Alright, here’s the deal.
I want a laptop that’s small in size. And I mean very small... like half of a Letter-size paper. And it will allow me to surf the Internet and check my mail.
Forget the webcam, I’m shy when it comes to showing my face online but I do love to chat so include that. Make sure that it has Wi-Fi ‘coz I love free Internet access while I take my morning coffee at Starbucks and others... I hate bringing with me a huge power adapter. I don’t want to carry around that gold-bar-like adapter. Make it small... like those ones for mobile phones? Oh, and don’t forget the USB ports."
Do you think we just made up a script? Maybe. But consider all the specs mentioned above, make it tangible, and it works. Would you be impressed if there was a laptop measuring half the size of a bond paper?
That’s the Alpha-400 pictured above. Like most netbooks, it is small and easy to carry. If that doesn’t impress you, then maybe the supplied power adapter would. Because unlike conventional power adapters for laptops and netbooks, this one has a mobile-phone-charger-like power adapter.
If you are familiar with earlier types of Nokia phone chargers, the Alpha-400’s power adapter looks very much like it, but a little bigger in size. The whole package contains only three items, the netbook, the power adapter, and a miniCD (which you may not use afterall). Heck, even the battery is built in.
The size of the Alpha-400 is a bit thicker than the EeePC. It has a 7-inch "Digital A Grade" LCD display, three USB ports, an SD card slot, and built-in speakers, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet port. This specifications is just what a person needs for Internet surfing, photo sharing, and for personal entertainment.
Perhaps one notable drawback of the Alpha-400 is the built-in 2-Gigabyte NAND Flash drive. That’s what the SD card slot and USB ports are for. To expand disk space, just plug in an SD card (of up to 32GB) or an external hard drive (of whatever size as long as it doesn’t exceed 160GB).
"So you get a portable adapter and an ultra-portable PC. But what can it do?" you may ask.
Well, the simplest answer to that is what the EeePC primarily offered - Surf, work, & play. Running on Linux, the user interface looks similar to that of the Linux-based EeePC. You will see five tabs - Internet, Work , Play, Settings and Others - in that order.
On the first tab, this is where you connect to the Internet using Firefox as your default (and only) web browser. Click the Wi-Fi icon to connect to access points, and Xip chatting if you want to chat.
Although you have to set your account first before you start chatting and it’s not that hard to do. All it will ask is where you want to chat (like Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, etc) provide your account name and password, and your done.
The email box is actually your POP3 mail, which you can setup so that you don’t have to open your browser, go the your email site, and log in. There’s an included FBReader if you any ebooks that you want to read on the Alpha-400.
The Work tab has basically an Office applications suite, so if you looking for apps for Word, spreadsheets, and PDF viewer, it’s here. There’s a pre-installed dictionary, calendar, and calculator also. On the Play tab, is where the pre-installed multimedia apps are. Yes, there’s no games but the media player, Xip Flash player, and Paint Brush apps. You may find the default theme boring so just change it by going to the Settings tab. Other things you can change here are the sound settings, date and time, and netbook’s profile (or your profile as the owner).
If you happen to connect the Alpha-400 to your office network, check the network settings here, too.
The last tab contains the Xip Tar (much like WinZip) and the voice recorder apps. You need a mic though to use this application. Perhaps that, and a nice carrying case is all the Alpha-400 need and you are ready to go.
1 comment:
have you tried this one with youtube?
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