netbook usefull?

George, with respect, just about every computer these days has internet capability.

Did you read the whole thread?

Doug, with respect, netbooks have little to recommend them except as cheap storage devices, but if you are in some remote spot the internet capability is an advantage that traditional photo storage/viewing devices don't have.

But perhaps you are too young to remember those.

G

George, you mean those plastic containers you put your film in?

There are new Atoms processors on the way for netbooks and one or two are even dual cores and Nvidia has the ION videocard for netbooks that support Cuda. No one knows precisely what the new "package" can do but they might be able to pull it off, editing photos I mean.

The only reason I won't use mine for editing is the size of the screen.

I shall view the photos (hence Irfanview) and probably tag them etc but editing will wait for the big screen.

My husband is hoping to use my netbook to edit his jpegs. Fat chance

We often travel by winging it and it is then good to have internet to search for the next hotel. In the past we have lugged his laptop with us, but now we don't need to. We will be winging it to a certain extent in France as we are pottering down to the first house, and pottering back up, so internet would be handy but it's not essential.
Mobile internet is too expensive roaming from NL, and I wouldn't use it here anyway - all my family have Wifi networks and there is always a McD or a train or something with free Wifi. Mobile internet is nearly impossible to organise in France I'm told, so I shan't be looking for a dongle and SIM there. So a few Internet free weeks. Will I survive?

Gosh, this thread has rambled around a bit ...
Back to netbooks. There are a few things that you can do with them. If you can get a connection, you can use them to do your on-line check-in from your hotel room. Of course, it may cost more than walking down to the hotel "Business Center", but hey, this is modern technology. Then, you can preview the photos, and trash all the out-of-focus, badly composed, blurred, etc, ones - only taking the good stuff home. You can check your email if you have the right ISP.
Editing photos - no way. Well, maybe if (say) you can edit 30x30 pixel icons from scratch, but for most people - no way. I have an IBM T40 (14.5 inch screen, and that is too small for editing for me - except maybe for simple stuff like an overall change in brightness/contrast. I would not want to try it on my Apple TiBook with a 17 inch screen. I do have PSE 4 on it, but still only find it good for viewing and trashing.
There are a lot of things that it is fun to try for technical reasons (AKA "Been there - Done that") but you don't do it for serious. You can take a shot with a 2x converter on the back of an 800mm mirror lens, but how many of us would do it if there was another option?
Geoff

I really don't understand why people think you can't edit photos on a netbook, my Eee 901 handles GIMP with images from my K10D wonderfully.


It's easier on a desktop with a nice big screen and oodles of oomph, but you can't fit one of those in your hand luggage.

I know you can edit on a netbook, but the small screen is one reason not to. Plus when I'm on holiday I tend to have better things to do than edit my photos. They can wait until I get home.
I may geotag them on the netbook though, just to get that horrible task out of the way every day.

whether or not you WANT to edit on a netbook is a different question, I can see why you might not, I don't usually bother, prefering to wait for access to my 19" PVA panel on my desktop.

However a few people have made the accusation that it's not possible to edit photos on a netbook, and I can't let that stand.

I've edited photos from a K10D on a 450MHz PII with 128MB of RAM, the original eee 700 blows that machine right out of the water.

For Mongoose.

You can't EASILY edit photos on a Netbook. The screen is too small, and the processor too slow on most of them, especially if you are using something like Silkypix and have a 14MP camera.

OK?

G

thank you George, that is accurate enough. The 7" screen on the original eees is definitely pushing it as far as ease of use goes, and it's certainly a nicer general experience editing photos on a big screen attached to a fast desktop.

However, if you want something that will fit in the top of your camera gadget bag and yet still run UFRAW + GIMP then the 900 series eees fit the bill.

I generally use mine (an eee 901, 1GB RAM, 900mhz celeron 20GB SSD and Ubuntu Linux) to look at the photos, use DCRAW to extract the embedded thumbnails and then play with crops and the like in GIMP if I have nothing better to do while I'm away. It'll do UFRAW in batch mode happily if I want it to though, it just takes a while to process (time to make a cup of tea!)

Thought Gwyn - internet cafes are available in France if you look for them - I was never very lucky

BUT some tourist offices will let you use their connection I found that in a lovely wee village in the Loire - was charged € 0.50 an hour for their connection They were quite happy to let me plug my MacBook in using my own Ethernet cable to join on their Wanadoo/Orange.fr livebox .

It's also worth just having a try to connect in a cafe while having a welcome beer or coffee - many will give you a free connection then

I'll be doing this with my iTouch next month - don't think I'm taking the MacBook with me this time - I'll see how the packing goes - but the Touch will let me stay in Touch [ hahahahaha ] by e-mail

Many Hotels are also giving free Wifi though some still charge for it .

I have a 901 (and the original 900), but have never mastered how to get UFRAW onto it. Instead, I shoot RAW and JPEG, which is wasteful of space.

The main barrier to adoption of Linux is the crazy way they have of loading programs. Ubuntu may well be better - does it come with Gimp and UFRAW pre-loaded?

Must get around to installing Ubuntu.

G

There are netbooks with 12" screens now (which I was planning to buy), the laptop of my grandpa standing next to me has a 13" screen and I've done some editing on that so I find it hard to believe that 1" would make much of a difference.

From what I understand is if a wireless network connection is not secured you're allowed to plug into it.
Don't know if it's so in every country.

Oh you can always try and 'sniff out' an unsecured network - you may be lucky [ I know a campsite where someone near to it has /had an unsecured one - could use it on our pitch , but the pitch next door couldn't get it ]

I do know that in France the Wanadoo/Orange Liveboxes were very very difficult to get on - even when you had the password for them .