iPhone vs netbook in extreme rally car typing challenge

With all the talk around here lately about netbooks, rallies and iphones:

http://videos.cnet.co.uk/39042323.htm

haha, that's pretty cool

Yeah, but he should have been driving like that while typing for a more real-world test.

The iphone is more for texting, occasional web browsing and small emails. It is a glorified smartphone, but it's at the top of the smartphone food chain.

The EeEeeeeeeEeee PC has far more productivity when not being bounced around inside a car.

So yes, not very scientific, but that Puegot rally car was pretty sweet. I so would love to have my hand at a awd rally car sometime.

PHeller wrote: The iphone is more for texting, occasional web browsing and small emails. It is a glorified smartphone, but it's at the top of the smartphone food chain.

The G1 eats the iPhone's lunch.

The fact that the iPhone happens to be a pretty good cell phone is pretty secondary to what it is.

The iPhone is an atrocious cellphone. I've never had worse sound quality, more cutting in an out, or more "my phone didn't even ring but now I have a missed call" events.

psteav, what generation are you generalizing about? Also, how is the signal strength where these situations occur?

gen 1 4 gig. And I'm guessing since you're accusing me of generalizing, you're prepared to defend it to the death.

I should have qualified my post somewhat. The phone on the iPhone is atrocious. Signal strength is almost always lower (sometimes equal, never better) in the same spot and same conditions as my girlfriend's "it was free when I signed the plan" verizon flip phone. Ditto all three of the complaints in my above post. Cutting in and out and the phantom missed calls are signal strength depedent, the sound quality however is uniformly atrocious. I understand that all of these issues have supposedly been addressed on the 3G, but that's not the phone I have. FWIW, several of my friends with 3Gs complain about the same problems.

Now, that said, I love the iPhone for everything else but the phone. It's great for someone (like me) who wants a smartphone/portable entertainment device but doesn't need one for business use. It's still got a high wow factor (important to my ADD-addled brain) and no matter what you want to do, there's probably an app for it.

If I had to rely on this thing to send email regularly or edit docs, I would definitely get something from HTC. I haven't seen much of the G1 in action, but I was originally looking for a Tilt or Hermes when I got a screaming deal on the iPhone.

I've actually found that the iPhone has better quality than my past phones. Maybe my past phones sucked. Not sure.

I'm not accusing, just merely stating fact. You were discussing an issue without explaining the variables involved.

I've had issues with any number of phones, with/without external antennas. The number of variables involved with dropped calls, bad reception, etc can skyrocket very quickly. I do know that the Gen 2 3G iPhones are "better" and as good as my freeby candy-bar that I used to have from AT&T. However, they aren't as good as the freeby flip phone the girlfriend used to have.

So far, I've enjoyed the iPhone and to be honest it works well enough that the other features more than make up for the occasional issue with a phone call.

My iPhone 3g does not work very well as a phone. Everything else it's awesome. Mysterious missed calls, and failed call attempts. All the while I always have full signal strength at my house. I never had any issues with AT&T in the past, and I've been a customer for 9 years.

Joey

In general - there's that word again - it seems to me that the performance of a phone as a phone is inversely proportional to the amount of 'features' that either the phone or the carrier add.

Example: my good friend and current boss has Sprint, because he had spotty reception with Verizon at his house. Got Sprint, no troubles. I got Sprint, too, based on his reports, since Verizon was spotty for me in some areas of the city. Got Sprint, no troubles. He moved to Sprint PCS and a Blackberry (his model name escapes me) with the snazzy PCS network and web and email and GPS and yadda yadda. Now, maybe 2/3rds of my texts ever get to him, 4/5 calls bounce to voicemail without ringing on his end, and his reception is worse than mine.

I was planning to get PCS so we could do the self-important instant-connect thing with each other, but now I'm not sure it's worth it.

PHeller wrote: The EeEeeeeeeEeee PC has far more productivity when not being bounced around inside a car.

I have to agree as Im replying to this on my Eee 1000