February 11, 2011

In Praise of Netbooks.

I love netbooks
Small. Portable. Lightweight. Inexpensive.

I've owned two netbooks over the past year. One I purchased for the sole use of taking overseas to China (I sold it when I returned to the states). The other, more recently, was to replace a home laptop that seems to be lumbering to a slow death, although it's only two years old.  I've grown weary of PCs that don't seem to last very long before initiating their breakdown sequence of stalls, crashes, lengthy responses and overall lackluster behavior (issues I don't seem to encounter with my Mac Mini ). 

Getting used to the smaller workspace and screen size is about the only adjustment I had to make, but once accustomed to it I had no complaints.  In fact, it's been downright fun to work on these undersized overachievers.  My particular model is the Toshiba NB505, although my original choice was the Acer Aspire 532h. Availability was the issue, as it's hard to find a decent selection of netbooks in retail outlets. Online is the way to go, if you don't mind buying without touching first.

Bottom line, I'm tired of plopping down $1000+ for a decent laptop or desktop, only to have it perform admirably for a couple of years and then quit.  Even if these netbooks prove to be no more reliable than their more expensive and larger brethren, at least it will only set be back a few hundred.

Budget concerns?  Give netbooks a try.