What’s the point of a Netbook?
Wednesday’s announcement of the iPad has raised some interesting questions. Not just the validity of their new platform but the gap that they’re supposed to be filling.
If Mr Jobs is to believed the majority of us are carrying around a smartphone and a laptop but we need something to go in the middle. To be honest, I’m one of those people and I have in fact tried to fill that gap. In my case I tried to achieve this with a Netbook. But as the Apple event pointed out, what is a netbook? It certainly doesn’t do anything better than a laptop apart from being a lot smaller. They’re slower and generally cheaply made, so why would I want one? My model is the Toshiba NB200, a nice machine but no way is it changing my life. So is anyone actually using Netbooks? When I’m out and about and I need to check something online like the web, Twitter and Facebook I whip my iPhone out. When I’m at home and I actually want to interact with the internet and be creative on it I use my laptop. So where does the so called gap occur? The trouble with the Netbook is the operating system. The OS of choice for the general Atom processor is Windows and Linux. I’ve tried numerous incarnations but am currently running Windows 7. But if the Netbook was to fill the gap left by phone and laptop then it needs to boot and get online in seconds. Neither of these offerings provide this. This had led me to experimentation with the unfinished but promising Google Chrome OS which runs everything through the browser and their other offering Android, a phone OS but which is creeping into the netbook market, although it’s lack of Flash renders it useless for some sites, but then again the same could be said for the iPad.
So basically since getting the NB200 it’s only been on a handful of times. I can do everything I need without it hence it being promoted this weekend to become my new bedroom PC tethered to keyboard, mouse and monitor. So is there a market for the Netbook and more importantly the iPad? Maybe not.