Thinking about casting aside that bulky laptop in favor of a netbook?
So I’m heading out this morning to attend a friend’s wedding in New Jersey. It’s the perfect opportunity to give my newest toy a trial run.
For the past couple of years, my travel computer has been a small Dell XPS series laptop with a 12-inch screen. I’d always thought it to be pretty small and travel-friendly (at least compared to laptop behemoth my wife has) until I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year. That’s when I came to understand the netbook has a place in my life.
After considerable research, I settled last month on a Samsung NC10 Netbook. It’s tiny, with a 10.2-inch screen and weight under three pounds (about half the weight of my Dell). With a 120 gb harddrive and an external floppy drive, it’s pretty much everything I need for traveling very light.
I won’t be playing World of Warcraft on it. And I won’t be running processor-hogging programs like Photoshop. But I will be able to email, take notes, watch movies and surf the Internet.
And really, this is the key thing you need to understand when shopping for a netbook. Don’t expect too much. It’ll only replace a notebook if you are a light user. Otherwise, it’s probably more of a complement.
Apparently, this is a distinction that’s creating a bit of confusion among computer shoppers, according to a recent report by the NPD Group.
The research firm found that consumers who think the terms “notebook” and “netbook” are interchangeable were more likely to be disappointed when they bought a netbook.
Only 58 percent of consumers who bought a netbook instead of a notebook said they were very satisfied with their purchase, compared to 70 percent of consumers who planned on buying a netbook from the start.
And here’s one funny finding from the study, which was conducted in May. Sixty percent of netbook buyers said portability was a key reason for their purchas. The same percentage then later admitted that they never took the computer out of the house. But hey, I guess it still counts as mobile if you are just moving it from room to room.
Tim has covered a wide range of topics, including tourism, crime, aviation and gambling, since becoming a reporter in 1990. The Oklahoma native joined the Post-Dispatch in 2007 after spending nine years in Orlando. In his spare time, he's often exploring one virtual world or another. He can be reached at tbarker@post-dispatch.com. 
I love my netbook and take it everywhere. I guess since I already carry a purse and can throw it right in there, it is fairly simple for me. I don’t understand that 60% that don’t leave home with it.Maybe those folks meant it was easy to port around the house?
No way! why would I pay that much for half a computer? No CD ROM drive, low speed processor, coupled with miniscule hard drive size, might as well use my 10 year old compaq laptop with an AMD-K6/2, that has an excellent battery life too!
I don’t know. 120gb hard drive for a travel computer doesn’t seem too shabby to me.
You are certainly right about it not having much processing power. Though it did handle my external drive and movie-playing very well.
Best of all, though, when I was lugging the thing around in my backpack, I barely noticed it was there.
I bought a notebook last year for about $1,000. I soon realized that with the money that I spent, I could’ve just bought a netbook, for use in surfing and taking down notes, and a modest desktop PC to handle my gaming and Photoshop needs.
Jag, you are misinformed. The only thing I might need/want a CD-Rom drive for is to install new software. And, those are going the way of floppy disks. Yes, it is not going to do EVERYTHING but how many people use their laptop for EVERYTHING?