The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time
Piggy-backing on our recent podcast on the 2009 Horizon report where we discussed mobile computing and the cloud, this article caught my eye
Netbooks prove that the “cloud” is no longer just hype. It is now reasonable to design computers that outsource the difficult work somewhere else. The cloud tail is wagging the hardware dog.
via The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time.
Netbooks are those small laptops with a 7 inch screens that use the web rather than onboard software to get things done. Clive Thompson, the author of this Wired article notes:
It turns out that about 95 percent of what I do on a computer can now be accomplished through a browser. I use it for updating Twitter and Facebook and for blogging. Meebo.com lets me log into several instant-messaging accounts simultaneously. Last.fm gives me tunes, and webmail does the email. I use Google Docs for word processing, and if I need to record video, I can do it directly from webcam to YouTube.
Being one who has long subscribed to the KISS principle, this is intriguing. At a $300 price point, this might be a great idea for my teenager…and maybe she will let me try it out.
