I never mark legitimate comments as spam, even if they are critical towards my post! I’m open to criticism.

Its just that Uni just resumed, and my course is being a bit heavy this year. And having a big bad cold doesn’t make things any better. I wasn’t able to login to GS to approve the comments, so sorry!

Anyways,

@Hannibal: Good commenting there. At least I see someone defending the NetPC. You suggest some good improvements there and I agree with those. Something though:

“- As far as video playing is concerned, once in the windows environment, you can fire up the windows media player for viewing your media clip.”… You won’t be able to view all videos with that, specially ones requiring installing a codec. NetPC doesn’t allow installation of software. So this might be problematic…

As I said in the article, the NetPC is for very basic uses only. Like something on the IC3 level or below. For something more serious, you will have to choose something else until the NetPC offer improves.

And Dial Up is no longer considered an Internet connection nowadays. It’s just an “old days” thing in the world now. If you are calling your country “Cyber Island”, Dial Up should be taboo. Talk about broadband. Talk about megabit speeds. But NOT 56K!

@ hannibal: Yea its true we can get more storage space with a pen drive…but i wonder how much at how much cost. I don’t really think even 1 4 GB pendrive would be enough nowadays and forget about buying and external HD coz it wld have been better to add the money and buy a simple PC in this case.

I have also got some reports from “someone” who just bought the net PC even though i had tell him not to buy…that the applications are sometime SLOW and also stop responding for useless reasons! I cannot confirm as I dnt have the net PC but it is a complaint i got.

First of all the NetPC storage capacity. There are 2 storage options: a) Remote storage capacity which is 500 MB where your files are stored and backup regularly on MT remote File Server and can be accessed from anywhere using a NetPC with your login and password b) Local Storage: if you need more storage space, this can be extended by using local affordable USB pen drive (1 GB, 2 GB etc) which can be readily found on the market and is practical for transferring and moving around with your document. Also the NetPC supports external Hard disk which can be connected to the USB port. This can additionally extends the storage capacity of your NetPC and both the pen drive and external hard disk can be used to store super confidential documents locally (and not on the remote storage).

- As far as video playing is concerned, once in the windows environment, you can fire up the windows media player for viewing your media clip.

Indeed the NetPC is not here to replace the normal PC but is somewhow a way to start in the world of computing for beginners and other people who are fed up with hardware crash, viruses, upgrades, software updates whose principal needs are, as 80% of users, Word processing, Spreadsheet, Internet Surfing and email. For the advanced users, doing heavy gaming, using database tool and programming then optioning for a normal PC is the best option.

It is worth noting that at MT the current dialup offer for 25 Hrs dialup connection is Rs 550 per month (Rs 450 + Rs 100 Access Fee) and with NetPC you are having 30 Hrs Broadband Access for only Rs 490 (VAT incl.) as well as access to license Microsoft Software with all future upgrades and updates, virus protection etc.

For my part, I give frak of Hardware. It depends on the platform I’ve to use for software development. Say, I’ve to run the upcoming Oracle Fusion, I’d pick the ‘low-cost AMDs’ with a few upgrades (mainly memory.) I’m no PC gamer but the same applies to one – the requirements of the games will determine the hardware to be bought.

The most appealing in the list remains the EEe with Mandriva. It’s kinda cute. Does it come in pink? Just wondering.