I can see Graywolf’s point on battery power… but a couple extra hours of battery life, while cool, isn’t enough to get me hot for another gadget.

I have been carrying a plain old Macbook for a couple of years now. With powersettings tweaked I can get a solid 3 or 4 hours out of it plus, it has enough ‘oomph’ to do pretty much anything.

As far as form factor, the Macbook isn’t as small as the netbooks, no, but it’s hardly what I’d call ‘huge’ either.

If the point of the netbook is, as SR suggests, replacing a laptop… I think a lot of people are going to run into some hardware capability barriers pretty quickly. These machines are much cheaper than laptops for a reason…

Matt, lugging around my Macbook isn’t all that much tougher than lugging around a netbook, plus, if I write an article I can actually edit an image in adobe or something on the Mac to put up with the article.

Tony, your argument makes a lot of sense. Some folks (I guess) just need word processing, email and the size and price point of the netbooks make sense in this case. My mother for example, might fit this description.

The Sony P series we have here at the office isn’t a netbook per se because as we mentioned it’s neither cheap nor limited in power. That said, it can’t do everything my Macbook can and while the P series is definitely easier to carry around the screen just feel too teeny for me. As a guy that does have to write a fair amount while out and about, I would not want to have to rely on something that size to be my ‘laptop’.

Michael McDonald
Follow me on twitter.com/mmcdonald”>Twitter!
Managing Editor
iEntry, Inc.

My 10-year old LAPTOP is running Windows98 on 128MB of RAM with a sub-1MHz processor and a 5GB hard drive, and I use it to do Photoshop, audio editing … whatever. If a netbook comes with anything more than those specs (which even the tiniest of them does), then it IS possible and even viable to consider using a netbook as a laptop substitute.

When I went on vacation, last year, all I had with me was my Palm Tungsten, whose keyboard is arguably much easier to use than the virtual iPhone keyboard and most physical smart phone keyboards. As I checked our servers and repelled attackers, I found that a larger screen and better keyboard made a HUGE difference in how quickly I was able to work. The small keyboard was simply too time-consuming to type anything more than a URL on, and copy-and-pasting IP addresses and whatnot between applications was nowhere near as simple as doing the same thing on a larger device.

Netbooks absolutely DO fill a need. Bigger than a cell phone is very important to anyone who is not satisfied with tweet-length text. And don’t even get me started on how much storage a handheld device has: 16GB < 160GB by a long shot, especially when a 16GB handheld is orders of magnitude more expensive than a 160GB netbook.

This article strikes me as being more of a “look at me” bit of fluff, rather than any sort of serious attempt at journalism.

Netbooks are for people that want to do work wherever they are.
Not system intensive work, like 3D rendering or video editing. Not people that want to game. Not people that want to watch a movie to while away the time, or listen to music and ignore people, or make phone calls, even though they can do most, if not all of these things.
They’re for people that want to work, while on the go, on basic things like documents, spreadsheets, databases, programming, minor graphic design or audio post editing (the last two being tasks that formerly required beastly machines).

Have you opened your laptop on a plane or a train?
It doesn’t fit in your lap. It precariously balances on the armrest of the chair that’s supposedly wide enough to share, or the folding tray from the seat in front, and encroaches into the space of the person on one side of you. Both sides if it’s a large screen one.
This pisses people off in a major way. I know when I travel I tell people in the rudest terms possible to put it away, or magically shrink it down. I have barely enough room as it is.
Not encroaching on other people’s space is a basic courtesy that most self-obsessed people have forgotten… often while they’re twittering about the rude schmuck telling them they’re the rude schmuck for taking up so much room.

Laptops are massively overpowered nowadays.
They are basically portable desktop computers, with all the grunt to match. That’s great if you’re a gamer or a video editor, and totally unnecessary and over priced for the rest of us… Especially overpriced and unnecessary if it gets damaged or stolen, and you need something ASAP to continue working before the insurance pays out.

If you want to twitter, and play poker on facebook, watch a movie, or play mindless games for a few hours…. great, here’s an iPhone! Some of us have crap we need to get done, and we’re polite enough not to take up your space to do it in.

