Michael Arrington, the driving force behind the popular tech blog TechCrunch has a thought provoking article today, entitled “Three Reasons Why Netbooks Just Aren’t Good Enough.” In a nutshell, he says they’re underpowered and that the keyboards and screens are too small.
Fair enough, but you’ll notice he doesn’t say exactly what they’re not good enough for in the title. If you want a computer with a large screen, big keyboard, and powerful processor, then a netbook is absolutely not the right machine for you. But good luck finding a 2.6 pound computer that will let you access the internet, run MS Office or OpenOffice.org and perform other basic tasks for under $400 that meets all of Arrington’s demands.
Arrington also gets at least 6 things wrong about netbooks in his article, which tells me that his ideas aren’t exactly backed up by serious research:
