Netbooks

So ... there's kind of a cool product hitting the shelves these days in the computer department ... they're called "netbooks" ... and they're basically mini-laptops without optical drives that are purposefully meant for people on the go and on a budget and who don't really do anything on the computer but surf the web. They're big in Asia and Europe and getting more common in emerging places like Brazil and Russia ... just starting to hit the shores here in the US.

They don't have DVD or CD drives and run WindowsXP or Linux ... they often don't even have hard drives but some do and they're basically designed to run everything on the web (or in the "cloud"). If all you really do on a computer is use email and a couple of small applications and mostly everything you do is on the web, these babies can be had for like $300-400 new. They have 8" or 10" screens and are basically kinda disposable. Perfect for travelling. You host all your content on the Web (photos, music, etc.).

There's nothing that runs Mac OSX right now (yet) so ... I'm not personally interested in anything that runs Windows ... but pretty cool none the less. There's versions in Asia that are super cheap and energy efficient that just have flash memory and run on the super efficient Intel Atom chip. Look for battery life to go through the roof and cost to plummet .. making computers available to tons of people worldwide that never had them before. Good or bad, it's happening.