-portables), since Intel formally announced the debut of its second generation of low-cost, low-power consumption Atom N450 processor back on December 21. Netbooks have been a hot category in an otherwise sluggish PC market place over the last two years, posting sales growth of 264% from Q2 2008 to Q2 2009.

The N450 processor, and its relatives aimed at entry-level desktops, the D410 and D510 (nettops, as these compact, basic computers are being labelled), don’t appear to make significant gains in speed, but do integrate the memory controller and graphics processor into the CPU chip itself, promising even lower cost and lower power consumption, which are major attractions of netbooks.

At this year’s CES, the expectation is that 80 or more new netbooks will debut, most or all likely sporting the N450 Atom, from the likes of Asus, who pioneered the category, as well as other major players such as Dell and HP. These small, ultraportable computers are usually defined and differentiated from their larger notebook/laptop brethren by their small size (7”-10” screens), light weight (around 3 lbs/1.5kg), long battery life (6-10 hours on a charge), lack of built-in optical drives (CD/DVD/Blu-ray), and low cost – typically $250-$550 Canadian.

I have to admit that when netbooks emerged a little over two years ago, I tended to dismiss them as toys, or basically an oversized PDA or smart phone. For my big hands, the tiny keyboards were impossible to touch-type on (most early models were 7” screens, and so had commensurately small keyboards), the built-in memory was tiny (many didn’t have a hard drive at all, just 500MB to 2GB of flash memory), and the long battery life and portability didn’t seem to make up for the small screen and slow performance.

Much of that has already changed, as has my perspective on these small computers, as I have seen and worked with more of them in the process of serving my computer clients. Screens are more typically 9-10 inches now, also allowing slightly more adult-sized keyboards, speeds have climbed, and real hard drives have vastly increased built-in storage. For web browsing and email, or for students or others who need a computer for basic documents, but need also light weight, durability (thanks to less parts, and less weight to bang or drop), and the ability to work more than 1.5 to 3 hours on a battery charge, netbooks offer real flexibility and utility.

Netbooks don’t really replace a traditional desktop or laptop unless your computing needs are very basic and you can live with the small screen, but they do offer some “real” computer utility in settings like school or travel that even the best smartphones don’t, or with their relatively low cost, they can easily become the  2nd/3rd/4th computer that lives in the kitchen for reading news and email and looking up recipes, or in the garage or shop to look up manuals, how-to’s, and sports scores.

In models that offer the new Broadcom Crystal HD or Nvidia Ion chipsets, netbooks can even make respectable multimedia platforms, playing back true HD video, although I have to admit I’m a little sceptical as to the why of this, since cost goes up and battery life down, and the small built-in displays will hardly do HD video or games justice, but for many, including myself often, cool tech is reason enough in itself.

Don’t expect any netbook to be your Call of Duty gaming platform, just the same. In fact, without supplemental graphics capability from graphics chips from AMD/ATI, Nvidia, or Broadcom beyond that integrated into the Intel N450 processor, even playing back flash video from sources such as YouTube will seriously strain netbooks.

It’s likely the dual-core Atom D510 will start showing up in some future performance netbooks, much like the current Atom 330 dual core originally aimed at entry-level desktops has. The D510’s power consumption is still a very low 13W, so battery life and heat shouldn’t be big issues – which with traditional laptops, even those based on Intel’s Core2 Duo that greatly reduced power and heat levels from earlier designs, can still be an issue. Overheating laptops will be a topic for an upcoming column.

This upcoming week, I’ll be watching to see what netbook and other computer news emerges out of CES 2010 in Vegas – and wishing I could be there to sample the cool tech and much warmer January temperatures. And maybe a show or two…

Greg Johnston
greg@infotrek.ca

http://www.cesweb.org/aboutces.asp#737
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/21/intels-next-gen-pine-trail-atom-processors-officially-announced/
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Asus-Eee-PC1005PE-Atom-N450-Pinetrail-Platform-Launch/
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=28805&tag=nl.e539
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=27383&tag=col1;post-28805

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