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Bits and Bytes May 13, 2009
By Gregory M. Peiguss
Netbooks for Everyone! No, they didn’t misspell
“Notebook”; the latest craze hitting the mobile computer industry is the
“Netbook”. What is one of these fascinating devices
you may ask, well simply put, it’s an ultra portable laptop computer
with the mobile user in mind. Netbooks are a hybrid
of your regular full-sized laptop and your handheld smart phone.
These netbooks are all very fairly priced and a good value can be
reached with a little homework with respect to your needs versus your
wants. Tired of lugging around a 6 to
8 pound full sized laptop or trying to type on a keypad or touch screen
just barely big enough for a 2yr olds fingers, then the netbook is the
way to go. Just about every computer manufacturer is
in this market, such as HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, just to name a few.
There are subtle differences in each of the manufacturer’s models
such as display size or the size and feel of the keyboard, however each
one of the netbooks serve the same purpose, very portable and
lightweight, long battery life, wireless connectivity, even cellular
connectivity, and low to medium storage capacity. I’ve personally used the
Lenovo brand of netbook and honestly I was quite impressed.
The display was very crisp and the keyboard was just the perfect
size. You didn’t feel like your fingers were cramped
while trying to type. Granted it is smaller than a
regular full-sized keyboard and after a couple of minutes of typing your
fingers will adjust. The netbook ran just fine
on Intel’s new ATOM processor and was able to perform some common day
tasks such as checking your e-mail, browsing the web, word processing,
and spreadsheets. Some “buyers beware” items you
will soon realize are that there are virtually no peripherals capable of
running inside the machine. Gone are such items as a
CD/ROM or DVD/ROM drive and for us old timers a floppy drive.
Most netbooks do supply an ample amount of USB ports to connect
external peripherals if needed like your CD drive or a printer, flash
memory drive or any other item you would like to connect to it.
As well, don’t consider one of these items if you are going to be
running some very processor intensive applications, for instance, video
rendering, audio rendering, photo editing or various engineering drawing
applications (i.e. CAD), you’ll be very disappointed in its performance. Like I said this is for the
mobile user who wants to get online and check their e-mail, browse the
web or work with a simple office productivity software suite (Microsoft
Office). They would be a fabulous edition to your IT
arsenal and a cheap solution for that high school grad looking to have
something when they go away to college. If you would like some more
information regarding these types of devices please don’t hesitate to
write me or even better post your thoughts in the discussion section.
You can e-mail me at anytime at g@219.com
Gregory M. Peiguss
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