Thinking of Buying a Netbook?

By Matthew Kerridge

A netbook is a great solution for students and business travelers. Lighter in weight than the traditional laptop, the features they all share are web browsers, common office programs such as word processing and spreadsheets, and a small photo editor. As inner city Wifi connectivity becomes more available, notebooks are a lightweight and inexpensive way to keep in touch with the office or home.

Which Netbook Extras are Worth it? Substituting the touch pad for a wireless mouse, costing about $80.00 makes it easier to browse files, the internet and eliminates wires. Since notebooks do not have an optical drive, adding programs from disks, playing music and watching videos are not possible without an external DVD drive, available for $80.00. To use that DVD player, it may be necessary to up the memory to 2G, costing around $30 and only available on notebooks with upgradeable memory card slots.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Netbooks. Costing from about $200.00 and up, netbooks offer mobile computing to those who could not justify the additional expense of a full laptop and may already own a full PC. For those racking up frequent flyer miles the notebook has a distinct advantage being on average 3lbs in weight. A full laptop weighs in at around 7bs and can freeze shoulder muscles after a long walk through an airport.

Netbook Memory Explained Netbooks have smaller memories to keep costs lower, so they will be slower than a typical laptop, but not that much. Their memories are upgradeable, in many cases and if they are used in conjunction with a home PC, the typical memory range of from 30G to 160G is not a significant limit to usage. Supporting familiar internet browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Thunderbird, netbooks are only slow in loading net pages where a lot of flash content is present. O.S. is usually Windows XP, as Vista consumes too much memory.

Are Netbook Screens Better than Laptop Screens? In many cases, the answer is yes. That is because of the very latest technology in backlit screens being installed in netbooks. This means a user can see the screen easily sitting outside in the sun, something many laptop owners envy. Displays are also rather superior, in some cases offering a much higher resolution than comparable laptops. Because of the demand for netbooks, it seems manufacturers are putting their best design features into that market, first.

Does a Netbook fit your Needs? If you travel a lot, the answer would be a definite yes, providing lightening speed and huge storage without the use of external hard drives is not important to you. Students will also love the lighter weight in their backpacks, where a netbook fits easily. Many business users already have found the small amount of space needed for written documents fits easily on a smaller memory and appreciate the lower cost. At present available in every color and an assortment of sizes, netbooks are the fastest selling category of portable computers

The Next Generation of Netbooks As the netbook generation grows up, improvements will make today's offering look as slow as yesterday's laptops, widening their appeal to gamers, photographers and others who typically need huge amounts of processing ability. Manufacturers are already starting to load netbooks with larger processors, in some case the duo core range, and much larger Ram and memory, which brings them much closer to full laptop capabilities. - 31403

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