Netbooks: Better Than Anything

I have deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy about my netbook, and Steve Jobs isn't helping.

The inadequacy comes from the fact that I think mine is the last 8.9-inch-screened Aspire One that Acer sold before they and every other netbook maker switched to 10.1-inch displays as the category standard. I don't really have a problem with the smaller screen even with my bifocal'd baby-boomer eyes, but it's like buying something at full price the day before it goes on sale. You feel like a chump, dolefully consoling yourself that at least 8.9 inches tops the 7-inch LCD of the original Eee PC which you also, um, paid full price for. Being an early adopter sucks.

As for Jobs, he sneers at netbooks the way he sneers at pretty much any non-Apple product. At last week's unveiling of the iPad, the Apple CEO acknowledged that the idea of a computing device that fits between a smartphone and a notebook wasn't new, but said such a product would have to be better than both the handheld and laptop at doing things like browsing the Web, watching videos, and reading e-books, else it would have "no reason for being."

Netbooks, Jobs gibed, "aren't better than anything" -- they're merely cheap laptops, he said, standing before a slide that read

Netbook
- Slow
- Low quality displays
- PC software

Only at an Apple event would you see the galaxy's vastest software library listed as a negative. As for "Slow," it's all relative -- running Adobe Photoshop on a netbook is indeed slow, running Paint.NET is as snappy as you please, and accusations of low productivity are droll coming from the maker of the iPad which has no multitasking.

And "Low-quality displays"? Low-resolution displays, I'll admit, with many netbooks limited to 1,024 by 600 pixels, but a number of 1,366 by 768 models are available, and the bright, LED-backlit screens of current netbooks are as sunny and sharp as you could desire.

No, netbooks aren't the junk that Jobs calls them. They can even, as I'm not the first to note, do some things the iPad can't -- make a video call via a built-in webcam, for instance, or plug into thumb drives or printers via a USB port, or let you type on a real keyboard in your lap, or again, multitask. At $270 to $450, with most of the nicest models in the $350 to $400 range, they're more affordable than the iPad, too.

And I haven't even mentioned smartbooks -- PC makers' latest crack at the machine-between-a-smartphone-and-a-notebook concept. The first announced smartbook is Lenovo's Skylight, due in April. Like the iPad, it's an under-two-pound portable with both 3G and WiFi for Web surfing, an ARM-based processor (Qualcomm's Snapdragon), a 10-inch screen, and promised 10-hour battery life.

Unlike the iPad, it's a netbook, with a familiar clamshell case and real keyboard, as well as a friendly Linux-based interface for Web surfing, social networking, and e-mailing. It looks a little pricey at $499, but it looks like the cutest Google Docs machine ever made.

Not better than anything? Sorry, Steve, netbooks are the best in the world at one simple thing: doing what a notebook does while being even more portable. And the notebook, laptop, clamshell, what have you is a form factor that's a proven best seller. That's why, while pundits speculate about whether the iPad will sell one or two or at a stretch five million units this year, DisplaySearch predicts notebook PC shipments of 158 million, not counting another 40 million netbooks.

And one of those sales will be mine -- the last possible one before a better model comes out.