Netbooks: The Device of Today and Tomorrow

Personal computers are an obstacle to broadband use. They're complicated, expensive, heavy, take forever to boot up – and unnecessary. Ironically I'm writing this post on a computer because I'm on a plane, one of the few places (besides rural America and developing nations) where broadband isn't available.

Mary was thinking about how to achieve Vermont's new goal of making broadband available to everyone including those who can't afford or don't know how to use computers. Suddenly we realized that computers are a problem, not a solution. If you know you're going to have good broadband, you don't need a computer to browse the web or communicate; you don't even need a computer to create documents, use spreadsheets, store and analyze data. We need to compute but we don't need a computer. The personal computer is an expensive, inconvenient, and inefficient way to all these things. Of course people like me are also hooked on computers.

So we bought a netbook. It took a while to find one with Linux instead of Windows; but that's what we wanted to experiment with. Vista has conclusively proven how much of a barrier an operating system can be. Linux is not only free but also non-obtrusive. Finally bought an ASUS Eee PC 900 with a builtin video camera, mic, and speakers (Skype ready), an 8.9" screen, and a 16 Gig harddrive (which I would have as soon done without). Didn't buy any applications, of course. $247.56 at Amazon with free shipping. (I know, I know, this is really a computer; even has Intel inside. But we're only using the browser and the explorer so it doesn't count as a computer).

Carefully I kept my nerdish self away when it came. Mary was up and on the Net using our home wifi in about ten minutes after opening the box. Mary's not a novice but she's also not a nerd. Looks good so far. I came back in when I heard the music and found her happily listening to Internet radio from India on the not-too-shabby speakers.

Here's our plan. Mary transitions off her HP to the netbook. She uses only online apps through the browser; she stores her data in the cloud (actually better for collaboration). Pictures live at Picasa or the like; videos in YouTube; white papers and spreadsheets in Google (GOOG) Docs (lots of Google here). Side benefits are her environment is available at whatever Internet café she uses to go online and backup is no longer an issue. In fact she was delighted to find after a small snafu with the word processor in Google apps, which made all the words disappear ,that every edit she'd made had resulted in an automatically archived version of the document.

If this works than maybe we don't worry about computers and software for the newly connected. A netbook'll actually be better – cheaper, easier install, easier to use, no software to buy, and probably replaces the landline phone with Skype video calls.

Comments

[TA:]

No one can doubt how useful Netbooks are in certain situations but this article is really another in a long endorsement of how the cloud is everything and Windows and local applications are dead.

I am sorry I wasted time reading this nonsense. There's plenty more examples saying the exact same thing in the archives if I want to induldge myself.

Apr 11 05:47 PM

[dihard:]

Standard Operating Systems, Linux (or rather Linux desktops) included, were designed for PCs, not for the net. We're working on set of hardware/software devices that enable "pure web use". We're shipping the first product - palm size, hang it on the back of the monitor, managed device called Xpack, currently addressing public internet access needs, including schools, libraries, internet cafes, etc..
Dan I., Moderro Technologies

Apr 11 07:08 PM

[HereAndNow:]

Smartphones may be leading the computer industry into the future, where you essentially start with a "thin" OS (e.g. Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry, WinMo, WebOS, etc.) and "build" the functionality you want on the device (smartphone, tablet, netbook, etc.) from an app store.

The effort to build applications that run on all of these "thin" OSes will be significantly reduced, when HTML5 & BONDI/PhoneGap become mainstream. They will enable the development of applications that can:
1. run unmodified on all OSes ("thin" and "thick").
2. access key device services (geo location, accelerometer, etc.).
3. be launched like desktop apps.
4. support online & offline modes.
5. be delivered from "internet" or "private" clouds.

The days of "thick" OSes and the complex and costly maintenance associated with them are numbered.

Apr 11 08:21 PM

[Alan in Mar...:]

Few things are seldom free. People are enamored with Picasa/Google because they use them without directly paying for their products/services. Don't expect this to always be that way. Someone has to pay the bill for the data storage infrastructure, software development, etc. This is a problem with America, people feel they are entitled to most everthing for little or nothing.

Apr 13 12:50 PM

[Stone Fox C...:]

That would be a nice future. Recently had fits with my PC at home and it'd be nice to just store everything in the cloud and not deal with software. Kinda like using TurboTax online. That is a beautiful process. Can pull it up at home or work and don't have to load software that has to be updated every year. Looking forward to that future.

Apr 15 05:20 PM

[sfk:]

the only problem with all this cloud talk i see is that you lose any and all privacy and data security. google and other sites tend to remove content they find inappropiate for one reason or another and clearly state they arent responsible for data loss and "accidentally" or sometimes even purposely sharing private user data with corporations and other users.

and another problem is that there is no netbook that is fast enough to offer a full internet experience. but they are getting there...

netbooks are pretty much portable clients that use the internet as backend server, thats the future, no doubt... but what we know as netbooks today is still to slow and crippled to really replace laptops.

Apr 20 11:23 AM