Netbook vs Smartphone

bilbobaggins

bilbobaggins

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Seeing as Moody Nick is going off sailing in a strop :D - and maybe his pajamas and slippers - we'll need to find something else to 'barney' about.

The above devices seem to cover a similar price range and do some similar tasks, but with different emphasis.

I'm thinking about my 'Letter to Santa'. What's preferable on board, and why?

:)
 
I dont suppose your interested in a discussion as to the whole question as to how the inclusion of electronic devices on a yacht which serve no usefull function in the managment of said is a effront to the holistic nature of sailing?
 
are you going to use it purely onboard, for email, net etc.

or something to carry on your person while you are onboard and out and about.

Personally, if I had a decent laptop on the boat, I'd go for a smart phone to carry with me, or more likely something like the SE C905, which while not a top of the range pc like smart phone, does email, internet (though small screen), wifi, has built in satnav/gps and is a very capable camera/video and a reasonable size slide out (phone not querty) keyboard. Basically all the things you need on the move - camera, satnav and googlemaps etc, email, ability to do quick google searches for things nearby or that sudden ? moment ( if your eyesight is up to small screen). But most importantly small enough to carry with you all the time like a normal phone.

Given the option, I'd have a netbook as well, to take with me when I know I will need better internet browsing capability, but a smallish phone which does most of the stuff is a very good option
 
What's the budget? Can you have both?

I've got a Nokia 5800 Smartphone, (Symbian), - £132 inc. p & p on ebay. does everything that you could wish.

and a

Samsung NC10, which was £320 new last Xmas, and can now be had for around £250, but you can get netbooks for much less these days.

The phone isnt quite as functional as an iPhone, and not as many apps, but it is pretty close and tons cheaper.

The Samsung is the dogs danglies but, if I was buying a netbook today, I would buy the Acer Aspire One 751 with its' 11.6in screen, and the 6 cell battery - mate of mine recently got one for £328 in John Lewis.
 
photodog said:
I dont suppose your interested in a discussion as to the whole question as to how the inclusion of electronic devices on a yacht which serve no usefull function in the managment of said is a effront to the holistic nature of sailing?
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah! But one argument at a time, please. :)


FWIW, I actually enjoy sailing where I use very little or nothing of the e-kit. I suppose that dates from my early sailing days, when my 'office' was a Canberra jet and I spent my time at work functioning at quite high intensity, watching fuel flow, hydraulic pressure, engine JPTs, electrickery output, all the nav instruments and power supplies, total fuel used, rates and reserves, altitude, attitude, speed ( various flavours ), direction, distance TO and FROM, 3 or 4 radios' communications, weather ( actual and virtual ), sticky-up hard bits of landscape, 'other entities', icing and de-icing, position, soon-position, 'phoning home', and the 'inflight' supply ( rations ).

My pilot was usually busy with the Telegraph Cryptic crossword - he'd been to Cranwell and knew such stuff. Every 20 minutes or so, he'd throw out a random 'clue' - "What's 'ironic, perhaps'; nine letters?" - just to check I was still awake, still there, and still 'at the coalface'. That's leadership for you!

Anyway, at weekends I could often get down to Restronguet Creek and disappear for a few hours on a Hurley 22. Just a stick to waggle, and a couple of ropes to pull on now and then. I enjoyed the lack of 'one-armed paperhanger' that was my working day. No dials and gauges. And I still do.

:)
 
Based more on experience with an IPhone, Blackberry, Netbook and Laptop on land with occasional use at sea:

For me the iPhone is ideal but you're probably a lot more demanding in your navigation requirements and amount of use at sea vs. ashore than me.

Smartphone Pro's:

  • iPhone Navionics App is brilliant - it really is a small screen plotter.
  • Lot's of app's designed for smartphones rather than PC's
  • Simpler to install and use (no loading software, drivers, dongles, etc.)
  • Possibly cheaper than a netbook, dongle package and phone
  • iPhone is about as user-friendly as any device could be, pinch-zoom, etc. are very good. Can't speak for others though.
  • You can make your smartphone IP67 by buying a £10 placcie bag with a lanyard to hang it round your neck
  • Probably easier to use in a very small boat or dinghy as it's handheld.
  • Should have a longer battery life

Smartphone Cons:

  • It's much easier to drop a smart phone overboard than a net book as you've got it in your hands more of the time.
  • It has a much smaller screen, usually with a lower resolution.
  • You can't (easily) attach a GPS receiver to it so you need to be where there's a good signal.
  • If you're using the phone the only way to see screen is by peering through the other ear.

