Personal Technology » hotel

Verizon Now Sells Subsidized Netbook With Cell Service

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:12:03 +0000

As laptops have shrunk in size and price, and cellphones have expanded in size and capability, the two are increasingly overlapping in function. Now, their pricing and sales models are blurring, too.

For a while, some wireless carriers in Europe and in Asia have been selling tiny laptops, called netbooks, equipped with built-in cellular modems, at low, subsidized prices, just as they do with mobile phones. And, just as with a subsidized phone or a plug-in laptop data card, there’s a catch: To get the low upfront price, the customer must agree to a contract and pay a monthly data fee.

[ See post to watch video ]

Starting May 17, Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, will try the same thing on these shores, selling a netbook model made by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) at $200, after a $50 mail-in rebate — less than half its usual price of $520. To get this price, the customer must sign a two-year contract and pay either $40 or $60 a month, depending on the amount of data to be consumed.

I’ve been testing this netbook, the H-P Mini 1151NR, a version of H-P’s Mini 1000 series with a cellular modem built-in. This model sports a 10.1-inch screen, and yet is very compact and easy to tote. It weighs just 2.45 pounds, is about an inch thick, and is only about 10 inches long and 6.5 inches deep. It has an Intel (INTC) Atom processor, common in netbooks; runs Windows XP; and includes one gigabyte of memory, a built-in Webcam and an 80-gigabyte hard disk. Like most netbooks, it includes Wi-Fi, but lacks a DVD drive.

My verdict: This netbook is an adequate light-duty computer, and $200 is a low price for a PC with a hard disk running Windows XP. But Verizon’s charge for Internet service is high if you intend to rely on that service as your main online connection, because the data levels covered by the carrier’s plans aren’t unlimited, and cost extra after you exceed a certain amount. It makes much more sense if you travel a lot, stay within the data limits each month, and want to avoid hotel and airport Wi-Fi fees.

But the Verizon (VZ) service is slower than many Wi-Fi connections, and it can be obtained for almost any laptop by buying a plug-in card that carries the same monthly fees. In my tests, at a typical Marriott (MAR) hotel, the Verizon cellular service achieved download speeds of around 1.6 megabits per second, while the Wi-Fi modem in the same PC got over five mbps.

The H-P Mini 1151NR

Also, even for a netbook, the computer itself is underequipped. Its 80-gigabyte hard disk is cramped by today’s netbook standards, and it has only a small three-cell battery that doesn’t last long. In my tough battery test, where I left the cellular Internet connection on, disabled all power-saving features, and played music continuously, the H-P Mini 1151NR lasted a pathetic one hour and 55 minutes. That suggests that, in normal use, you might get around 2.5 hours of use.

A bigger six-cell battery is available for $130 from Verizon, but that’s a huge price premium on a $200 PC, plus it makes the netbook 75% thicker and 30% heavier. Verizon doesn’t offer a larger internal hard disk.

By comparison, you can buy an Acer One Windows XP netbook with the same size screen as the Verizon netbook, and twice the hard disk and battery capacity, for $340. The Acer lacks the built-in cellular modem, but you can buy that from Verizon in plug-in form for $30, with the same monthly fees. Total upfront price: $370, versus $330 for the Verizon model with the bigger battery.

You could also pay much less at a RadioShack (RSH) store, which is selling a subsidized netbook with a built-in cellular modem and required contract (with AT&T) (T) at $60 a month. This model, also an Acer running XP, has a smaller 8.9-inch screen, but most other specs are similar to those on the Verizon model. Yet there’s one enormous difference: It costs only $50, plus a $36 activation fee.

In my tests, the Verizon/H-P netbook handled all common tasks well, if not at blazing speeds. It lacks Microsoft Office, but includes the lesser Microsoft Works productivity suite. I was able to download and run common third-party programs like Firefox and iTunes. The built-in Verizon software for managing the cellular and Wi-Fi connections worked very well, and can be upgraded to a new version with added features.

The hardware has some notable downsides. The keyboard feels too flexible, and some symbols on the function keys are hard to read. The mouse buttons are awkwardly arrayed on the sides of the touch pad, not below it. And the speaker, while loud, is tinny. Also, the machine has a bunch of craplets, mostly links to H-P Web sites or to companies like eBay (EBAY) and Pandora.

