Quentin’s got a netbook. So has Dave Winer, who is not impressed by the way Steve Jobs poured cold water on the whole netbook concept. So here’s Dave’s definition of the essence of the netbook.

1. Small size.
2. Low price.
3. Battery life of 4 hours. Battery can be replaced by user. Atom processor seems to be a requirement, those that aren’t Atom aren’t selling (and are apparently being discontinued).
4. Rugged.
5. Built-in wifi, 3 USB ports, SD card reader. It seems it must have 802.11n to be taken seriously.
6. Runs my software.
7. Runs any software I want (no platform vendor to decide what’s appropriate).
8. Competition (users have choice and can switch vendors at any time).

I’ve had an Asus EeePC for just under a year, and have found it impressive and useful. It has some annoyances (battery life not great, forgets WEP passwords when hibernating, undersized trackpad and screen slightly too small for serious browsing). But on the other hand, it came configured with great applications (including Skype and all major flavours of webmail out of the box), is delightfully small and light and fits in anywhere. I took it away on holiday once to see what was lacking — and found that the only thing I really missed was the ability to upload and edit photographs from my digital camera.

I also bought an HP MiniNote for research purposes — and to see what an established computer manufacturer would do with the netbook idea. The HP machine is beautifully made, has a bigger, nicer screen, a 160GB hard drive and a much better keyboard. But it’s also over-engineered and heavy, has unimpressive battery life and came with the worst Linux distro I’ve ever seen. The machine was effectively unusable until my colleague Michael installed Ubuntu on it.

So… The Netbook genre is still in its early days. The big challenge for the manufacturers is how to resist the temptation of feature-creep. That’s one of the problems of the HP machine — it’s edging back into small laptop territory. And that’s a mistake. The motto for the genre should be KISS — Keep It Simple, Stoopid.

As Dave Winer says, Steve Jobs may be dissing netbooks in public but behind the scenes he’s probably hassling his designers to come up with Apple’s distinctive take on the genre.

LATER: Bang on cue, here’s TechCrunch in speculative form:

This week saw an interesting story come out of the New York Times. The Times reported seeing traffic from an Apple product which has a screen resolution greater than that of an iPhone but less than that of a MacBook. This seems to correlate very well with reports of Apple building something that is akin to a new Newton, although whether it is a bigger iPhone or a MacBook Tablet is still any one’s guess.

Stephen Hawking is retiring. The professorial Chair once occupied by Isaac Newton is vacant.

The Board of Electors to the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics invite applications for this Professorship, to take up appointment on 1 October 2009 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Applications are invited from persons working on mathematics applied to the physical world, with strong preference for the broad area of theoretical physics.

The appointment will be subject to the Statutes and Ordinances of the University.

Form an orderly queue.

From Robert Reich’s Blog

Pardon me for asking, but if a company is too big to fail, maybe – just maybe – it’s too big, period.

We used to have public policies to prevent companies from getting too big. Does anyone remember antitrust laws? Somewhere along the line policymakers decided that antitrust would only be used where there was evidence a company had so much market power it could keep prices higher than otherwise.

We seem to have forgotten that the original purpose of antitrust law was also to prevent companies from becoming too powerful. Too powerful in that so many other companies depended on them, so many jobs turned on them, and so many consumers or investors or depositors needed them – that the economy as a whole would be endangered if they failed. Too powerful in that they could wield inordinate political influence – of a sort that might gain them extra favors from Washington.

He’s right. But guess what? In trying to contain the financial panic, governments here and everywhere are creating even bigger behemoths.

At the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out to walk from Rotterdam to Istanbul, equipped only with a stick, a rucksack, a notebook and a gift for languages. This is the first of the two retrospective volumes in which he recounted his adventures. It’s a ravishing book, which has made me revisit my own memories of various places on the Continent where he passed through in the 1930s. I lived and worked in Holland for a year in the 1970s, for example, and have loved the country ever since, so his summary resonated with me:

“I was astonished … at the impressive, clear beauty of the country and its variety, the amazing light and the sway of its healing and collusive charm. No wonder it had produced so many painters! And the Dutch themselves? Although we were reciprocally tongue-tied, the contact was not as light as these pages must suggest. On foot, unlike other forms of travel, it is impossible to be out of touch; and our exchanges were enough, during this brief journey, to leave a deposit of liking and admiration which has lasted ever since.”

He’s very perceptive about the Dutch landscape and its eerie, consoling familiarity — the product of centuries of painterly mastery. I lived in the East of the country, near the German border, but often drove to Amsterdam by myself on Saturday afternoons, and I remember vividly how oddly familiar the landscape seemed as I neared the coast, especially in the winter.

“If there is a foreign landscape familiar to English eyes by proxy, it is this one; by the time they see the original, a hundred morning and afternoons in museums and picture galleries and country houses have done their work. These confrontations and recognition-scenes filled the journey with excitement and delight. The nature of the landscape itself, the colour, the light, the openness, the expanse and the detail of the towns and the villages are leagued together in the weaving of a miraculously consoling and healing spell. Melancholy is exorcised, chaos chased away and wellbeing, alacrity of spirit and a thoughtful calm take their place.”

I’ve always thought that if I were deported from the UK as an undesirable alien, Holland is where I would settle.