Jason Chen, editor of Gizmodo, says...Netbooks. They're small, light and portable--the seemingly perfect form factor for the constant traveler. They're selling so extremely well that every computer manufacturer CEO is asking their staff why they don't have a model (or three) of their own.
Christmas lists this year will be filled with one for each family member. So why do I think it's going to go the way of tablet PCs and be a niche seller at best? Here's why.
Netbooks are underpowered and underoutfitted. Units like the ASUS Eee PC or the Acer Aspire usually run in the single digit gigahertz range, with only enough RAM to handle a few simultaneous applications in Windows XP. You may claim that you only want to browse the web a little bit and do a little word processing, but websites these days are heavy, and the latest versions of Office take up more and more resources with every revision. Point being, get used to doing everything slightly slower on these things than you're comfortable with.
It's like using a computer from 2003; you can get your tasks done if you wait long enough, but prepare to be there a while. And remember how I said Windows XP, not Windows in general? Yeah, you're not going to be really able to run Vista or Windows 7 on these things. Which is alright, actually, because any app that requires Vista or Win 7 will likely run like solidified puke on a netbook.
Netbooks are also usually uncomfortable as hell to use. Take a look at your current laptop. Its screen is most likely somewhere between 12 to 15 inches. Not as good as a desktop LCD of course, but you make do. Now imagine chopping off about 40% of that real estate. Those are the seven and nine-inch models. Then there's the matter of their liliputan keyboards, which cramp your fingers in a style reminiscent of Kathy Bates and her sledgehammer in Misery. Picture a grown man riding those automated kids' rides outside supermarkets.That's what you look like hunched over one of these things. You want small, but you don't want midget-sized.
Netbooks, even with the drawbacks of sub-par performance and miniature construction, would be bearable if you got SOME kind of trade-off for all the sacrifices you made. Battery life, for instance? Nope, not really. On average, you're seeing somewhere between two-and-a-half to five hours on them; the same two-and-a-half to five hours that you find in the market for regular-sized notebooks. What's the deal? Along with leaving out part of the brains of a notebook to get these down so small, manufacturers had to leave out its heart. (We're talking about its battery if this metaphor is getting a bit strained.)
Netbooks are still undeniably lighter and more portable than their properly-featured predecessors. So if that's the only feature you're really looking for in a laptop - the ability to be able to sneak one into prison inside your person - then by all means, netbook it up.
But if you can wait a few years for decently-powered laptops to shave some pounds off their heft, you should. Models like the Apple MacBook Air, Samsung X360 andToshiba Portege R600 are the current best-bet in the trade-off between size and performance. On the other hand, you can afford about four netbooks for the price of just one MacBook Air.
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