The Little Engines That Could (and Still Can!)

Some say the netbook fad is over, tablets will kill them. Not for me!

Netbooks: reduced size, reduced power, reduced price and (somewhat) reduced capabilities.

It's as if the industry finally awakened to the fact that all those "palmtop" PCs of years past were too darned small. A year or so back, the "netbook" was all the rage. Finally, a usable keyboard a not-so-bad screen in a package that was smaller than a notebook computer. Despite the newest latest tablet craze, I still LOVE my netbooks!

Yes, tablets are hot, but already there is a cry for (drum roll, please) real keyboards!

Apple execs once sniffed that netbooks were "junky" and not worthy of the Mac name. Uh-huh. Of course, they had the iPad for three times the price and no Flash animation. Doesn't anyone at Apple need a keyboard? Actually, the virtual keyboard isn't so bad, but the excellent Apple Bluetooth keyboard is, ahem, selling well. I wonder why?

While the Asus Eee PC is and was my early darling of netbooks, I have switched to an Acer Aspire One loaded with Windows 7 "Starter " edition (seen above). My unit is "refurbished," which could mean a customer return because they didn't like it or got buyer's remorse. It was well under $300 with a separate DVD reader-writer and a handy slip case. With a GB of memory and a 160 GB hard drive (moving disk, not solid state), it has plenty of and runs everything from my Adobe Audition audio editor to streaming Netflix movies and even my Pinnacle video editing suite! This unit has WiFi, built in web cam* and a darned decent keyboard. It will also accept an SD card and has three USB ports. *See photo below with my Handpresso espresso maker!

And the prices keep dropping as newer models are released. Even outside of these frugal times, a unit like this could be a big advantage to anyone in sales having to show photos and PDF files.

Those selling TV and radio could even present commercials on the unit. I'm deeply impressed with both the Acer branded models and their eMachine branded models, which appear identical. There are minor variations involving the number of cells in the battery pack and the size of the hard drive. The rest of the units seem the same.

Windows 7 Starter Edition

There is nothing wrong with this basic version of Windows 7!  It lacks some of the "eye candy" of the more complete versions and does not come with the MS media center. This means you will need so install the free and excellent VLC Media player if you want to watch DVD movies or some other films in AVI format, etc. The early beta version of Starter was deliberately limited, but then MS changed their minds. I feel absolutely no need to spend $79 to upgrade from this version.

Out of curiosity ,  I did upgrade one  of my netbooks,  and found that  there was  no problem handling  the bigger O/S, but no clear advantage.  Again, I am doing both audio and even video editing on these netbooks!  Since I am not a gamer, I cannot  vouch for  how well they will handle  those graphics intensive  tasks!

As the netbook fever cools, expect to find  more of them at lower prices.  My eMachine (a second backup netbook purchase) was  a  display model  that  I snapped up  for  $149.95!  These are the most  productive and  solid  devices  I  have  ever used.  Keep  your  eyes open for bargains!*