Nokia Booklet 3G Review: Things I Hate

Yesterday I shared some of the things that I absolutely love about the Nokia Booklet 3G, but it’s not entirely a win. Today I’ve compiled a list of things that really suck about this sleek laptop, and I hope Nokia is listening. Some of these can be fixed with software, while others will require a whole new piece of hardware (possibly the Booklet 4G?)

1. Windows 7 Starter Edition – why a $700 laptop is crippled with this dumbed-down version of Microsoft’s best OS is beyond me. The convenient snipping tool is missing, I can’t change the background, there are no Aero functions available, and it’s just plain annoying. This thing should at *least* come with Windows 7 Home Premium. Note, the official Nokia Booklet 3G page shows Windows 7 Home Premium to be an option, but I can’t figure out how to get that out of the box.

2. 1GB of RAM – It’s actually kind of funny, most of Nokia’s flagship phones are crippled with piss-poor amounts of RAM, and it appears as though the phone people had lunch with the Booklet team, because this thing crawls with only 1GB of RAM. Now, I realize that every other netbook on the planet only comes with 1GB of RAM, but Nokia built the Booklet 3G so that users cannot swap it out for a 2GB stick – it’s soldered in. It was insanely easy for me to install 2GB of RAM in my Asus 1000HE, and only cost an extra $25.

3. Glossy Display – I really really really hate glossy displays on computers. Sure, it might look nicer, but it’s annoying as all get-out to actually use, and, well, I hate it, that’s why it’s mentioned here.

4. Speakers – as Dotsisx pointed out recently, it seems like Nokia’s loudspeakers are getting softer, and the Booklet 3G is no exception. The speakers on this mini-laptop are really bad – low volume and empty sound quality mean you’ll be using that 3.5mm headphone port pretty much full-time.

Honestly, that’s all I could come up with, is four things that I hate. The Nokia Booklet 3G is really a pretty easy netbook to love, provided you don’t expect to be able to get alot done on it. The slow processor and RAM work together to absolutely kill any chance of productivity that the Booklet 3G ever had – you’ll spend most of the extra battery life just waiting for the computer to respond.