Dell Mini 9 netbook - too small too slow
Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 23, 2009 with story from ComputerWorld
Netbooks surged past notebooks in sales this year capturing the lion’s share of first quarter purchases but buyers are experiencing buyer’s remorse. With the price of Vista notebooks getting lower each month, on the price difference alone it is hard to justify a netbook purchase.
Netbooks are not notebooks. Anyone who tries to work steadily on a netbook will discover the screen and keyboard are too small, the processor too slow, the drive too small and the machine just plain disappointing.
Think about squeezing the text from a 17″ to 19″ screen down to 8 inches. Eyestrain will be the obvious result. It is hard to read the letters. Give it to your kids and they will need glasses. Most people over 40 years old will find reading a netbook painful.
I don’t like a notebook keyboard for typing. The even smaller netbook would be painful. The screen and keyboard angle is not ergonomic. The head and neck angle is guaranteed to induce headaches according to physiotherapists.
“Netbook owners are more likely to be disappointed with their machines than people who purchase larger and more expensive laptops, a retail research firm said today.
Just 58% of consumers who bought a netbook rather than a notebook said they were very satisfied, compared to 70% who admitted they planned to buy a netbook all along, according to a survey of 600 American adults conducted by the NPD Group.
The disappointment with netbooks — NPD analyst Stephen Baker preferred that term rather than “dissatisfaction” — stemmed from expectations that a netbook was the same, more or less, as a laptop. Six out of every 10 netbook buyers, said Baker, thought that the two were equivalent, and figured that their new netbook would have the same functionality as a laptop.” ComputerWorld
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