@What happening to Moore's law?

There are other laws around that may be more relevant:

- As soon as a category, like laptops, becomes decent, an lower spec is introduced to create room for improvement.

- The form factor reduces until there is no room for the chip set/drive/cooler (keyboard and screen don't count).

- The small cheap £200 computer is here today, but the makers are still asking £350 for them.

@Vicent

"I still can't get the business reason for buying netbooks..."

1) Health & Safety/convenience

My previous personal laptop was a backbreaker. I never took it anywhere. All standard sub-£500 models are, as a rule, pretty heavy.

2) Durability

I dropped my previous personal laptop once. ONCE. The keyboard stopped working, the Wi-fi stopped working and the latch for the DVD drive got buckled. Sub-$500 models again are lacking in this regard. I've dropped my eee several times from at least as high. Guess what? No problems to report.

3) What do you want to do?

I don't merely browse -- I also word-process. Let's face it, the state-of-the-art in document style hasn't really changed in over a decade. A modern laptop is overkill as a glorified typewriter.

I also happen to be more interested in retrogaming than first person gorefests, so running SCUMMVM, ZSNES and VICE fulfills my gaming requirements.

4) Price

Why pay more to get something heavier than you need, more powerful than you need and less reliable than you need? It's like buying a papier-maché monster-truck when all you need is a Smart for running around town.

@Ivan

"Can you tell me what's the use of spending £350+ for such a thingy... I really can't get it... you can basically do nothing else but surf... and then what?

Yeah, it's light, ultra portable, but then again, you can't do squat with it... I still can't get the business reason for buying netbooks..."

I can answer this. I run an estate of thin clients, and several dozen of my users are gearing up to work in a mobile manner. They do not need massive computing power: just the ability to connect to the citrix farm for emails and access to corporate documents. A great number of these users are female, and don't want to heft a paving slab size laptop around just to check mail and grab the odd document. Netbooks with a 3G card have plenty of oomph to be great all-rounders, but for me the way they work specifically as a platform to access office systems is a winner, especially at the sub £300 mark. As an added bonus, they can replace thin clients in the office (as all they need to do is run a citrix client on top of a barebones XP install) means I can save on the £300 it costs to stick a terminal on the desk: they just can connect their keyboard, mouse and monitor and bob's your uncle.

I wander around with an HP2133 and work in the manner outlined above, and it's great for me, as I don't need a big screen when I'm out and about. My Chief Exec and several directors do the same.

I agree that the netbook range isn't great for everybody- some users who do more out in the field prefer a 12" screen (those new Dell's are looking mighty promising for some of my lot), but for people who might need the option every now and then to be more mobile than they currently are, the netbook category is a real godsend- especially if you have a TSE sitting at the heart of it all.

Well I use a Netbook for...

I got work to buy me an Asus 901 for the following:

Testing wireless signal strength when users say "Your wireless service isn't working" (when what they really mean is "I can't work out how to turn my wireless card on").

Console connections to network switches and routers when they need on site work.

Browsing the web in general /web-mail, work VPN etc...

Using web based applications such as Google Docs etc.

Reading PDF manuals on site.

In fact to sum it up I use it for more than I used to use my 3KG full spec laptop for as its light enough to throw in a bag with fibre testers, spare patch cables, spare switch, screwdriver, cage nuts etc.

I think that shows a need (even if just for me!)