With sales of the Apple iPad soaring and a slew of Android-based tablets poised to lure consumers this holiday season, you have to wonder if netbooks are dead. This category of portable PC, with its small form factor, long battery life, and low cost, has been the darling of the computing world since it was first introduced in 2007.
Sales are still strong, but do these pared down notebooks have a future? According to ABI Research, final 2009 shipment numbers totaled 36.3 million. In 2010, netbook shipments will reach 58 million. ABI Research sees the pace of netbook market growth slowing to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23%, as media tablets start to steal some netbook thunder.
I purchased an HP Mini 210-1010NR earlier this year and am quite happy with it. I paid $299, but have seen it for as low as $229 in a Micro Center store near me. That’s a lot of computing power for the buck, so I don’t think the netbook is dead.
My only gripe has been with connectivity, but that’s not the netbook’s fault. My Verizon 3G USB stick just doesn’t cut it as a broadband solution. It’s serviceable for getting online and doing text-based tasks, but falters when it comes to sites with high graphics content and video.
Thus, I don’t use the netbook as much as I was planning to on my train ride to and from the office. Hopefully, this will change when 4G USB sticks become available.
Curling Up With A Good E-Book
I have been pleasantly surprised by the netbook’s ability to function as an e-reader, at least for netbooks with Windows. I use an application called Adobe Digital Editions to launch an e-book, and then I rotate the Windows desktop 90°.
Turning the netbook to match the display makes for a very familiar reading experience. The drawback is that the mouse pad on the netbook loses its orientation and is difficult to control.
Brian Shannon, senior product marketing manager of the PC Business Unit at Synaptics, says that this version of the Synaptics mouse pad was not designed to work with the screen rotated 90°, but future versions would.
At Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, earlier this year, Synaptics demonstrated ClickEQ, the industry’s first hinge-less uniform-force, uniform-click depth ClickPad mechanical design, which makes it easier for users to activate typical “button” actions. ClickPad eliminates the need for physical buttons—the touchpad is the button—and provides a larger area for gestures.
In addition, the new ClickPad features
ClickSmart technology, which enables users to control the left and right button commands on their ClickPad universally. Users and OEMs aren’t burdened with having to select click usage behaviors. ClickSmart provides a new “universal” support mode that accommodates both traditional and modern user click behaviors.
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