Netbook Pro's:

  • It has much larger screen.
  • Probably easier to use as long as you have somewhere to put it down
  • Harder to drop overboard as you tend not to carry it around.
  • Can attach USB devices such as GPS bug, allowing you to keep the netbook out of the way. also you can attach DVD writers, Hard Disks, etc.
  • Will run some PC apps.
  • You can use your phone while also using the Netbook.

Netbook Cons:

Pretty all of the smartphone pluses to a greater or lesser degree.
 
photodog said:
I dont suppose your interested in a discussion as to the whole question as to how the inclusion of electronic devices on a yacht which serve no usefull function in the managment of said is a effront to the holistic nature of sailing?
Click to expand...

How can you exclude stuff from a holistic activity? Rather contradicts the holisticness (holisticity?) of it, no?
 
Ah, but I think Aristotle summed this up best.... "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts"

Ergo Sailing in itself is the Whole... and and any addition to this that is not part of the central core experience, adds nothing but excess, and therefore as excess.. in fact detracts from the whole.
 
The trade off is pretty simple - portability against screen size.

Smartphones are very impressive but they are inherently limited by their screen size - browsing the web on them is never going to be a very engaging experience. However if you already have a mobile phone then it saves you having to have a second device and potentially saves a lot in costs as well (rather than having to have a second mobile bill for the netbook).

Netbooks have bigger screens - making browsing more feasible - but are not as portable. Then you need either to have a separate dongle or built in 3G - or connect it up to your 3G phone - and that makes it a lot of hassle.
 
bedouin said:
The trade off is pretty simple - portability against screen size.

Smartphones are very impressive but they are inherently limited by their screen size - browsing the web on them is never going to be a very engaging experience. However if you already have a mobile phone then it saves you having to have a second device and potentially saves a lot in costs as well (rather than having to have a second mobile bill for the netbook).

Netbooks have bigger screens - making browsing more feasible - but are not as portable. Then you need either to have a separate dongle or built in 3G - or connect it up to your 3G phone - and that makes it a lot of hassle.
Click to expand...

Using Opera Mini 5 on the Nokia 5800, I find browsing fairly straightforward and, whilst not as easy as a netbook, creating output with the qwerty touchscreen is very do-able.

Equally straightforward to tether the phone, (or a dongle), to the netbook. No need for a second mobile bill if you have a contract with some "unlimited" data access. Netbook very portable but obviously not as portable as the phone.

If I could have one or the other I would have the netbook but, as most of us have mobile phones, I would be upgrading to a capable mobile at the earliest opportunity.

The Nokia 5800 is almost as good as an iPhone, and an unlocked one on ebay can be had for around £130-£150, or "free" with a £25 per month contract.

BTW Netbooks can do everything that a normal laptop/PC can do. The downsides are the smaller screen and lack of a CD/DVD drive. Also slightly slower for hungry apps. but fine for the usual stuff.
 
At the end of the day if you are looking at charts, the bigger the screen the better, and almost every thing else becomes minor, perhaps with the exception of power consumption. If you are not worried about charts then anything small is fine and probably for navigation a hand held GPS is best
 
Seems to be the electronics onboard are what we spend most of the time setting up, swearing at, fixing etc.

What ever you were going to spend on it, spend it on wine. You can either spend you evenings with your head burried in a cockpit locker trying to fix some connector, or you can sit in the cockpit with a glass or two of wine and a fat/dumb happy look on your face, whilst you watch the antics of the boat next door, whose skipper has his head down in a locker trying to fix some electronics.

(As you can guess boat electronics are not at the top of my "I like" list at the moment!)
 
Which one should I get, then?

My Nokia N73 is dying. The battery runs down in about 10 hours standby. I have bought a new battery but that's made no difference. I presume there is an internal short or some such problem.

I've persisted with the N73 as I have a full car kit for it, which won't fit other phones. But I have always hated the tiny buttons and the flimsy camera cover. In fact I don't want a camera as I've never used the N73 one (except on the first day, as a novelty).

