Finally the Team TechSansar made a visit to busy dusty crowd of New Road and Putalisadak areas in Kathmandu visiting the real hardware dealers. The made it ‘Netbooks in Kathmandu‘ as the thematic tech update for the time being. Here are the findings that our team came out for various netbooks available in the valley. From Hi-end Lenovo style to local Chinese produced netbooks are hitting the Nepalese market in as less as 30 thousands rupees.
Before discussing about specific netbook gadget, let’s first explore the common features that these netbooks has to offer for.
Common Features of Netbook (available in Nepal):
1 Gigs of RAM, expandable upto 2GB, 1GB of DDR RAM cost around NRs 2200 as of today.
Screen display in inches 10 to 11, also found 8” netbooks
No option for optical drive (ie no CD ROM or DVD ROM), if you want to install some apps or the OS, even, then you will need the external portable DVD. The Buffalo’s portable DVD RW cost NRs 8000, other’s ranging around 6k.
No external graphics card or VRAM, only internal integrated video cards.
3 cells battery are the most common (2 to 4 hours of working time)
Surprisingly, most of these netbooks run Adobe CS3 Suite well (we found the sellers have installed on most of such gadgets)
All models got WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth, some with Bluetooth + EDR, but none with Bluetooth version 3.
160 GB of hard disk space is common, 320 GB is also available, and some models got just 60 GB of Solid State Disk.
Intel Atom Processor 1.66 GHz in all the models observed, 566 MHz common.
We would like to omit other common features, for you can explore or search on this website.
Local Chinese Netbooks:
The cheapest of all netbooks we found in Kathmandu, cost around NRs 30,000 ± seller’s policy.
HP Mini 320:
Stylish look netbook for NRs 33,000, you get a complete user guide and netbook bag for free.
Toshiba NB 200:
Cool look but expensive, NRs 42,000 bucks, go for it if you are a Toshiba addict.
Prestige 111:
11 inch display gets you maximized working space, NRs 60K, most expensive netbook we found in Kathmandu.
Acer N 450:
For NRs 33,000 you get huge 320 gigs of cool and sleek red ultra portable and mobile netbook with FreeDOS. Ensure you match this model with Buffalo’s optical drive in Red color – slim got slim friend. One of our team members was addicted to this model; probably he will run out for ATM soon.
MSI Netbooks:
Varieties of netbooks, protruding batteries on the rare side, cool look but expensive, price ranging around 39K, awarded by various magazines.
Prolink Netbooks:
Most advanced with 3.75G (Why not 4G?), so get ready to compute with mobile telephony services. 3G to 4G transformation. If you can’t withstand your pocket and wish to have the latest gadgets go for it. Price NRs 32,000, get it now from Prolink store in NLIC City Center.
Lenovo Netbooks:
Expensive, for geeks.
Sony Netbooks:
Get it if you’re a Sony addict. No more features than other netbooks. Price few thousands extra.
You can find these netbooks in Kathmandu at NLIC City Center, Computer Bazar, Tamrakar House, Ishan Infosys, Computronics, and other gadgetry stores in New Road.
The sad point is that all, if not most, vendors/sellers have replaces the original genuine OS (Windows 7 Starter Edition) with cracked version of Windows 7 Ultimate. Few netbooks even had FreeDOS which we recommend strongly. Finally, you will be using Windows 7 Ultimate in your netbook if you purchase one in Kathmandu.
