Netbooks aren’t going anywhere.

By the any idea what OS is used by the final RTM of the crunchpad? This is just eating me!

Well, I have an acer aspire one and a sony vaio p530H.

Both my wife and I work fulltime online, and she has the acer hooked up to an external monitor and finds it works perfectly for her job as an editor.

I use the sony when I travel, and have found it to be great running the adobe CS3 suite. I write software for a living primarily in flash and do graphics editing.

I can fit the sony in my inside jacket pocket, and now when I travel find it vastly easier than carrying a laptop in a case, and can now travel with much less carry-on.

I was at a political rally recently, and shot video on my tiny canon powershot 1000, edited it on my sony vaio using windows movie maker, and uploaded it to youtube via the wireless connection. The computer was running Vista and didnt crash or slow me down at all in this (or any other) operation.

The only issue I have with the vaio is the startup time, it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to start up from completely off. And, it doesnt run second life. The Acer, however, runs Second life well enough and I actually participated in a voice based virtual interview via wireless internet and my acer aspire (so it was handling voip and rendering a live 3d virtual world space including spacial audio all at once without breaking a sweat)

Once I can put windows 7 on my vaio, I imagine it will run even smoother, and I find both of these computers to be a fantastic value for money. For the cost of one average laptop, I recommend people buy a decent desktop and large monitors for home use (I use 2 22″ LCD’s) and use the Vaio or the Acer for travel.

So, from personal experience, I have to completely disagree with your article.

- With little knowledge of the PC industry definately ASUS is an unknown brand. With a little research you’d be amazed about what you would find.

-If you are recommending a “2GHz processor” have you taken into account if its an in order or out of order CPU? What is the IPCs that the CPU can handle. And other technical details similar to that? According to you logic an overclock Qualcomm Sanpdragon @2GHz would probably beat an 1.8GHz Celeron. Or maybe an 1.6 GHz Atom will beat a 1.5 GHz VIA Nano. No, WAIT!!! A 2.6 GHz Athlon XP will beat a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo…sight.

- If you write about “utltimate guide to netbooks” stick with the subject and review said products. Even a quick peak at any serious tech site will help you spot the differences between the products “reviewed” and the products your guide was supposedly wanting to talk about.

In other words, educate yourself before you spew useless crap. It’s amazing that people like you are actually given permission to give their opinion on anything.

i think anything that is considered a netbook has a top screen size of 10-11″ and that’s it. tch.

I don’t know if you’ve ever bothered to look at the word, but “netbook” is actually a combination of two words: “net” and “book”. They’re compact in size, used primarily for non-demanding internet activities and tend to have low-end specs (which are reflected in the price).

As Justin said, people aren’t replacing their laptops with these, they’re getting them as complementary products for less-intensive use. You assert rather than explain that netbooks are a deadend. You also say that companies will continue to sell $200 netbooks, which I’m presuming is because people are buying them.

(Also, as an aside, ultralights will never displace netbook as a classification if they use that name. It sounds like a type of cigarette. Which it, in fact, is.)

* Web browsing
* Video
* Maps/Navigation
* Email composition
* Documents/email attachments

In these cases, making a quick switch from your smartphone to your netbook will be an amazing relief.

HARDWARE

Notebooks have honed the miniaturization skills of the ODMs and the components shared with netbooks will benefit from economies of scale. Also, subsidies from wireless operators offering “everywhere access” plans tied to netbooks will eliminate hardware cost. Rumors are that a $1 netbook will hit the market this Fall.

There are a few technologies that could *define* netbooks in the next 1-2 years. Portability and use for short sessions wherever you may be are paramount. If these are not met, then netbooks will not improve upon notebooks, and they will die.

- Instant on
- Everywhere wireless (WLAN and WAN built in)
- Super-long battery life (6-10 hrs)
- Lightweight – under 3 lbs

Screen and keyboard sizes will be the largest that still allow these constraints to be met.

NETWORK & WEB APPS

* Bandwidth is now plentiful, cheap, and wireless
* Standards have matured for web application development
* Browser capabilities now enable rich applications to be built with AJAX and more recently HTML 5 with access to OS and hardware features
* Open source has taken massive costs out of cloud infrastructure
… and the list goes on

This time, because of the technology trends above and the mass adoption of broadband Web use for email, browsing incl. video, social networking, and even VoIP, etc. the netbook will be a commercial success.

OS & NATIVE APPS

One more point on the OS. To echo what Rick said, consumers don’t care (or more accurately, don’t want to care) what OS the have. They want web access and a few key applications that could run on top of Linux or whatever:

* Microsoft Office
* Microsoft Outlook
* Apple iTunes

http://www.displaysearch.com/cps/rde/xchg/displaysearch/hs.xsl/071309_mini_note_netbook_shipments_to_double_y_y_to_more_than_30m_units_in_2009.asp

There is one point that has merit- that the current batch of netbook offerings will become obsolete. But that is true for any tech product. There’s always something better on the horizon. The Atom processors in today’s netbooks will be replaced by the next generation. Perhaps CULV will become the netbook standard. Either way, for the vast majority of non-technical people out there, the performance offered in netbooks is sufficient for the tradeoff in increased portability.

I guess that’s what’s happening when internet guys with a lack of hardware background are trying to promote their own devices. :)