personally, they seem like a waste (even before the ipad). not nearly as powerful as a 'regular' laptop and not big enough to do anything but surfing.

if you're just couch potatoing it, put the money for 2 crappy things into one ipad. or try to hustle a used macbook air or some other 13" screen laptop (just am not as familiar with the pc offerings in that space).

Outed, that's a really narrow view. Just because you find something to be useless doesn't make it so. As for benefits of netbooks, use google to see the list of features not found on any other device.

shaner, minus one for such a lazy question.

I have a Samsung N230. Best purchase I've made recently. My other computer is a very bulky/heavy laptop which can manage rendering and other intensive processes. But when it comes to carrying it around, it's a massive weight. With my netbook I can literally pick it up by one hand and throw it into my bag without even considering the charger. I'm just starting some research, so the 13hr battery life (allbeit with brightness set down/bluetooth off) is great to just walk into the library and get going without having to find a socket.
In terms of capabilities, it's surprised me. I can do photoshop, chrome (multiple tabs), vlc player, word, several pdfs all at the same time and with little to no slow down. There are times when it has to stop to think (e.g. a large automated batch command on PS while reading from HD) but otherwise it's amazing.

Also, with regard to above, the iPad - while excellent at what it does - is not imo suited to typing. Perhaps it would be fine with a short email, but typing out 30,000 words of research on a capacitive screen is my idea of torture. Having Flash helps too.

hey steel studs.. how bout minus 1 for you and your anti-midget porn agenda???

The anti-midget porn agenda has been trading at minus 40%-60% off regular unit. From what I've seen, So far.

When my laptop died a few weeks before a final last winter, I bit the bullet and bought a small netbook (Gateway of some sort) on sale. It wasn't actually too horrendous, and I was pretty surprised. It still ran the office software (OpenOffice - I felt that MS Office was laggier), 2D CAD (if the file wasn't too big), open-source GIS (again, watch the file size), an old version of Photoshop, media, what have you. Granted, it wasn't all that fast, but it got the job done.

However, I ran up against its limitations when dealing with large data files, large CAD or GIS files, anything in 3D, and other specialized software that I needed for work I was doing. I eventually broke down and built a desktop this past summer (i7 930, so I actually get 8 full logical cores, woot), but the netbook is still really good for things like field work (the 5-hour battery life is a huge blessing).

In short: if time is not important and/or you don't really use it for work that much, or if you need super-portability (if you need a computer when backpacking or something, or you are doing long stints in an airplane and have no outlet), it's pretty helpful. Otherwise, if you already have laptops and are looking for an extra toy, I'd just stick with laptops; netbooks are basically the same, just smaller, less powerful, and longer-lived between charges.

anti-midget porn agenda? what?

I have a dell netbook - I waited until the screen resolution hit the magic 1400. I travel more than I would like and find it very useful for writing and a little designing. I prefer the netbook on the planes, trains, and automobuses then this 20-pounder beast that is more table-without-legs than laptop that I am using right this minute.

If all you want is the midget porn, get an ipad.

i like to have the 19" widescreen for my midget porn... the netbook would be more for siamese twin porn... midgets are too small on netbooks

You are my new archinect friend

One word : Flash. Something the ipad still can't do. Unless those recent talks between adobe and apple have changed this.

Netbooks are here to stay, have been and will be. The new dual cores will just cement them in even more. For browsing with the chrome browser, it's a good little device. You can even stream videos (although not HD) from your desktop or watch netflix movies on them. They're not as pitiful as everyone believes :)

I bought the missus the ASUS netbook last Christmas, and she in turn bought be the Dell netbook for my birthday in April. They both perform wonderfully. Her's gets about 6 hours battery life with the backlight on, mine about 4. But mine is way faster - I won't give you the specs but it runs about 60% of the software I have on my behemoth of a laptop and significantly better. Though I do not have any CAD software on it - on purpose, it's really about doing research, writing, etc. In fact it has become my laptop of choice when I have to do any major writing (project proposals, essays etc)

2Ghz runs WAY faster when supported by flash memory - that's all I'll have to say.

A flash-memory based hard drive would only help when opening and saving files. Processing power is still limited by the weak netbook processor. You'll want to make sure you also maximize the amount of RAM you can install in your netbook once you get it/order it.

architechnophilia - I'm intersted to know, does photoshop run faster with the scratch disks assigned to a flash drive over a HDD? I'd assume so but to what degree?