I know of several people (non geeks) that use a netbook (mainly Asus EEEs) as their primary PC. There are many more people that use them as a secondary PC, but a few only use them solely. I use my MSI Wind as my primary PC and I get excited (i am a geek) when I see someone happily using one. I get mostly positive comments all the time from netbook users. Most of the complainers that I have talked to are either people that will download any attachment they receive or power users that should know better.

My only complaint is I wish my Wind had a slightly larger display. The more I look at the netbooks in stores, the more I’m starting to think a 10 inch display with higher resolution would be enough for me.

As Kevin and James reiterate all the time, “Everyones needs are different.”

I think Scott above got the metaphor a bit better, Kevin, comparing the Honda with the Ferrari, rather than vice versa.

The funniest part is that most of these business journals are all pro-market place, and Gomes is complaining that the market is responding to demand. Boo-hoo.

I don’t think his journalism is bad, as he’s probably accurate in everything he’s reporting. He’s just a lousy consumer who didn’t bother to do his research before he dropped a few C-notes. Um, You get what you pay for. No free lunch. Caveat emptor. I’m guessing he can give his netbook to some nephew and drop a few more dollars on what he should have gotten himself in the first place without worrying about making his house payment or whether the family will get groceries. Sheesh!

I suppose you fault Honda for not making their civic as powerful as a Ferrari. “oh sure it’s cheaper and it can handle your basic transportation needs but it’s not as powerful as this sports car so it’s useless…”

Do you scratch your head at how many Hondas sell each year (just like netbooks) too?

Don’t waste everyone’s time talking about stuff you obviously don’t understand.

Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly with the post! Even though I don’t like netbooks and would never own one personally, I base my recommendations to people on what they want to accomplish and what their usage habits are, not on what *I* would want.

I’m a power user, I want my machine to be on par with me, and if possible I want it to be better than me… you know, on part with God, if possible! Blaspheming aside, not everyone needs their computer to be that. Some just want to sit in a coffee shop or on a plane or on the couch or whatever and watch an occasional video and surf the net and other lightweight tasks.

But then again, this whole article validates a point I’ve made about them for the past two years… while I’ve been wrong about their sales, I’ve been right about how they’re used… light weight productivity and heavy on entertainment values.

Does Mr. Gomes expect to take his Shelby GT500 out to the racetrack and try to break records running on corn oil? I don’t think so. Although, he may be that stupid.

I actually wrote a column on my blog a few weeks ago highlighting 10 reasons where desktops still beat notebooks. Some may argue that the tower is dead but the truth is, when you DON’T need to be mobile, a desktop simply beats a notebook in many areas. Netbooks pair so well with desktops, especially when you have WHS set up for remote access. You can work remotely on your home desktop using your netbook while mobile, stream all your files and access your data anywhere, easily. When you factor in the price, size, weight, battery life and portability of netbooks it makes a compelling argument indeed.

That aside, I found “screen resolution” to be the biggest factor limiting my productivity with netbooks, not the OS, or the CPU nor GPU. If I need to run a flight simulator, I fire up my Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708, not my HP 2133 mininote. But when I need to use Cool Edit Pro to do D/A A/D conversions, work on an office document, or fire up WME for a short encoding job, I can choose to go with either netbook or the beefier notebook. Now this would not be the case had I not gone with the higher res screen on the netbook, or installed Vista in place of XP.

As for Forbes, I’m somewhat amazed they would publish such a half-baked article and actually pay this guy for his work. I guess when Forbes puts their name on something, it must be pretty good – even if it is still garbage.

I think as you see the Ion based netbooks start to be released, you will see a lot more of the “bottom” falling out of the notebook market. Why? Because as someone else pointed out above, most notebooks aren’t as capable as a desktop either. If you NEED portable, the average notebook gives you very little more than the average netbook.

Although I have to say that even the argument that a desktop is necessary is a lie. I used to believe that I would always need a desktop for video editing due to the large amount of rendering/processing needed. I now do all editing on a HP laptop without a problem. My sister in law does CAD for architecture on a laptop as well. Desktops will go the way of the betamax in a few years.