Apple Touch-Screen Netbook?

je ne sais quoi writes "The Apple rumor mill is churning today. Reuters and the DOW Jones news wire are reporting that an anonymous source in Taiwan has leaked that Apple has ordered some 10-inch touch-screens from WinTek, the maker of the touch-screen for the iPhone. It looks like an Apple netbook could possibly be in the works for a delivery date in Q3 of this year, in time for back-to-school sales. CNET and Engadget have completely unsubstantiated mock-ups."

Re:Who wants this?

[geekoid]

Hospital charting, Warehousing are jsut two industryies where someone walks around caring charts.
Weight is very important.

For home use, they could be used to allow guests to check their email quickly.

I could us one to check my systems, a task I do not need a heavy awkward laptop to do.

Re:Who wants this?

[Sabathius]

Exactly. And just to set the record straight, the new Asus 1000he has the new Atom 280 micro and 9 hour (advertised...probably more like 8 and change) battery life. These highly portable computers are seeming more like a viable option and less like toys all the time.

Are they taking on Axiotron?

[slummy]

AxioTron : Modbook [axiotron.com]

Re:Who wants this?

[XxtraLarGe]

I'd have to agree partially, but the iPhone/iPod touch does have some serious limitations. I was using my iPod Touch this past weekend to update Twitter from a high school championship sporting event--yeah, I finally found a way to make Twitter useful--and the keyboard is not very good at all when you're trying to type quickly & accurately. None of the Twitter clients on the iPhone support landscape orientation, making typing a real pain in the neck. Also, how long is Apple going to be stubborn on the whole copy/paste issue? There were some LONG URL's I wanted to link to but couldn't. Both of these issues really slowed me down quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod Touch, but I don't think it would give a small netbook a run for it's money as far as being able to quickly enter data is concerned. Even an OLPC [laptop.org] would have done a better job in this particular instance.

Re:Who wants this?

[truthsearch]

Their lowest-end laptop currently costs $999. So a tablet or netbook would almost definitely cost less.

Re:Who wants this?

[jaavaaguru]

Underpowered adjective: driven by an engine of insufficient power.

The power of my 1.6GHz Atom netbook with 2GB RAM and a 16GB SSD is more than sufficient for doing normal office tasks, web surfing, video watching, and using development tools such as Eclipse and Komodo. Definitely not underpowered.

The small screen is a bonus... my 12" laptop is too big to fit comfortably on the tables in many planes, whereas I can fit a snack and a drink next to my netbook while having the screen fully opened without touching the back of the chair in front of me. In the office or at home, I use it with an external keyboard and monitor.

Re:Who wants this?

[Paracelcus]

"They cannot be used for complex calculation problems", Huh? are you calculating an interstellar jump? They are plenty powerful enough for any normal (non gaming) activity.