The Compaq Airlife smartbook is getting closer to release, and Chippy at carrypad has gotten ahold of a pre-production model and written a review. Basically it’s a stripped down netbook that’s slower and less useful. The only upside of this device is that it’s instant-on OS is very convenient, but with all of the quick boot options available on netbooks now this is not all that great anymore.
Basically the Airlife 100 is worse than any comparable netbook in speed, looks and memory and according to Chippy will cost well over $300.
Some more examples of how the Airlife is completely useless:
- There are no USB ports
- Screen can’t be opened far enough to point at your face (if sitting on a table it points at your chest) and combine this with a poor viewing angle
- Comes with stripped down version of Android (no apps, not even gmail) and no access to the Android marketplace
- Flash doesn”t work on websites
Basically the Airlife 100 is a piece of junk and will not sell well at all in its current configuration. If they add some usb ports and drop the price to $99, then we’ll change our tune.
If you ask me the “smartbook” category is going to disappear before it even gets started.
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