gadgets

REALLY?

I'm about the furthest thing from a loyal Apple fan, but even I expected something, well, NEW given all of the tech blog speculation and the cloak of secrecy surrounding this thing. There hasn't been a hype-letdown event quite like this one in a while. This is on par with Y2K. Rumors of Project Natal style motion sensing or at the very least, a revolutionary input mechanism, were all met with utter disappointment.

According to Steve Jobs, the iPad is a gadget that will render netbooks obsolete. Obsolete, the man says! Let's see how that pans out with the following typical computing scenarios:

You want to listen to music while surfing the internet.
● Netbook: Yes.
● iPad: No. Seriously.

You want to watch Hulu or play Flash-based games on Facebook
● Netbook: Yes.
● iPad: No Flash on the most revolutionary internet device ever conceived by man or machine.

You want to access files from a thumb drive.
● Netbook: Yes.

I've been doing a bit of research on my netbook and it turns out that there's a pretty sizable mod community for these Dell Mini's. One site in particular, <a href="http://www.mydellmini.com" title="www.mydellmini.com">www.mydellmini.com</a>, seems to have a very active forum with a number of well put together how-to guides. I am thinking of cracking open the Dell and doing a memory upgrade when I have a little extra money. It's around $25 for a good 2GB stick and while it requires a complete disassembly, it doesn't seem TOO daunting.

Prior to owning one, I never really understood the appeal of netbooks. Tiny, underpowered laptops. What's the target demographic for these devices?

I am proud to say that I have finally figured out the answer to the above question: Desktop users!

It actually makes a lot of sense.

Netbooks are targeted at people like me who prefer work on a desktop but would like a compact computing device to take on a plane, play Peggle on the crapper, check e-mail in bed, etc. I don't need a 17" screen and a quad-core processor to do these things.

I foolishly tried the "performance" laptop thing in order to do work on-the-go. I quickly found out that I was not nearly as productive on a laptop due to the physical limitations of the device. It really is true what they say about extra monitors and productivity, especially when doing anything graphics/multimedia related. On top of that, having slightly over one hour of battery life kept me pretty much tethered to an outlet. Oh, and I don't think they can really be considered laptops if they run so hot as to sear the flesh on your lap.

So netbooks are great and definitely have their place in the world of gadgets. Thanks mom.