For the past year my netbook of choice has been the Samsung NC10 as while it shipped with stock Intel Atom hardware like other netbooks such as the Dell Mini 9 and earlier ASUS Eee PCs, the Samsung was built very well and possessed a rather large and well laid out keyboard for only being a 10.6" mobile computer. Catching my attention recently though has been the ASUS Eee PC 1201N netbook.

There is just one week left until Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" will be released, but is it worth the upgrade if you are running a netbook? From our testing of the development releases, it is most certainly worth the upgrade, especially when compared to Ubuntu 9.04 with its buggy Intel driver stack that caused many problems for Atom netbook users.

As I alluded to earlier, I am out of the office this week. With me to Italy I took a Samsung NC10 that is loaded with an Intel Atom processor, Intel integrated graphics, an OCZ solid-state drive, and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. Prior to leaving I loaded it up with a clean install of the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, but what a mistake that was.

Intel has provided an early development preview of the Moblin 2.1 operating system, which we briefly tested out on a Samsung NC10 netbook. Here are the screenshots and a few more details.

One of the most touted advantage of Windows 7 over Windows XP and Linux is improved battery life. This may be trues for newer netbooks that would be optimized for Microsoft new operating system, but don't expect any gain from installing Microsoft's latest release on you current netbook! Many people have actually reported reduced battery life on their netbooks after an upgrade to Windows 7.

In this last (for now) post about the KDE Netbook Desktop, Jamie A. Watson focuses on what it is like to actually use it on a typical netbook. He will be using his Samsung N150 Plus, running PCLinuxOS 2010.7. This is a very typical netbook, with an Atom N450 CPU, 1 GB memory, 10" display, 1024x600 resolution.

Looks like the Android netbooks are coming: Toshiba introduced their Dynabook AZ Series which is equipeed with an Android 2.1 OS. Toshiba AC100 The AC100 is a mobile internet device with a 10.1 inch LED screen and "up to 8 hours" of battery life. According to Toshiba, it "combines smartphone functionality with netbook usability".

ZaReason is shipping a Linux-ready, 10-inch netbook that uses the Intel Atom N450 processor and is claimed to offer eight hours of battery life.

For frequent travelers who just can’t live without having a computer with them, the netbook has become an essential device as it is extremely portable. However, its portability has sacrificed a few important features. --One of which is battery life.Netbooks are usually sold with 3-Cell Li-Ion battery that when fully charged can last up to 3 hours on normal usage.