Rise of Netbooks and programming

Question

What does the recent rise of netbook devices, and the popularity of these low power, low memory computing devices, mean for developing desktop applications? Reworded like this:

From User RSolberg:

Given the recent trend in the market for smaller net books with lower performance standards than the modern laptop and desktop, what will happen to .NET desktop applications? Are there things that one should avoid when developing an application for a net book? Any tips on how best to handle the lower performance standards on the netbook? What types of code should I avoid?" – RSolberg 10 mins ago

Answer 1

I have run Windows 7 RC on an Eee PC 900 (2GB Memory Upgrade) and I've run .NET and WPF applications without issue and no major performance differences between normal laptop. I have even been able to run Visual Studio on the netbook, its not zippy, but its usable.

Answer 2

I company I recently worked for where developing a windows applications directly targeted towards netbooks. Netbooks are an interesting device.

What do you use one for? They are lower power machines, but they don't fall into the PDA category, nor do they fit with the laptops.

From a programming perspective, you definitely have to be conscious of performance if you are targeting the NetBook with thick client ware.

For the web, it's probably not a big deal, unless you app is heavy on the client side scripting.

Answer 3

I've got an Asus EeePC and it runs the Eclipse IDE perfectly well. In fact it's nippier than my Lenovo X41, which is my main laptop.

Eclipse is written in Java and is slow and bloated even in comparison to other Java desktop applications.

I don't think you need worry about garbage collection or any other modern language feature on netbooks.

The only real issue is lack of screen real estate.

Answer 4

Netbooks offer enough resources to run most desktop apps and with so much stuff moving to the "cloud", as long as it can run a browser, performance may not matter.

Of course there are cases (video editting, games, etc.) that require the power a netbook may not offer.

Many come with solid state drives which may make up for the processor speed in terms of feeling speedy.

Answer 5

Here is a benchmark with a difference.

http://netbookation.com/netbkbnch.htm

It can be downloaded to be run on other machines.

psik