A week or two ago I saw a sale on Dell's website for a new mini Netbook computer for $199. The only hitch was that the keyboard on Dell's mini netbooks is smaller than a typical keyboard and as a result useless for someone like me who primarily uses a laptop for writing. However, it did get me looking into netbooks, which generally are like laptops, only stripped of disc drives.
I'm wondering though if it'd really be worth paying $300-$400 for a netbook when for $400-$500 I can get a full-functioned laptop. How does the speed/battery life of the netbook compared to the notebooks for nearly the same price?
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Comments: 11
I have centrino on my notebook which means I can take it out and use wi-fi. But carrying it ... it's much heavier than the netbook.
The keyboard is not much smaller as there is less frame along the sides and the side keys (page up/down, etc.) are somewhere else.
If you really need to use a computer away from home a lot a full fledged notebook will work well. Most can be attached to a regular keyboard, mouse, and monitor at home. A netbook is convenient if you want something for web browsing and email either away from home or maybe to use in the living room while you're watching TV or pretending to interact with people.
I would guess that with a USB hub you could attach a regular keyboard and mouse to a netbook. I'm not so sure about a real display.
One thing that USB has done is made most peripherals portable and easily interchangeable between computers. You can get a 1 TB portable hard drive for next to nothing that you can connect to any computer with a USB port. Expansion cards and PCI cards are mostly old school technology although there are a few applications where you don't have much choice.
1) If you have a young kid who is getting into computing and really needs something on which they can put skins, it might be worthwhile. This person will have smaller hands so the keyboard size isn't a big deal, and won't be needing tons of computing power yet.
2) Better than an iPAQ or similar for keyboard for something light to carry on vacation. The question becomes, how many devices do you want for specific needs?
3) Because what I need to carry with me about 60% of the time is file storage and email checks or "connect to network" checks, it might be a good option for some of my offsite work. I tried several this last weekend, though, and I wouldn't want to do a lot of typing (keyboard size and keystroke "hinky").
4) I am really interested to see what these look like with Windows7 (not just the expensive ones, I'd like to see some inexpensive ones running with it).
5) I am seriously considering it as my "travel Linux" machine installed with Ubuntu. That isn't for most people, though.