Still, if you travel a lot and like using a cellular modem, the machine’s $200 price is compelling, so long as you can handle the wimpy battery and small hard disk.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

New Amazon Service Streams TV Shows And Films to PCs

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:08:05 +0000

Consumer options for viewing popular TV shows and movies directly from the Internet, as opposed to watching them from traditional cable and satellite systems, keep growing. Last week, yet another approach to Internet distribution of commercial video content emerged.

Amazon (AMZN) launched a new service called Amazon Video on Demand, which allows users, for a fee, to watch any of 40,000 TV episodes or movies, in real time, on their Windows and Macintosh computers, and on specially equipped Sony Bravia TV sets. This service replaces an earlier Amazon video offering called Unbox.

[ See post to watch video ]

I have been testing Amazon Video on Demand and I found it worked well, although it has some limitations. The user interface is clean and smart, the quality is good if you have a fast Internet connection, and there are some clever features. On the downside, it works poorly with the slow connections typical in places like hotels. And there are some studio-imposed limits on what content is offered and how you can view it.

To date, there have been three major models for legally getting TV shows and movies from the Web.

In one, best represented by Apple’s (AAPL) widely used iTunes store, the TV shows and movies are ad-free, but you pay for each. All of this content is downloaded to your Windows or Macintosh computer or your Apple TV set-top box for later viewing, even when you’re not connected to the Internet — though on Apple TV you can start watching while the material is being downloaded.

A second model, best represented by the studio-owned Hulu.com, presents movies and TV shows on a Windows or Macintosh personal computer free of charge, but requires you to watch commercials that can’t be skipped. The TV shows and movies you view on Hulu are “streamed” rather than downloaded, meaning they are meant to be viewed immediately, in real time, rather than stored for viewing when you’re not connected to the Internet.

The third online model is best represented by Netflix (NFLX), the popular DVD distributor. It offers a “Watch Instantly” streaming option on Windows PCs or on TVs equipped with a special set-top box, for a small portion of its large catalog of TV shows and movies. These videos are ad-free and don’t carry an individual charge, but require a monthly subscription fee.

The new Amazon Video on Demand service is a hybrid of these others. As on iTunes, the TV shows and movies it offers are ad-free and purchased individually, don’t require a subscription, and work on both Windows and the Mac, plus on one type of set-top box. In Amazon’s case, that’s Sony’s Bravia Internet Link, a $299 device that works only with Sony (SNE) TVs.

But, like Hulu and Netflix and unlike Amazon’s older Unbox service, the new Amazon Video on Demand service offers videos via real-time streaming. In many cases, it also allows downloading, iTunes-style, to Windows PCs (but not Macs) and to TiVo devices attached to a TV. The videos can’t be streamed in real time using a TiVo (TIVO).

Amazon’s streaming videos are viewed in any of the major Web browsers and don’t require any special software. I tested the new service on both Windows PCs and Macs, and on a Sony Bravia TV equipped with the $299 adapter box. In my tests, Amazon’s videos looked quite good over a fast Internet connection. However, on a typically lousy hotel Internet connection, the movies were often grainy and kept stuttering.

The new service doesn’t yet offer videos in high definition, something Apple just announced this week it is adding for some TV shows. Amazon says it is working on HD.

Amazon’s user interface for the new service is very nice. All of your purchased videos are available in a library stored on the company’s servers, so you can easily watch them again and again if they are purchased, or resume a partly watched rental. And the service remembers where you stopped watching a video and resumes it at that point, even if you started it on, say, a Dell (DELL), and resumed it on a Mac.

On the downside, the new Amazon service isn’t always simple or consistent. For instance, you can watch only two videos at a time, and not all titles can be either streamed and downloaded, or be either purchased or rented. Most rentals last 24 hours, but some differ.

Selection was OK, but not great. Because of studio policies, many current and recent movie hits aren’t available. There are gaps as well in the TV selection. For example, while iTunes offers the current second season of the excellent “Mad Men” series, Amazon has only the first season.

Prices also can be confusing. Amazon rents most movies for $3.99 and sells them for between $9.99 and $14.99. TV shows generally cost $1.99. But some titles carry different prices, albeit these are often lower.

All in all, Amazon Video on Demand is a good service for people who prefer paying for ad-free TV shows and movies, and is another strong step in the Internet’s rising competition with traditional TV.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.