Why Netbooks ARE Good Enough
Michael Arrington has an interesting post over at TechCrunch. It's a post that has drawn some controversy, controversy that I wanted to add to. Michael identifies three reasons why Netbooks aren't good enough and to put it plainly... he's wrong. I purchased my netbook (ASUS EEE PC 900) for traveling. I absolutely hate lugging around a full size laptop (and on occasion, two full size laptops). It does everything I want it to and then some.
Michael had three complaints. They were:
- Screen Size
- Keyboard
- Processing Power
So let's take a look at each of these (btw, I'm typing this entire post on my netbook).
Screen Size
I think this is the most interesting as Michael uses a screenshot from a Mac to demonstrate what you see on a Netbook... he's simply cropped the photo.
Here's his post (with the title showing) and he's correct, you don't see a lot.
However, I can easily scroll down with my mouse (Michael mentions that you need to use the trackpad or keyboard to scroll and that means taking your eyes of the screen... I don't know but I can scroll with either and my eyes never leave the screen... in addition, I always travel with a physical mouse.) So here's the article if you scroll to the start of the text, more than enough is displayed at once.
Keyboard
Up next was the keyboard, which Michael describes as 80-85% of the size of a regular keyboard. This is probably true, however the comment that no adult can type on it is bullshit. I'm not a small guy, and I definitely don't have small hands, yet I can type just fine. As proof... here's a online typing test screenshot... again done on my netbook
Processing Power
These netbooks definitely aren't loaded with processing power... but I'm not going to be running multiple virtual machines, 20 firefox tabs and a video game... I use it for email, word processing, surfing the net and occasionally a flash game. While it does slow down on certain flash games... so does my desktop. Netbooks are designed for Web 2.0... they don't need a lot of processing power because other than your browser not much will generally be happening locally.
Conclusion
In the end, netbooks are good enough... and they do exactly what they are designed to do. People may want to attach unintended labels to them and designate that they be used for tasks they weren't designed for... but that isn't the netbooks fault. I highly recommend a netbook to everyone that I talk to.