Marginalia

I've been playing with the EeePC 901 as offered by Orange for 'free' on a mobile broadband contract.

Now, I am not sure that tying yourself in to £24.47 a month for two years is necessarily a wise move. Two years is a long time in both mobile broadband and netbook terms. Actually, even a quarter of that is a long time.

Orange reckons the 'free' EeePC 901 is worth £350, but I found it on the web for prices around £250. Even that lower price is a lot of dosh in these constrained times, so maybe plenty of people could be lured by the all-in price, notwithstanding that for £14.68 a month you can get a USB dongle with the same 3GB usage cap and shove that into whatever notebook you choose.

A quick rough and ready reckoner says that over 24 months of the EeePC contract (the dongle is an 18 monther) the difference between the two contracts is:

24 (months) x £10 (per month) = £240

Enough, in fact, to buy an EeePC or shop around for something else.

Having said all that, I do rather like what Orange has done. The EeePC 901 with its 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 pixel screen, 1MB of RAM and 16GB of SSD storage isn't exactly a workhorse, and its keyboard, though well built, is cramped even for my little hands.

But Orange has made the best of it. This includes adding a PDF reader, Microsoft Works and Star Office to the EeePC right out of the box, and building a neat little SMS manager which works nicely and even rings like a telephone when a message arrives.

The Eee PC 901 itself is a neat little device. Weighing 1.1KG and supplied with a protective pouch it runs Windows XP with ease and has three USB connectors, microphone and headphones sockets, monitor connector, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

So yes, I like it, and it'll probably accompany me on my Christmas travels. But I'll also be taking my 'real' notebook, and therein lies the rub. Many of us still need a more powerful machine, and whichever way you do the sums, you're going to have to justify the spend on a netbook, with or without mobile broadband attached.

The netbook has been the computing phenomenon of 2008. Packing some hardware into a tiny notebook chassis and flogging the result as a low cost connected computer has proved a real moneyspinner for hardware bods.

I've spent considerable time with Dell's variant on the theme, the Inspiron Mini 9 as sold by Vodafone complete with HSDPA connection. I reviewed it back in October and since then have been using it on and off. It does for a mobile internet machine, but the specs and screen size mean I really don't think it could function as anyone's sole computer unless their requirements are very rudimentary.

More recently I've become friends with LG's X110 which takes the netbook concept on to another level.

One of its key plus points is the 160GB hard drive which I reckon means that many users could store all their data on it. I could certainly happily install the applications and data I need for both work and leisure.

But it is the HSDPA connection which is the most alluring feature of all. The X110 is available 'free' at Phones4u on four different tariffs from Vodafone, Orange, 3 and O2. There are download caps ranging between 3GB and 5GB, and HSDPA speeds run between 2.8Mbps and 7.2Mbps. The tariffs range between £30 and £35 a month and all are 24 month contracts.

All the gen is here. Wi-Fi is built in which should help you keep inside those download limits.

I found the keyboard small but well built. Touch-typing at very close to my normal speed was not a problem. Usability was more affected - and negatively so - by the 10-inch screen whose 1024 x 600 pixels don't display enough information for serious work and can't adequately cater for having two simultaneously opened windows.

The webcam could be useful and there is a fun element in its software which lets you do things like apply 'hall of mirrors' type distortions to images and overlay stamps and frames. There is a YouTube uploader plonked in there too.

Build quality is superb. The casing feels solid and there is a neat tapering to the front. There is a fair range of ports and connectors: three USB ports, VGA-out, Ethernet, flash card reader for SD and Memory Stick formats, headphones and microphones connectors.

There is 1GB of RAM which seemed to cope well. The X110 runs Windows XP Home on its obligatory Intel Atom processor. The speakers are on the underside of the casing where their sound was often muffled by my clothing or the desk on which the X110 was resting.

The LG X110 is certainly a serious step up from the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 from Vodafone and on the basis of usability alone I'd swap in an flash if I had the opportunity. But those contracts aren't cheap, and I'd need another computer for everyday work with the LG sufficing as a weekender.

Which makes it a bit of a non-starter for me.

The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 (let's just call it the Flip for short), is the first clamshell device from RIM and it is not short on features. It goes without saying that it meets RIM's mobile email criteria, and it also packs GPS and Wi-Fi, which are two near necessities of the modern handheld/smartphone world.

There is a 2-megapixel camera and the Flip has a 3.5mm headset connector. Added to this, it runs the new-look BlackBerry user interface which is so much more zingy than its predecessor was. Unfortunately it is not a 3G device, supporting quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE.

Inside the clam is a classic SureType style keyboard that is comparatively large. In fact sitting it beside my Vodafone BlackBerry Pearl 8110 the keys on the Flip look about twice the size. This doesn't make them twice as easy to use, though. I'm pretty adept at using the Pearl 8110's keys at a fair old lick and got up to a comparable speed with the Flip but couldn't beat it.

Unfortunately, the Flip is a bit of a monster in size terms. One of the main benefits of clamshell phones is that they are small, but that is not always the case and it isn’t here. When closed the Flip measures a respectable 100mm x 50mm x 17.5mm. But when opened it becomes 18cm tall which makes it feel like a bit of a monster when held to the ear.

To be honest, I’m not sure what to make of the Flip. I don't want to suggest for a moment that nobody will be interested in it, and it certainly packs in the features. RIM has obviously done its market research, and so has O2, the UK operator which has taken it on and is offering it from free on various tariffs. Both clearly feel it has a place in the market.

But it is quite obviously eclipsed by both the Bold and the Storm which seem to me to be much more compelling devices, the latter with its innovative fully depressing touch screen system and the former with its high resolution display and excellent miniature qwerty keyboard – one of the best I’ve ever used.

The Storm lacks Wi-Fi but it is taking all the attention at the moment just as RIM knew it would. Vodafone has the exclusive on the Storm, so for O2 to get the Flip is, I suppose, something of a consolation. But this handset just doesn’t do it for me, I am afraid.

I wonder if it will see a second iteration, or whether we'll be back to the candybar format for the next installment in the Pearl line.