I recently purchased a new laptop that weighs less than 1 kilogram, which makes it lighter than a telephone directory. This is a new class of laptops known as netbook that emerged back in 2007, but took real momentum only in 2008. The reason for this was that the initial netbooks came with Linux pre-installed, and the Linux user base was smaller than that of Windows. One of the reasons why vendors chose an open source operating system was because it was easy for them to create a simplified user than to get Microsoft to do a smaller version of Windows. This is a fine example of how open source software can play a leading role in developing cutting edge technology and get into the market ahead of others.
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| The netbook trend began with ASUS and their ‘Eee PC.’ |
However, the user base for the netbook was with Microsoft. Windows XP made its appearance in netbooks in early 2008 which boosted netbook sales thirty times more than the previous year to roughly 11 million and is expected to grow to 35 million in 2009. The primary design for netbooks was for web browsing and e-mailing, which meant it relied heavily on the Internet. It possess a number of cool features, the main one being Wi-Fi access to the Internet. You’ll find standard features such as one or more USB ports and headphone and microphone outlets, as well as things such as a built in camera.
Some other features included are; 9 – 10 inch screen, battery power up to 4 hours and up to 180 GB of hard disk space.
The netbook trend began with ASUS and their ‘Eee PC’. Since then, other brands that have entered the market include Dell, Acer, HP, Intel, MSI, Toshiba, Sony and various others. Basically every computer manufacturer now has its own model of netbook on the market. Acer Aspire One netbooks and the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 are amongst the favourites.
The price of netbooks ranges from about $300 to $1000 depending on brand and netbook features.
The Sony VAIO netbook is $900, which I believe to be the prettiest netbook available today.
How to pick a netbook
Getting information on the different brands of netbooks is easy. The difficult part is, finding the right one that fits your purpose and makes the investment worthwhile. I’ll share with you the approach I took in purchasing my first netbook. The first decision point was the price. At a cost of only $299, this was an easy decision to take. It was affordable and looked really cool! Then comes the decision of picking the right brand and model.
This depended on the type of work I do, which is mostly writing documents, spreadsheets, emails and of course listening to music and watching movies. None of these tasks require a massive load of memory and processing power. But I did need lots of space to store my music collection and all the documents. Based on these facts I decided to go with a netbook that was affordable and primarily had a lot of hard disk space.
Students will find it very handy in the classroom for taking down notes and reading up on latest information on-line. |
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