I bought a netbook and it utterly failed to displace my tablet in any way shape or form. Currently it's sitting on the kitchen counter as a recipe machine.
If it's not pocketable, it aint worth the hassle.
On the same note I have a M1330 Dell laptop and the majority of the time, email, web-browsing e.t.c occur on my iMac and I'm a Linux lover.
geneven: The "can't write a novel" argument is based on the alleged impossibility of touch-typing on a small keyboard, and the assumption that touch-typing is essential to novel-writing, not (AFAIK) on performance issues. I don't really consider either of these valid, but I can't touch-type or write a novel (with or without a netbook), so how would I know....
Ensuring that your computer is inside the house, and is cooled by circulating room air through it, rather than, say, ducted to a wall, is sufficient to heat your house with it. Using a heat engine to recover some of it as useful work is a little harder.
Thanks.
(a) I touch-type on my netbook every day. It boggles my mind that anyone here is ignorant enough about netbooks to think that this is impossible.
(b) Someone actually claims to touch-type on their N810, btw -- it's in one of the threads!
(c) Someone once claimed to have written a novel with texting only, on a mobile phone. This was in the main stream media.
My netbook runs way too cool to be of any help in heating my house. It's not warm to the touch. I can sit it on my bed for 24 hours without it overheating.
My Dell Latitude D800 on the other hand, would be very useful as a housewarmer, and might double as an egg-cooker. It's about the size of a netbook but cost about four times as much (because I got a really good deal, in Moscow).
Seeing as how I am reading the forum and writing this reply from my hotel room with wired internet on an "old" eeepc8G (7 in screen 800x480 display) and my n810 is sitting on my hotel dresser, I would have to say that netbooks *don't* suck.
My netbook has replaced my relatively light-weight work laptop for travel, but my n810, while I take it everywhere, has not replaced my netbook.
When a reasonably priced pocketable device can run openoffice and firefox at reasonable speeds and work well with a citrix client so that I can run my work apps remotely then maybe it can replace my netbook -- and I have what is now considered a rather low end netbook.
I am looking forward to the OpenPandora or a new maemo device to free me from my netbook on travel.
Bah, the article completely disregards the way the pies at Jester Burger have shrunk over time in order to maintain their price point. They're now the size of Fig Newtons and completely uninteresting because of it.
I won't mention that though, because people will take it as a metaphor for something else, and we already have enough threads about something else.
Instead, I'll just note that the pies at Jester Burger are no longer served at a temperature approximately equal to that of the surface of the sun. I'm not sure what that has to do with mobiles, netbooks, or notebooks, but I think that it indicates a disappointing trend in modern society.
And upon further reflection, maybe I will like those Intel-powered phones that will be available in a few years.
I haven't laughed that hard in a while, thanks.
I can't speak for Jester Burger, but at McDonalds, that's why you always buy the sundae. You take your spork and jam hot pie pieces into the ice cream.
Also, thanks to the author for giving us something to talk about by being totally out-to-lunch. I use to always buy the smallest, lightest laptop I could find and it was always twice as expensive as the company's cheapest offering. All hail the netbook and the slot it fills in the expanding devicescape.
I have written at least two chapters of a novel I'm writing for the magazine of our local health agency on my n810 plus Dell foldable bluetooth keyboard.
Neither netbooks nor tablets-as-we-know-them-by-now stay into the suck zone. In my very humble opinion, iphones and >=14" laptops do *suck* - the former are mobile but not powerful enough, the latter do everything but you won't carry them everywhere.
See the point?
I don't want, I really don't want think of the new coming maemo device as a genie-in-a-box without a way to open that box (without a proper keyboard which sports all the chars I need for my language and for interacting with a terminal; without directional arrows to move and scroll into text; without copy/paste, an exhilarating idiocy which has plagued all the recent symbian s60 browsers after series 80 was discontinued; without a screen I can read, without a way to run Debian or Ubuntu, and so on).
My netbook has pretty much eliminated my need for a laptop. No, I can't run my tf2 or my ps2 emulators, but those would require battery guzzling overweight laptops for playable speeds anyways. There's something to be said for a laptop that only weighs 2 1/2 lbs. making it obscenely easy to carry in one hand and virtually unnoticeable in a backpack
Let me know when a smartphone can
Output to VGA (presentations / streaming netflix)
Provide me with a touch-typeable keyboard (I can type at around 80% of my normal typing speed on my 900HA) for typing up essays
Easily handle 10+ tabs in a full internet browser - normal usage for me
Crack WEP passwords (yes, I occasionally leech off of others' connections, no, not usually more than 5MB for looking something up - sue me)
Give me 160GB of storage
Do moderately advanced image and video editing (by no means adequate for a professional of that field, but definitely enough for, say, a video for a school project, or some quick work in photoshop / GIMP
Sync my MP3 players
Emulate N64 / PSX / (most) MAME - load up my old copy of OOT or play a rousing game of Marvel VS Capcom with a friend
Create a usb boot disk to recover your desktop
Print
Using a heat engine to recover some of it as useful work is a little harder.