Netbooks signify the newest customer electronics craze. They're small, they're portable, they're dirt cheap, and, in 2008, consumers bought somewhere in excess of 14 million of them. At last week's CES, all the major players introduced new netbooks,
Cheap Windows 7 Starter, stimulated by that consumer demand: Sony introduced the Pocket P; HP debuted the Mini Mii; Asus brought out its S121 with a 512GB solid state drive.
Power users are often skeptical of small, underpowered devices and we at Ars can understand that. Now that CES is over, here are five points to consider that might change your mind about netbooks and how you might use one.
Netbooks don't have to be your primary computer
Almost no one buys a netbook as their primary system. Netbook sales appear to be filling a niche for secondary computers that let you hit the road with the bare minimum of computing hardware. That's made possible by a new wave of applications that don't care what platform you're computing on, so long as you can authenticate yourself.
Between clever syncing strategies, Exchange-like servers, and web-hosted applications, your data no longer care if you're at the office on a PC, on the go with your primary laptop, or on a netbook. You can check in at work and do some light-weight computing at meetings,with a platform that offers more flexibility than a smart phone and less overhead than a traditional laptop. Netbooks augment rather than replace laptops when it comes to portable computing.
They're not underpowered for what they really do
In the real world, laptops let you perform serious work and let you do so without a lot of compromise. In the portable world, netbooks just aren't meant for that standard of computing. The screen is small; the keyboard is compromised; the chip runs slow. So consider them in the light of the activities that people use netbooks for: sending e-mail, browsing the net,
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In each of these domains, the netbook handles its job at a satisfying level, offering a significant improvement over any smartphone. Even the smallest netbooks offer keyboards that are an order of magnitude better for typing than those found on phones—the best phones with pull-out keyboards simply cannot compete. The same goes for screens. Even the finest phone interfaces are limited by their screen space, which is at best about a quarter of the size of a typical netbook screen. As for the clock speed, none of these tasks are particularly CPU intensive. The popular Intel Atom processor is more than up to the task.
They're sitting on the edge of a ubiquitous connectivity revolution
Netbooks are the perfect match for some form of built-in connectivity, although, in all honesty, they have yet to realize this potential. Some netbooks currently ship with built-in 3G modems, notably those offered outside the US. Sadly,
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In the US, RadioShack sells the Aspire One netbook for $99 provided one takes on a pricy $60/month 3G data contract. That works out to a cost of $1540 over the two-year lifetime of the contract, including the hardware itself. To compare, the iPhone offers 3G data plus a very reasonable voice package starting at $70/month, or $60/month if you're on a grandfathered plan. The Radio Shack plan seems to be a tentative exploration of the netbook connectivity space that, if properly priced and promoted, could become huge.
For the moment, many netbook users are choosing to tether instead, sharing an internet connection on a smart phone rather than buying a netbook-specific data plan. Tethering is a morally gray area, as many of the phones that are being used to tether with do not explicitly allow this in their contract terms and conditions. Tethering also means you have to coordinate two devices (instead of using hardware already built into a netbook) and have to watch battery usage on both. Tethering, you'll be unsurprised to hear,
Office Professional Plus Key, can drain a phone's battery very quickly.
This all having been said, the netbook's strength lies in its amazing portability. As built-in connectivity takes off (and it will), netbooks will be able to offer their network-based applications regardless of whether users are traveling in a car on a highway or at a WiFi-enabled cafe hotspot. And that is going to be a huge deal.
You can dock
As with any other laptop, netbooks are easily connected to peripherals thanks to standard USB and Ethernet connectivity. You can bring your netbook home, dock it, and treat it as a secondary system. Yes, you're still limited by the modest but not unacceptable processor speed but, in all other ways, the netbook can bypass its normal limitations when brought into the office.
If the screen is too small, use a bigger screen. Every netbook I have ever worked with could readily drive an external monitor at a respectable resolution. Most allow you to create an extended desktop that spreads across both the internal monitor and the external one, creating an even greater workspace.
If you don't like the size and feel of the built-in keyboard, you can use it with a full-sized external USB keyboard and mouse. There's no reason you have to compromise on typing when at your desk. Should disk space be an issue, it's simple to connect an external USB drive. You can also network to your primary computer and share its disk resources, scanners, and printers, as well. Just a small collection of peripherals, ready to dock to at your office, can transform a netbook to a system that's just as useful at a desktop as it is on the go.
The price and size appeal is real
While you can argue that the price of regular laptops has plunged over the last few years, the netbook price point remains extremely appealing. For a few hundred dollars, you can walk away with a portable computer that adds to, rather than replaces, your existing computing setup. And, should that system fail, it's a lot less expensive to replace.
You don't have to buy special carrying luggage either, nor haul around lots of accessories the way most people do with laptops. Netbooks can be used more casually and tucked into briefcases, handbags, and backpacks with less worry and overhead.
You're rarely going to do the kind of long-term extended work on netbooks that you do with laptops, so power concerns are also diminished. A full charge on a netbook easily gets you through a meeting and off and on use through an afternoon.
As a final appeal point, consumers find netbooks "cute." It may be a hideously embarrassing truth,
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