The Nokia Booklet 3G is an ultra-portable (1.25 kg) mini laptop: it has a 10-inch widescreen, built-in GPS receiver, supports 3G mobile connectivity, its huge battery provides approximately 6 hours of battery life and the aluminum housing lets you to dispense with the cooling fan, so it is extremely quiet. And last but not least, is far more beautiful than any other netbook. However, there are a couple of drawbacks, Booklet 3G is quite expensive (about EUR 600) and it is maddeningly slow. Probably because of its sluggish performance, working with this laptop can be very tedious. Fortunately, there is an effective remedy for slow laptops: change the operating systems.

Booklet 3G comes pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium edition, the latest Microsoft operating system. Microsoft has certainly done an excellent job of correcting shortcomings found in its much maligned OS, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 is a good option for typical laptops, but too heavy for mini laptops such as 3G Booklet, especially when there is no possibility of expanding the memory. For example: watching an AVI format movie in Booklet 3G is like a torture, because images and sound are so choppy, which is especially frustrating as the computer also has an HDMI port for connecting to a HDTV.

However, 3G Booklet owners deserve a salvation, they should immediately abandon Windows and install a lighter operating system. Specifically, they may use Jolicloud, a Linux distro designed completely for netbooks and offers the chance of leaving the existing Windows installation. Once installed, when starting 3G Booklet you can choose between the two operating systems.

When choosing Jolicloud at startup, the performance improvement is evident. Everything works far more quickly, from the logon to the wireless network access to applications and file management. And of course, videos playback is much smoother, according to a benchmark, the Booklet 3G runs 22% faster in Jolicloud than with Windows 7. The difference is so substantial that you may not feel tempted to use the original Windows 7 again. Naturally, the feasibility of this decision depends on each case: to some people using Linux could be convenient if the 3G Booklet is not their main laptop, as when they are traveling they often spend most of the time using common applications, for which they only need a simple browser, and a few office programs which are readily available in Linux. Besides, you can keep the Windows 7 installed, just in case.

So, if you can spare a few gigabytes on the netbook storage, it is recommended that you try Jolicloud. Probably you can use your Booklet 3G for a year or so before changing to a more powerful computer.

You may also be curious about using other Linux distros, such as Ubuntu 10.10. Just like Jolicloud, Ubuntu can’t run Windows application, but at least you can still retain the Windows 7 application. You can also run Ubuntu temporarily from a USB flash drive memory. Ubuntu 10.10 is not so easy to set up as Jolicloud, for example, you have to download an additional file to get support for the 10” screen resolution, and the webcam may not working. But one thing that is certain: it is even faster than Jolicloud, 31% more than Windows 7 on a Booklet 3G. Unfortunately, the increase in speed has a price: the video player does not recognize some common video formats, like AVI.