Why I will never purchase a netbook
By Cédric Pierre-Louis on Saturday 15 May 2010, 13:15 - Computer & High-Tech - Permalink
When people ask me some advice before buying a netbook, I always make a disappointed face. Indeed, from my geeky point of view, netbooks are the worst computers ever created by the IT industry. So, do not even expect from me any positive statements about these gadgets. In fact, I think these devices are useless and are just pushed because of an irationnal and already old fashioned trend. Let me explain to you my point of view.
First and foremost, netbooks are generally cheap (above €400, I consider they are too expensive) but they deliver very low performances. They are dramatically slow because of their Intel Atom processor (which was supposed to be incorporated in smartphones...)
2nd. There is nothing they can do properly. The user experience while using a netbook is so disenchanting, that you fastly understand you can not ask too much to these "baby PCs".
3rd. Intel imposes very strict rules to netbook manufacturers to restrict the kind of hardware specs they can include with their products. If they want to get preferential Atom pricing, they can not sell netbooks with more than 2GO of RAM, or use screen larger than 12.1 inches. Worst since almost 2 years, every netbook released on the market has the same 1.6GHZ Atom processor.
4th. Because of all the reasons evoked above, netbooks can not replace a "classic" computer. In addition, because of their size, netbooks are quite uncomfortable, for instance type a long text on these toys can be quickly very unpleasant.
Last but not least the iPad is now available, so the game has significantly changed! The iPad is terribly powerful, incredibly light, it comes with built-in WiFi and 3G connectivity, more than 6000 applications to do everything you use to do with a laptop and even more. Clearly the iPad is a netbook killer, and has already notably impacted the netbook market (see the graphic below).
