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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from CNET Asia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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How well do Netbooks work with Web apps?
By Josh Lowensohn, Webware.com
18/06/2009 URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/notebooks/0,39050495,62055196,00.htm
Netbooks are an incredibly exciting new product category, and one that's undergoing constant evolution. Designed to handle email, Web browsing and some basic software apps, they are somewhat limited when compared with most full-size laptops, but how limited? These are Web apps that let you get things done, be it business, homework or personal scheduling. Google Docs and Zoho--Both of these online office suites performed great. Zoho clearly has far more tools in one place than Google Docs does. So for the sake of this test I just used the ones that they both shared, which include word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. The Netbook handled all of them without any slowdown. However, this is definitely one set of tools where a larger screen resolution makes it easier to see what you're doing. Otherwise, a small text increase in your browser (Ctrl +) makes it feel normal. Kudos to both sites for offering a special full-screen view of the workspace. This let me get more use out of the slightly smaller screen. 
Zimbra performs well on Netbooks. Not tested in this roundup was the desktop version. Zimbra is the perfect office Web app for Netbooks. You get email, calendaring, chat, document editing and creation as well as contact management in one tight package. I gave both the Ajax and HTML versions of the service a spin, and the performance was equally great across all three browsers. Not tested was the desktop software-based version, but based on the requirements it should run on just about anything. Google and Yahoo Calendar are both lightweight Web applications. Google's iteration uses AJAX (which means less page refreshes), and provides the option to create meetings or appointments simply by clicking and dragging onscreen. Any Netbook, even older models, should have no problem with these apps. DimDim--We wanted to put WebEx through its paces, but for the sake of this story we're going with free tools. DimDim, one of my personal favorites, makes for a good test subject. Its free version lets you screen share, video chat, voice chat, work on a whiteboard, co-view Web pages, and even record the entire session to view later. I did all of those things, and while there was a little slowdown when co-viewing Web pages, the person on the other end said the video and voice were coming in loud and clear. Google Reader/iGoogle/My Yahoo/Netvibes--All of these RSS and widget news pages ran with ease. Similar to the calendar apps, these are designed to be lightweight, with the exception of some of the widgets that can run on them. Google Maps/Bing Maps/Yahoo Maps/Ask Maps/MapQuest--These five popular mapping services all worked without a hitch. Tiles came in fast, and there was no slowdown when zooming in and out. In terms of specialty mapping services, Street View in Google Maps was fluid, although not quite as buttery smooth as on my MacBook. And the 3D view in Bing Maps worked when set to its most basic level, but there was a notable drop in performance when compared with the standard detail layers. I would not recommend trying to run the more graphics-intensive modes that actually give you 3D buildings since these require a dedicated graphics card (something most Netbooks don't have). 
Flickr's organizing tool works great on Netbooks. It's even better on Netbooks with higher-resolution screens (note: This screenshot was taken on a Mac). Flickr (organizer)--Viewing photos on Flickr works just dandy, but what about if you're trying to do some heavy re-arranging and tagging of shots you just uploaded? Its photo organization tool is JavaScript-heavy, which gave me some doubts. The good news is it works great. No slowdown, and no lag when dragging-and-dropping photos and videos. Storage--The Mini I was using for the test comes with a 160GB hard drive, but many Netbooks come with less. An easy solution is Web storage either through the browser or with a hybrid desktop solution like Mozy or Carbonite. Since we're trying to keep this test as software-free as possible, I limited my online storage providers to Box.net, MobileMe, ADrive and DropBox. The Netbook handled all of them with ease, except for MobileMe which is not IE-friendly (that's not the computer's fault, though). My favorite of the bunch was Box since you can preview most file types without having to use outside software or download the entire thing to your hard drive. If you're looking for a service that provides you with a virtual folder that can be used in your computer's regular file explorer, both MobileMe and DropBox can do that. Of those two I prefer DropBox because it behaves the same on multiple operating systems. Video chat--The computer I was testing has a Webcam. So how did it handle two-way video chat? I used both Google Talk (in Gmail) and TokBox. It worked flawlessly with both, although I give a nod to TokBox for not making me install any additional software to make that happen. You can also use TokBox's two-way video chat inside of Meebo, which brings us to... Play These are Web apps that may let you do work, but most are for fun and entertainment. Meebo--This chat app works great, although this is one of the few apps where screen resolution becomes important. I had to increase the size of the text in my browser to more easily read what was on the screen. Most browsers these days save these settings on a per-page basis, though. Kongregate--Our test Netbook tackled a handful of Flash games with ease. There was no slowdown or lag with the controls on the dozen or so games we played. If you want to see how today's Netbooks handle full retail games, check out this guide at Gamespot. They put two similarly spec'd machines up against popular software titles to see what played well, and what didn't. 
