Over the last several months I have been attached to the various netbooks on the market. Yesterday, I was listening to Mobile Tech Roundup and heard Kevin talking about the Toshiba NB205 netbook, and peaked my interest. I had seen this device a couple of times, in the past, but never thought too much about it. The battery lift is one items that really peeked my interest, I thought really nine hours on a charge. Well, as we know those number tend to be a bit altruistic, but even if I could get six regularly, I would be happy. Also, these the keyboards on these devices have come a long way from when the first Eee PCs arrived on the market. I had the a change to spend a few minutes with the NB205 yesterday at the local Microcenter and I must say the keyboard and track pad are very usable unlike some other models I have seen in the past. Also, the track pad buttons are located under the pad rather then on the sides, which I much prefer. The issue that I have is can I would with the low resolution screen of a netbook. I am writing this post on a monitor that does 1280 by 1024, nothing special, but bigger than 1024 by 600 as many of the netbooks are. Also, I have some concerns about the speed, but for the battery life, I think that I could deal with it, after all, it is not much slower then my almost four year old desktop. I am sure there are other models that have other benefits that I have not seen yet, but I will keep looking and maybe someday I will pull the trigger and purchase one. The real question still remains would I use a netbook?
What would you use the netbook for? Just for browsing the Web and some Office programs?
I guess, for me, I’d rather have a laptop over a netbook, just to have the additional resources available. My desktop has 4 GB memory (well 3.24 GB that’s recognized), and I’ll quite often go over a gig of memory, having a lot of windows and apps open at once. Some of the programming tools I use take up quite a bit of resources, too, so that would be a drawback.
It all depends on what you would use the netbook for, I suppose.
The key items that draw me to the category are the size and the battery life. The NB205 will support 2GB of RAM so that would be a for sure upgrade. Also, it would be used mostly for web access and as a small portable to have around and use as needed. Some form of 3G or EVDO would be nice for when I am out also.
For those uses, it sounds like it would be a good thing to have. I saw that it came with a gig of RAM, but didn’t get far enough to see it was upgradable – and for mostly Web access, that amount wouldn’t really be necessary unless you have a ton of tabs open at once. The long battery life would also be nice.