In the interest of full disclosure, I need to point out that I really dislike netbooks.
Netbooks are these little, tiny underpowered PCs that are becoming more popular among a small segment of the computing world, including high-school students who often have them forced upon them by unsuspecting school boards.
I have spent a couple weeks with three netbooks that are offered under subsidy by Verizon if the user picks a two-year contract for the mobile broadband service.
For $150, you can get an HP Mini 110 with a 10-inch screen that runs a pretty peppy version of Windows XP considering its svelte size.
It comes with a gig of RAM and a 160-gig hard drive.
What makes it good is also the downside – the small size makes it hard to use if you have other than elfin hands. The mousepad is especially annoying on this product because the buttons are on either side of the pad and not on the top or bottom.
It’s quite possible that given enough time I could get used to using this netbook.
After all, they say U.S. prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton eventually got used to the dripping water. But unless size is the prime factor in your life, you may want to consider the larger HP, the Mini 311.
For $199, I actually enjoyed the 311 – a little. It has an 11.6-inch screen and 2 gigs of RAM and runs Windows 7, the newest version of Windows. It also has a 160-gig hard drive and a built-in Webcam. I hated the touchpad on this model, too, but my hatred was similar to the rage I felt toward the 1969 Mets and something that I could probably get over in time.
The main benefit of the netbook is the built-in cellular Wi-Fi, which eliminates your need to constantly be looking for hot spots. That is a big plus even if the cellular connection isn’t as peppy as your home or office connection. I was averaging about 1.7 megabits per second, the same as I get on the cellular card on my real laptop. I get about four times better speed on my home wireless connection.
You will want to use Wi-Fi when you have it available to avoid the potential for overcharges on the cellular plan, which may be limited on download capacity, depending on the plan you pick.
The shortcoming of both of these HPs is battery life. To keep these things light, the batteries are relatively wimpy.
Extended batteries are expensive and heavy and sort of defeat the purpose of the light, small laptop in the first place.
I would not count on more than two hours without a plug.
Could this replace your “real” laptop? If your duties are light and you are a road warrior, yes. If size is your only consideration and you need portability and to be always on the Internet, yes.
If you need real laptop power, with a DVD drive and processing power, no. And think twice if you have long fingers and a short fuse.
Netbooks (sometimes also called mini notebooks or ultraportables) are a branch of subnotebooks, a rapidly evolving category of small, light and inexpensive laptop computers suited for general computing and accessing web-based applications; they are often marketed as “companion devices,” that is, to augment a user’s other computer access.
James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer-repair firm and a tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com