Flash games on Kongregate were smooth and responsive (note: This screenshot was taken on a Mac). YouTube worked without a hitch. I could view normal and high-quality videos without any slowdown or system hiccups. This came close to topping out the processor, though. And as expected, HD videos don't play well. This is a mix of a need for Flash optimization and simple hardware requirements that some Netbooks won't meet. Will they get there? More on that later. Vimeo--Like YouTube, non-HD videos worked fine, while HD videos slowed to just a couple of frames per second. Unlike YouTube though, Vimeo has this odd quirk where you get slowdown when viewing HD videos with the HD turned off. This only happened when turning HD off mid-video. Once I reloaded the page, the video played just fine. 
Hulu played great, as long as it wasn't the "Hi-Res" stream or viewed in full screen. Hulu--Same story as YouTube and Vimeo. As long as it's the standard stream, it's fine. What's unfortunate is that I experienced a notable slowdown when jumping up to the 480p stream (the standard is 360p). This isn't even HD video, it's just a higher-resolution stream. I also got a slowdown on the low-quality stream when I put it into full-screen mode, which is how I'm guessing most folks will want to enjoy a 25 minute-long episode of their favorite show. Picnik--This popular online photo editor handled simple edits on 12-megapixel shots with relative ease. Crops, rotations and resizing were smooth and fluid. However, our machine had to work harder to handle Picnik's filter effects, which is one of the things that makes the site really fun to use. You can still employ all its features, though--even the collage tools. You simply don't get the smoothness or responsiveness you get on a more powerful machine. Facebook--As expected, all of Facebook works marvelously with a Netbook. The only exception is HD videos which, in truth, most of my friends are not putting up on the service. Other parts of the service, such as chat and photo viewing, worked great. MySpace works well, although it isn't as snappy as Facebook, in part because of the music players that users tend to have on their profile pages. While the music portion of the site works just fine, I ran into the usual slowdown problems on MySpace's video site. Standard user-uploaded videos worked fine, but the larger-resolution items suffered a slowdown. The verdict I was genuinely surprised at how well the Mini handled nearly everything I could throw at it. The one obvious shortcoming in all of this was video. I spoke to Adobe about this, which, along with hardware makers, the company is working on a fix. The bad news is the fix is likely to require new hardware. The bottom line for determining Flash performance is hardware can take that highly compressed video and decompress it quickly. Full-sized laptops with beefier processors can handle this with CPU cycles to spare. Most Netbooks, however, come with ultra-low-power chips that come up a little short. Anup Murarka, who is Adobe's director of Partner Development and Technology Strategy, told me this was only temporary. "The new generation of Netbooks, due late this year or early next year will start to address these issues," he said. Something that may help with that is an update to Flash will aid it to make more use out of multicore processors and onboard graphics processing units. For instance, the Dell Mini 10 I was using can tear through local HD video with relative ease using its integrated decoder. It also has an extra core that was not being used to its full potential. Flash does not yet tap into those, but it could in the future. The main thing that's keeping Adobe from sinking time into building that support right away is that it would have to do so for the individual hardware configuration of each Netbook. So is it worth buying one now, or waiting? As with any computer purchase, it depends on your needs. If you're OK with not viewing HD videos, it does everything else, and does it well. On the hardware side though, just make sure you opt for a higher screen resolution if it's available. Most Web apps like horizontal space, and if you're planning to use photo tools like Picnik and Flickr's organizer, the extra little bit helps. I would go with something that's at least 1,024 pixels wide. It's also worth seeing the device in person since the keyboards on Netbooks can feel a little crammed. Even though manufacturers are getting them upward of 95 percent of the size of a standard keyboard, that difference takes some getting used to. Even after a few weeks on mine, it was still jarring to switch back and forth between a full-size machine. It also depends on what kind of applications you're using. Had any problems or experiences with certain apps while using a Netbook? Share it in the comments. Original article at CNET Webware |
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