Can someone please recommend a suitable phone for normal use and occasional internet access? Cost is less important than functionality. The buttons must be large enough to avoid pressing the wrong one, as often happens with the N73. I would also like to be able to slip the phone into a pocket easily. The N73 is rather thick for that.

Also, can anyone advise me about email via mobile phones? I do have a ThinkPad (Lenovo T400) with integral SIM card giving Vodafone internet access, which works really well in some places, but my personal email is through Hotmail which now won't work with Outlook.

I'd better stop asking questions now as I'm probably becoming incoherent.
 
grumpy_o_g said:
Based more on experience with an IPhone, Blackberry, Netbook and Laptop on land with occasional use at sea:

For me the iPhone is ideal but you're probably a lot more demanding in your navigation requirements and amount of use at sea vs. ashore than me.

Smartphone Pro's:

  • iPhone Navionics App is brilliant - it really is a small screen plotter.
  • Lot's of app's designed for smartphones rather than PC's
  • Simpler to install and use (no loading software, drivers, dongles, etc.)
  • Possibly cheaper than a netbook, dongle package and phone
  • iPhone is about as user-friendly as any device could be, pinch-zoom, etc. are very good. Can't speak for others though.
  • You can make your smartphone IP67 by buying a £10 placcie bag with a lanyard to hang it round your neck
  • Probably easier to use in a very small boat or dinghy as it's handheld.
  • Should have a longer battery life

Smartphone Cons:

  • It's much easier to drop a smart phone overboard than a net book as you've got it in your hands more of the time.
  • It has a much smaller screen, usually with a lower resolution.
  • You can't (easily) attach a GPS receiver to it so you need to be where there's a good signal.
  • If you're using the phone the only way to see screen is by peering through the other ear.

Netbook Pro's:

  • It has much larger screen.
  • Probably easier to use as long as you have somewhere to put it down
  • Harder to drop overboard as you tend not to carry it around.
  • Can attach USB devices such as GPS bug, allowing you to keep the netbook out of the way. also you can attach DVD writers, Hard Disks, etc.
  • Will run some PC apps.
  • You can use your phone while also using the Netbook.

Netbook Cons:

Pretty all of the smartphone pluses to a greater or lesser degree.
Click to expand...
Have just had my Orange upgrade, a HTC Touch 3G. It has wireless, plus phone internet capability BUT most important it has an inbuilt GPS and Windows. I have Maptech and Memory Map charts on my lappie and the reason windows is important is that I can and have ported the charts and software on to the HTC. I also bought route 66, a sat nav talking road navigator. So I can use it to navigate to the boat and then use it as a backup chart plotter!
It really works well and I would recommend it thoroughly to anyone.
Stu
 
photodog said:
I dont suppose your interested in a discussion as to the whole question as to how the inclusion of electronic devices on a yacht which serve no usefull function in the managment of said is a effront to the holistic nature of sailing?
Click to expand...

It would make a very useful on board spellchecker ! ;-)

affront
management
you're


and holistic - " noun Medicine the treating of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of a disease. " according to the OED.
 
wotayottie said:
It would make a very useful on board spellchecker ! ;-)

affront
management
you're


and holistic - " noun Medicine the treating of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of a disease. " according to the OED.
Click to expand...

AND? What is it you are adding to this discussion then? Give us all a break will you, we all know what is meant - you included.:(

Back to the thread topic:
I have an Acer Inspire Netbook which I bought refurbished for £150 with Linux OS. My No1 son upgraded it to XP & it is brilliant. With a simple 12v lead I can use it in the car or on the boat. In fact I use it for everything these days, I gave my full size laptop to my son a month ago.

I have also just upgraded (free on contract) to a Nokia E71 on 3 with GPS, WiFi, querty keyboard etc etc. Yes the keys & screen are small, but I can manage fine if I put my reading glasses on & it is only slightly wider (not taller, thicker or heavier) than a normal candy bar phone. The Nokia maps are pretty poor, but Google earth with GPS is superb. I could even use it to navigate provided I had a local chart to indicate rock positions & lights/ buoys etc. It also plans road routes for me.
 
Ah, well you see... I take a holistic approach to my spelling... Its the whole that is important... not the parts.
 
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