Netbooks: spoilt for choice?

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 13 November 2008 09:58

Opinion and Analysis

Decisions, decisions... You can't go too far wrong when buying a desktop PC, and any minor mistakes can usually be corrected by swapping a component or adding a peripheral. But picking a netbook is getting harder rather than easier.

These thoughts are prompted by the arrival of the Eee PC S101 in Australia, which is essentially a slimmed down and pimped version of the Eee 1000.

That weight reduction is definitely desirable - a 10in netbook that only weighs a kilo sounds like my kind of system. But the dollars for grams tradeoff seems steep, and $1000 is definitely into regular notebook territory.

But do I want a relatively cheap and heavy notebook? I could get (for example) a Dell Inspiron 1525 Core 2 Duo for a grand and have no concerns about the size of the keyboard and screen, or having the horsepower to handle applications I'll probably never use on the road - but then I'd be back to lugging 2.7kg around.

As much as I'd like a MacBook Air (and would probably cope with the additional weight compared with most netbooks in return for the convenience of using Mac OS X), it's way out of my price range. Still, there's always the possibility of quietly loading Leopard onto a netbook.

While I'm not that bothered by appearances, I would prefer something that looks like a computer rather than a toy computer - sorry Asus, but the cheaper Eees just don't do anything for me.

The whole point of the exercise is to find something that's sufficiently light to carry practically anywhere, yet large enough to be able to comfortably write articles on the spot. And there's virtually no chance that I'll spend more than $1000 - $600-$700 is more realistic.

So over to you, dear reader - what should I buy?