Question about RevMobile

[Richard Gaskin]

Alex Tweedly wrote:
> I thought the reason that netbooks were so cheap was because they were
> under-powered, or under-spec'ed.
> Do you find them (or it) adequate for general use ?
> Does it run the full Rev IDE  reasonably (I know you use a fairly
> minimalist one most of the time) ?

It's not so minimalist these days, it just makes good use of resources. :)

I forked MC several years ago and have been building on it since; more 
recently I've been kicking around the idea of a Netbook Remix IDE for 
Rev - if anyone's interested let me know, it might be a fun thing to do.

Rev, MC, and my IDE all feel a bit cramped in 1024x600 (hence me desire 
for a netbook-optimized design; IDEs simply take more space than most 
software), but as far as performance goes even Rev with its massive 
script editor runs fine.

And that's saying a lot given that my netbook is an EeePC 901, which I 
chose because it's smaller and lighter than most (probably the smallest 
one that still has WSVGA).

If I had to do it over I'd probably go a step larger in form factor to 
get a full-size keyboard, but for the small size and weight the 901 
takes some getting used to but it's not bad.  In fact, since it weighs 
less than a quart of water I'll be taking it in my backpack to an 
archaeology site in the Mojave so we can run our pics through D-stretch 
to see details in pictographs we can't see with the naked eye.

It's no match for my 17" MacBook Pro where I do most of my work, but if 
I'm running a stack and I need to touch it up a bit it lets me get the 
job done.  Heck, it even runs Google Earth surprisingly well.

A couple of my clients have market segments well suited for netbooks, so 
I'm spending more and more time with it as I prep those products to work 
well in the smaller screen.  Given that most of the work I do usually 
treats 1024x768 as a minimum, it's only a loss of about an inch and a 
half vertically to accommodate netbook users, usually easy to do if you 
plan for it and use space well.

I like to think of netbooks as somewhere between a MacBook and an iPad - 
not nearly as powerful as a really good laptop, but far more useful than 
an iPad for general computing and even programming tasks.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
  revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv