I’m a believer in the explosion of Netbooks into the PC marketplace over the last year or so (for those of you that don’t know what a netbook is, an excellent rundown on their history can be found on Wired). As a proud cheapskate, the idea of a $300 – $400 laptop is very appealing. As a business traveler, a computer that weighs around three pounds and can fit on the “seatback tray in front of you” without contorting body into a pretzel to use the keyboard sounds like a welcome relief.
After reading up on the Toshiba Mini NB205 I couldn’t resist any longer, and now that it has arrived, I’m in the middle of a continuing experiment to see just how much of my job I can accomplish on this thing.
As the economy continues to be choppy and therefore budgets remain tight, I’m beginning to wonder if organizations can really afford to ignore the economics of these little machines. When you consider that so many corporate users do little more than check email and run the occasional spreadsheet or powerpoint, the question has to be asked, “why do these users need a $1,500 dual-core?” I think its very possible that a large swath of expensive hardware could be replaced by these little, adequate machines.
I see netbooks fitting nicely into the slot currently occupied by notebooks, where a user has an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse at work to make inputting tasks as comfortable as possible.
Starbucks founder Howard Shultz talks about wanting his coffee shops to be the “third place” that people spend time (home and work being the other two). I’m starting to think that these netbooks could become the “third device” (the full-size laptop/PC and the smart phone being the other two).
This leads to some questions that I think we’ll start having to explore. If netbooks begin to become a prominent fixture in the enterprise environment, what does that mean for portals and web UIs in general? Do the small sizes of the displays on the devices necessitate a new interface design? Conversely, as we see the sizes of the displays on these devices begin to expand, are no new changes required? Do we need to account for the slower, single-core processors? With the limited height on the displays is there a premium on getting content “above the fold?”
I don’t claim to have all the answers, and as quickly as new machines with different capabilities are coming on the market, the questions may change a bit over time. I just don’t want to ignore a segment of the computer market that seems to be gaining steam, and make sure that the capabilities are maximized.
