Battle of the bulge: time for a solid diet

LAST week Lenovo entered the 8216;netbook8217; space with its IdeaPad S10, exactly a week after Asus launched two new variants of the EeePc.

LAST week Lenovo entered the 8216;netbook8217; space with its IdeaPad S10, exactly a week after Asus launched two new variants of the EeePc. The EeePc8212;the 8220;three Es8221; are an abbreviation of the Asus advertising slogan for the device: 8220;Easy to learn, easy to work, easy to play8221;8212;is a computer designed for portability and easy Web access. This sub-notebook8217;s portability stem from its light weight. At just over a kilo, and a screen measuring around 138221;, these notebooks don8217;t strain your back like normal laptops and notebooks that tend to weigh upwards of two kilograms.

These three new netbooks have joined the ranks of the Apple Macbook Air, HCL MiLeap and the XO, as computers that have successfully trimmed down their fat, enabling users to create documents, check mail, surf the web and even create short video clips on the move.

Electronics are notoriously anorexic with new devices tending to be lighter, faster and more reliable. But these sub-notebooks have lower processing power, though what it has is sufficient for most on-the-go work. Unlike their forefathers, most of these sub-notebooks8212;with the exception of those with capacities of 80 GB and more8212;have been able to remove one of the most important and obese components of the computer: the hard disk.

The hard disk, the memory of the computer, is the place where all your documents, music, video and even the operating system are stored. Without it, the computer wouldn8217;t know what to do after being switched on and would be restricted to being a very powerful calculator.

Unfortunately, the hard disk has a huge set of problems; it has a tendency to crash, electricity fluctuations can damage it, and even a mild fall can leave it inoperable. When you fit this onto a device meant to be portable, those problems get ported as well.

Sub-notebooks have removed these problems by bringing in the Solid State Drive, a computer memory similar to the one used in USB pen drives. Not only are these drives lighter and faster, they can also take on a lot more physical abuse, in most cases, consuming less power. The main reason for this is that these drives don8217;t have any moving parts that tend to shatter, make noises, crash without warning or get short-circuits when immersed in water.

This supermodel tendency of devices came into the mainstream when Apple launched the iPod. The hefty earlier models became sleek and light, only because they ditched the hard disk for solid state drives 8212; iPod Classic still has a hard disk.

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From then on, these drives are slowly making their way into camcorders, hand-held devices used at hospitals, PDAs, smart phones and almost anything with a battery and the need to store information.

Yet the hard disks haven8217;t whirred their last. Even now, for the same data capacity, solid disks tend to cost more. As a result popular and easily available drives tend to have lower capacities. Even the EeePc tops up at 4GB coupled with a 256 MB RAM; anymore space requires an external drive or a regular laptop hard drive.

As of now higher capacity solid state drives are being tested if successful, most devices will switch to these. At that point, we can be sure that our portable devices will never carry paunches again.