Not everyone has a computer and this is their low-cost entry. Not everyone has an iPhone or one of the 20 Android phones coming out, and do not want one with their monthly charges. Not everyone wants to work on a screen as small as an iPhone or one of the 20 Android phones coming out, but would like a smaller form than a regular laptop.

As a sysadmin I am always “on call” even on vacations etc. There is a LOT that I cannot do remotely or with any efficiency using an iPhone, BB, or any similar handheld based device.

A netbook is a great way for me to be capable of handling whatever might arise sans lugging around a full size laptop.

I’m fairly confident that there are enough folks in other “high availability” vocations that could benefit from the same small size with full functionality that a netbook provides.

Lynch

As a person that flies 4 out of 5 days, my netbook is esential to my business, I can type word documents and work on excel files on my netbook. Thank God I don’t have to do this on my Touch Pro. I can watch movies on my netbook while flying at 9″ not 4″ on my phone.

Hell if I had an Iphone the battery would be dead by the time I arrived.

So word to this writer. You stick to your iphone or whatever you use and try to be productive and I’ll just blow right past you.

P.S. written using my netbook and not my Touch Pro

1) Its a back up to my regular laptop, in case it dies, and I can carry both in the same computer bag.
2) 1 netbook is less cost than 4 months of digital service on my phone that I don’t need – a phone is for talking on, not texting and surfing the net.
3) I can actually do work on a plane while travelling with a netbook, which I can’t do with a regular laptop, nor with a phone that is supposed to be turned off.
3.5) The phone won’t run my word processor, my proprietary software, etc, so it CANNOT function as a backup computer in case the lap top dies.
4) Don’t need additional “services” for the netbook, just connect through the same ISP, etc.
5) The netbook can run my slide shows at a vendor table while I am in the conference room with the laptop
6) The netbook runs XP, not VISTA, which is more compatible with most of my software.
7) The netbook is less of a “tweener” than your i-phone, or someone elses Blackberry …. and isn’t locked in to proprietary software.

If your Sony is sitting there collecting dust, why not send it to me!
I promise I’ll use it to write you a review.

Hey Mike,

I can see where you’re coming from and there are no wrong answers. Here’s some of my own decision factors when I bought a Notebook.

First though, I am a professional webmaster, and I run my business online, every last bit of it. I travel alot. Some of it is business, some of it is personal, but all of it requires that I be able to check in online daily, play the occasional movie, and get some work done when I do not have wifi access.

So here are my pro-notebook decisions:

Phone VS Notebook: I thought seriously about a web phone. I don’t want to receive a monthy bill for service (I have 4 lines coming into my office, which is plenty), I need to be able to see what I am working on to a smaller scale that you can get on a phone’s screen (such as making changes on a website’s content), and I already make telephone calls through my computer.

Laptop Vs My Present Laptop: My existing laptop is a clunky monster, and requires its own separate bag for it + peripherals. I can just chuck my notebook between my trousers in my regular luggage. The laptop is heavy, carrying it for 3 hours straight even with a strap hurts. The notebook has a battery life of 5 to 9 hours, vs an hour-ish for the laptop, especially if you want to view a DVD. The Notebook does NOT have a cd or a dvd player… but I can transfer a dvd onto a flash drive (or anything else) and watch movies anyway. Also, people steal Laptops, not so much so Notebooks.

Notebook Vs Newer & Smaller Laptop: Prices were around twice of one for the other when I purchased mine. The Notebook was not that much less memory and power than a low-end, smaller Laptop. Mine is an Acer EeePC, runs Vista at 160 GHZ with 2 GB RAM and a hard drive of 142 GB. I have several dvd/movies on there right now for an upcoming trip, Dreamweaver/Flash, several full websites (including rough images and PNGs) and plenty of room to spare. And 5 to 9 hours to actullay use them.

General and other: Traveling is alot less of a hasle, I get to be entertainmed a little, I don’t worry as much about theft, I can make customer service calls by phone/wifi and I get my work done, either directly on the Notebook or through PC From Home (Citrix).

Great article!