Size matters

Size matters when it comes to netbooks. See the picture of my last 3 generations of laptop, notebook, netbook bags. The netbook is almost completely sunken in the small cross body bag right of the apple. No, not what you might think. I put the apple there for size comparison.

I always had a desktop and none of the laptops ever completely replaced it. But being in a meeting, at a conference or just on the road, the netbook is my choice.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2009
  How about some details on the 3 models and what works and doesn't work as well for them? There are clearly some performance trade-offs when moving to a netbook form factor. But are they really that bad? Is a netbook a good-enough choice for traveling, etc? Cheers John

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2009
  @John, thanks for your comment. Absolutely right. By downsizing the system you (I should say I) not necessarily maintain the same level of performance. But I also remember well receiving small form factor laptops for testing and training from AMD that were at least as well performing as their larger siblings. These notebooks had almost the same size and weight as the current netbook I work with. Actually I tried to make it clear that I always had a desktop for my day to day work. That said I see the netbook as a companion device more than a replacement. To your question about traveling: It obviously highly depends on the purpose of your travel. Going to events like TechEd or to customer visits presenting is different from running demos requiring a powerful environment, perhaps involving a number of virtual machines etc. Even in the latter case, a netbook might be a good choice if network connectivity to your powerful demo systems via Remote Desktop, Live Mesh or other means can be guaranteed. As you and I know this is not always the case :).