According to the Financial Times, Netbooks have managed to fascinate Britain’s tech-savvy community so much that they are tipped to be one of the most gifted wanted products, this Christmas! So, if you feel your present laptop is just too heavy to lug around all the time and you could do with a smaller one when you’re out at the coffee shop downing lattes and blogging, now is the time to start looking.
What is a Netbook?
Shortest definition = A small, low-cost, mobile computing device designed for consuming content, rather than creating new content.
It’s interesting how after the likes of OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negopronte were laughed off for wanting to create a small inexpensive laptop which wasn’t exactly a powerhorse, Asus pioneered the ‘’small budget laptop” revolution with their EEE PC. However, it looks like Asus may find it difficult to maintain their grip over the market as Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo and Samsung are now in the market, trying to lure consumers with a wide variety of choices…
No, you’re mistaken if you think the netbooks are just small cheap machines which run only on Linux. Agreed, the price for running on Windows is higher but that hasn’t deterred HP from offering you the HP 2133 Mini which runs on Windows Vista. I’d have thought that Microsoft should actually be quite happy that 70% of netbooks run on Windows but given their 90% dominance in PC’s, they are apparently concerned about the impact, Linux may continue to have.
Is Apple going to enter the race? Sorry, folks but looks like Mr. Jobs just ruled it out last week, saying
“We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.”
Terribly upsetting but hey, maybe he’s got some uber cool gadget in the labs now. Yeah,Optimism!!!!!
