Sunday, March 8, 2009

To netbook or not to netbook

So I've learned a lot in the last couple days about something I didn't even know existed: netbooks. Netbooks are basically tiny laptops with slightly more limited capabilities and without built in optical drives (CD drives).
Over this past year in Thailand my Macbook Pro has gotten so much use that I'm scared I'm going to crash it far before it's time (remember my post a couple months ago about how I thought the hard drive might be kaput?). Now it wouldn't be as big of a deal if I hadn't paid $2000 for it! I will most definitely have to buy a new battery for it as soon as I get home. It lasts barely a minute now curtsey of the high voltage in this country.
When I bought my mac I had no idea I would be teaching and carrying my 15 inch laptop around with me everyday. It may be thin, but it's big and heavy and now has a couple dents in it. I say this all because I want to use my Mac for awhile longer for what I bought it for, photo processing and graphic design work and I don't want it to die on me from the everyday use I give it from teaching.
Now here's where the netbook comes in. A netbook would be small enough that I could carry it around with me without a problem and it's cheap enough where if something happened to it I would be sad no doubt but I wouldn't be heartbroken like I would be if something happened to my Mac. I could also take it with me when I travel, the battery life is super long (5+ hours) and it's a PC which even though I totally pro MAC and I love it to death there are just some things harder to do on them and I get super frustrated. Like the printer in our staff room, for some reason MAC's can't connect to it wirelessly. Ack!

Here's the netbook I've been looking at. It's by Acer and no I didn't set my heart on a netbook because of the cute cotton candy color, it just so happens I'm super lucky it comes in a cute cotton candy color. It's about 6.5 inches tall, 9 inches wide and weighs just over 2lbs. It costs about $320 so just a little more than and IPOD touch (another small way that you can get wireless internet).

So what do you think to netbook or not to netbook?

No comments: