Anand has a nice review of probably the best netbook so far, but that really isn’t saying much. Seriously folks, if you came here expecting netbook love, move along. Most of them represent the worst investment you can make – even as a $250 toy, these things are disappointing.
“Subjectively, you know the netbook is slow as soon as you start using it (unless you’re coming from a pre-2004 laptop or something without enough RAM). Launching Internet Explorer (or Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari for that matter) takes noticeably longer. Opening and rendering web pages takes noticeably longer. Interacting with Windows in general is far more sluggish. The detailed PCMark05 explain in numbers exactly what you’ll experience with a netbook. An entry-level $500 laptop is about 50% faster at rendering simple web pages (and the difference increases with lots of Flash content). Loading Microsoft Office is similar in that the initial start times are slower and menus and dialogs are less responsive in terms of popping up. If you have a task start using a lot of CPU time, the pauses become far more common and distracting — in other words, heavy multitasking isn’t a good idea.”
Simply put, netbooks are OK when usage models replicate the manner in which people used computers 10 years ago. For our modern workflows, absorbing information on multiple websites all at once, netbooks are a poor choice.
Slow CPUs are forgivable for all day battery life – but only a few vendors offer netbooks with long lasting batteries. And few are in the magic $200-300 price range where an almost pocketable PC makes sense. In about a month, Intel CULV ultra thin notebooks will be hitting retailers with a much more compelling value proposition, and you’ll feel stupid for buying a $400-500 netbook.
