The advent of Netbooks

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In the recent past we have seen quite a lot of technologies going the wireless way. Computers and internet are one of them. In India, we can see many of the internet companies, are now focusing more on making things smaller and without wires. Laptops are now preferred over Desktops. Smartphones are also denting the market of Laptops, but not as much as the newer spinoff. Netbooks seem like the best choice here, and definitely hits the sweet spot.

Netbooks are also known as Mini-Notebooks and Sub-Notebooks. They are the breed of small, cheap and light computers. They are generally suitable for general use and mainly for internet access. They are also called as a “companion” computer as we can carry it around where ever we go. They are also known as the cheaper and long lasting alternative of laptops. These laptops have enough charge in their standard batteries to last around 7-8 hours, something that its larger relatives cant achieve without the use of non-standard batteries.

The Netbooks have been famous for their ridiculously small size and weight, while maintaining the performance expected out of it. Its cost is also one of the lowest ever seen, thus fueling its market share. The features that have been “thrown out” of Netbooks compared to the laptops are many such as, standard size keyboards, standard size screens, optical drives and a little less computing power. These Netbooks have screens ranging from 5 inches to 13 inches, and weigh at an average of 1 Kilogram. In fact, consumers who don’t mind the size factor, are confused over choosing among a Netbook or a Notebook.

The major manufacturer who can given credit for coning the term “netbook” in the large scale market is Asus, with their Asus Eee PC being one of the first widely marketed and sold netbook. But these Netbooks were more targeted at the developing markets such as India, South America and Africa. But the real manufacturer who first started manufacturing Netbooks is Network Computer(NC). A worthy mention can also be given to the Psion line of Netbooks which have now been sadly discontinued. Surprisingly all these Netbooks have the capability of running Windows XP and Linux operating systems. Some of the models did ship with Windows Vista, but end consumers preferred XP to Vista, if not any of the Linux Distributions. With all of these features Netbooks started taking away the market share of the laptops, and millions continue to be sold even now. In fact the extension of the life of Windows XP, given by Microsoft, was attributed to the Netbooks which was more suited to it than Windows Vista.

HP, MSI, Dell, Microsoft and Intel are now seen focusing more on Netbooks because of the ongoing recession in th world market. Intel is more interested as most of these Netbooks use their Atom brand of processors. The price of these Netbooks is an average of $400 across all brands. But the average Netbook will now feature a 10″ screen with a gigabyte of memory and a 160GB of hard disk space. The newer breed of Netbooks are however featuring Solid State Hard disks(SSD), which in turn require much lesser power and will be much lighter and last much longer.

Ananth Acharya
Guest Blogger
www.ATechiesThoughts.com

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