Netbook Ruminations

I’ve been lusting after a netbook lately. You know, like I did for my Kindle last Fall.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Netbooks have really grown up quite a bit. The two I’m looking at are the ASUS 1015PEM and the ASUS 1015PN. Both use the new dual CPU Intel Atom 550. The 1015PN has an actual Nvidia graphics card instead of just the Intel onboard graphics. The cool thing is you can switch back and forth between them. The Nvidia when you are playing a game and need the 3D power; the Intel when you are just doing web browsing or watching a movie or whatever. The tradeoff being battery life. With the Intel you get like 10 hours to a charge.

Of course, there’s no free lunch. The 1015PN is about $380 on Amazon, while the 1015PEM is about $325.

I don’t really play much in the way of games on the PC anyway, which kind of begs the question of why I’d pay the extra 50 clams. (the PN also has Bluetooth and USB 3.0 and HDMI and other geeky stuff, but nothing really cool – like an ice cream maker or something)

And the REAL question is - why do I feel so drawn to these things? What on earth would I do with it? When I’m off doing Army stuff, like I will be soon, it would be handy to do email and web browsing and stuff. Unlike an iPad, I could run Office or even Visual Studio if I wanted to, and I could view web sites with Flash. But most likely, I wouldn’t do any of that.

So I’m kind of at the point where I wish I could come up with some semi-compelling reason to buy one. But I can’t. Bummer. I’ve probably never gotten over my tech-envy when my daughter bought a netbook back in 2009. Or it could be that it is just more entertaining to think of spending money on a netbook rather than getting the brakes done on my car.

And I should clarify that I do still love my Kindle. I use it all the time and just finished a 350 page book on it. Come to think of it, I also use the Kindle for email and Facebook and games. It weighs nothing, the battery goes for weeks or a month, and it has free 3G wireless.