Ryan Pestano

Dare I say it – I love my Netbook. So what’s Netbook you ask? It’s basically a small, inexpensive computer. Asus computers pionered them back in 2007 when they released their line of eee pcs. The hardware specs for Netbooks are usually pretty unimpresive as they are mainly meant for cruising the web and checking email, and ran a light Linux distrobution as the operating system. The good news was they get great battery life and is about the same size and weight as a paperback book.

As technology goes, give it a little over a year and several other computer manufacturers have released their own. Still with the same concept of lighter hardware now they are usually equipped with an Intel Atom processor and about a gigabyte of RAM. You can still get them with solid state hard drives but, now have options for hard disk drives. Oh yeah, and they started releasing it with Windows XP for those of us not as comfortable with Linux and want to run regular Microsoft Office instead of Open Office.

I bought mine, an Acer Aspire One , about six months ago and I couldn’t be happier. I own several laptops and desktops and I find I use my Acer Aspire One Netbook the most. Here’s why:

1) It’s light as hell. It weighs just over 2 pounds and about as big as a medium sized book, making it ideal to throw in to a bag with a couple books and go. No more lugging my 6 pound laptop home everyday with an achy back.

2) It’s fairly rugged. The case is pretty solid. I slide it into the sleeve it came with and don’t worry about putting it in a bag, unlike my old laptop that had to go in the padded compartment. I even backpacked through China with this thing with no problems. Besides, if I do break it – at less than $400 – it’s not as painful as losing a $1500 laptop.

3) Battery life is amazing. I have the 3 cell battery which give me about 2.5 hours of battery life but, the ones out now come with a 6 cell battery for 5 hours of juice. Just because that’s just short of a trans atlantic flight I bought a spare 9 cell battery for less than $100.

4) I still like the fact that people are always amazed when I pull this thing out. People are always like “that’s the smallest (or cutest) laptop I’ve seen”. Actually a couple of my friends ended up buying one. 

Most of the time you just don’t need a top of the line system to check your email, cruise the web or come to think of it just about 90% of what regular computer users use their computers for.

Netbooks are here to stay and I’m glad. More and more companies are releasing their own Netbooks like HP, Lenovo, and Dell. Microsoft actually demoed their new operating system, Windows 7, on a Netbook at CES just this week.  I can only see Netbooks getting better and hopefully the manufacturers maintain the lower price points. I may just buy a few more.

Have a Netbook or thinking about getting one? Leave a comment or question.