netbooks

What the hell is a “netbook”? The New York Times tries to explain in plain English.

By the end of the year, consumers are likely to see laptops the size of thin paperback books that can run all day on a single charge and are equipped with touch screens or slide-out keyboards.

A friend (Karloskar, who has written here before) has had one of these for a while now.  I find it a tad too small, but it’s at the small end of the scale – the slightly larger ones are easy enough to type on, but small enough to throw into a small bag and take anywhere with you.  My favourite use for it now is as an argument-settler – whenever a ridiculous claim is made which requires immediate and brutal correction, you can whip this thing out and settle it the old fashioned way (i.e. with Google).

Using it is also pleasantly low-risk – somehow it feels like a tough little plastic toy which can be used casually, not a fragile glass-and-plastic artefact which must be used with due reverence to avoid inflicting any catastrophic damage.

These are going to be everywhere soon – if all you need a PC for is a little bit of web browsing and email then it’s hard to go past something that costs a few hundred bucks and fits in a handbag, briefcase or glovebox.

We’re probably going shopping for one soon.  I’ll report on the results – there are a bewildering array of them on the market already (how the hell to computer companies crank out highly complex devices with a few months’ lead-in when other industries take years or even decades to introduce new products?  Anyway…).  Even so, I don’t think I’ll be giving up my nice, heavy Real Man’s Laptop TM any time soon.