Net Books

I am sure you have seen them, the small laptops that look too small to do anything with?  These new net books are the newest craze in the laptop industry.  Now you probably will not see these flying off the shelf for college students, but you are sure to see them in the airport or at internet cafes world wide.

The main reason these net books are great, is the same reason they may end up not selling as well as they should.  These net books are basically internet only laptops, yes you heard right, internet only.  This laptop is great for checking your email and surfing the web, but not much else because most are not powerful enough to do anything.  Now, some may instinctively think this is a good idea, however I am on the other hand with this one.

I think these Net books are not the most sound investment.  Sure they are cheap, with a price tag of around $399, but they are only "good" at one thing.  There is no writing papers, doing spreadsheets, creating powerpoints, there is surfing the internet and checking your email.  One "good" thing to these "laptops" is they are tiny, I mean real small.  Think about the Mac Air small.  Small enough to carry in your purse and not notice it small.  This is a "good" thing as the gadget craze is the smaller the better, but what about those who want a full keyboard, or want a slightly larger screen?  Sorry mate, you are in the wrong section!

Now some may be wondering why these are in production, and I thought that as well, but then I had to realize that not everyone wants to use a computer to do everything, they simply want it to check their email and their favorite websites, in which case this is a great investment, if you can get past the fact they are so small you will be scrolling for hours on long websites.  Sure these will be popular at the airport for the frequent flier, or at the mall for the frequent blogger, but really that is about it.  These will never make a run for it in the business world and be successful, there is not enough functionality.

A typical Netbook has a 7 inch screen (told you they were tiny), an Intel Atom or Via Nano processor, a solid state (flash) hard drive and a keyboard that’s 80-85% standard size. Most have Wifi. Some have other bells and whistles like bluetooth, a camera, etc. but most do not.

I find Netbooks unusable for three reasons: they’re underpowered as PCs, the screen is too small for web surfing (about the only thing it is good at), and the keyboard is so small that effective typing is impossible, unless you have tiny fingers.

One major plus with this technology is the battery life.  It is the one thing I can say actually is correct about these little machines, the battery life is amazing.  These can go for ever without dying.  In the end, if you are looking for a computer, this is not for you.  If you are looking for a personal email checker and web surfer with a long battery life and a light weight small body frame, then look into theese Net Books, they may be your new bestfriend.

How I see it, Netbooks are designed to appeal to two very different markets - the price sensitive and the size sensitive. The two are really mutually exclusive.  Outside of those two markets, there really does not seem to be much of an appeal for these newest attraction to the computer industry and will probably phase out over the long run.

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