The all new Netbook as Main Computer series is a log of the trails and tribulations of going from powerful Core i5, 14″ notebook to a puny, weak and underpowered 10.1″ netbook with half the power. Can Tiff survive?
Too... much... clutter... need... more... space...
In this series, I will explore the biggest issues for someone who is forced to live with a netbook, and the solutions towards a better netbooking experience.
Puny screen, back-to-the-90′s resolution
Netbooks usually have 10.1″ displays, and usually these screens display a resolution of 1024×600. Now, this isn’t a big issue once you get used to it, but coming from a 24″, 1920×1080 environment, it took a while to get used to having the breadth of my 24″ monitor become the width of my netbook’s monitor.
The question now is can a netbook display a full website. At almost half the resolution of my desktop monitor, the problem now lies in the fact that everything has to be scaled down, and not always can you do so.
Solution:
There are multiple solutions to this problem:
Get a netbook with a 1366×768 native display
Most netbooks don’t come with a HD monitor like this and you’ll pay a premium for this, but the benefits of having that 720p+ screen makes it worthwhile because you will be able to play Civ III and run Adobe CS5 or other software that demands a minimum resolution of 1024×768.
Auto-hide the taskbar
The biggest benefit to this lies in the fact that when you autohide the taskbar, you get more vertical space. Or, you can do the biggst mindf*** and move it to your right/left. The latter solution gives you the ability to not hide your taskbar while gaining the necessary vertical space.
Unzoom in IE/Firefox/Chrome
Some websites are not optimised for the native resolution of 1024×600. You’ll know it when your browser gives you the option to scroll horizontally. If your eyes are up to scratch, you can actually shrink the website proportionally. In all browsers, you can press CTRL and move the mouse wheel to shrink/enlarge the browser. However, the my experience has shown that the sweet spot lies around 85%.
Plug in an external monitor
It was so much more comfortable using a big monitor.
An external monitor will probably end all your problems.
Most netbooks have at least a VGA port for you to plug your notebook to an external display. However, I did notice some problems sometimes. People have complained that some netbooks cannot support monitors of resolutions higher than 1440×900, while others have no problem doing 1920×1080.Clearly, if you have Nvidia ION in your netbook, that won’t be a problem. It’s the Intel series that is a bit dubious. Check before you buy if you intend to plug it into a large monitor.
Also, do note that if you intend to connect via the HDMI port, ensure that your monitor has such a port! Only more expensive monitors have this connector (though you could always get a HDMI to DVI converter…)
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This post is somewhat amusing as I read it on my very own 1015PN, because at the native resolution of 1024×600, this website gives me the option of scrolling sideways (i.e., it is not optimized for netbooks). Thank you for your help and information, though. I find it very useful.
Well, f***. I thought browsers automatically shrink the size of the page to fit your screen. Guess not.
You can also lower the font size of the text in the window titlebar (thus also making the title bar much smaller – it’s possible to make it nearly invisible).
In the same menu you can lower the font size, you can decrease the size of the scrollbar on the side, as well.