 
Pramod de Silva
Forget Notebooks. The Netbook is here. Since Netbooks- small-screen
low powered laptops - appeared just over one year ago, they have soared
to the top of sales charts all over the world.
 It was Asus that started the trend with their 7-inch Eee PC. However,
Asus, Acer, MSI and HP have now increased the screen size to 10.2
inches.
The basic specification of a Netbook is a 10 inch screen, Intel Atom
N270 or N280 processor (though Samsung has a model equipped with a via
Nano processor), no optical drive (again, Asus has come out with a model
which has one), 160 GB conventional hard disk or Solid State Drive
(typically 128 GB), Wi-Fi and all other standard connections/outputs.
Windows XP is the usual Operating System.
 The best thing about Netbooks is the price: Typically 400-500 US
dollars.This is far more affordable than higher-powered Notebooks. If
you are into websurfing, email, social networking, Skyping, light
word-processing or presentations, you can’t go wrong with a Netbook. And
they are much lighter so carrying one around is not a problem. Battery
life is generally great - one Asus model does nine hours on a single
charge, which no Notebook can match.
What can we expect from Netbooks in the near future? Windows 7 is
likely to become the standard OS from next year, though there is
speculation that Google Android could enter the picture. Slightly bigger
screens (and keyboards) are coming too - 11 and 12 inches.
Bigger SSD drives will be on offer - there already are Notebooks out
there with 1 TB SSDs. USB 3.0, Wi-Fi Draft-N and embedded 3G will be
more common. So it is an exciting time for Netbook lovers. It is better
to hold on a bit if you want to go in for a Netbook, with more options
and Windows 7 coming up. You simply can’t go wrong with a Netbook in
this age of the Net. |
