lanehalley

In Today's AdvertisingAge Simon Dumenco writes:

"To give you some background, in late 2007, I tested the Eee PC, a mini laptop from Taiwanese laptop maker Asus. At the time, the "netbook" moniker hadn't quite congealed around this emerging category of sub-sub-notebooks, so when I wrote a column in January 2008 about my experience with the 2-lb. wonder, I didn't even know what to call it. But I knew then it was going to change everything. The $300 machine, I wrote, "has me contemplating nothing less than The End of Microsoft." That's because I tested a version that was Microsoft-software-free -- it had a simple customized interface built around Linux (the popular open-source operating system) and was obviously set up to encourage users to compute on the "cloud," using free web-based services such as Gmail, Google Docs, Facebook, etc. I totally didn't miss Microsoft's balky operating system or its pricey apps, because I was mostly using my new little buddy as a front-end to the internet (sort of like an oversize iPhone, with a real keyboard) rather than computing locally on my hard drive."

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I bought an Asus Eee in 2008, but found that the screen resolution made it impossible to use Yahoo mail and other net aps with top-heavy page layouts. The browser and advertising cruft at the top of the page made the form factor impractical.

Fast forward to 2009. I've abandoned the Asus, and love my new Dell Inspiron mini, with a screen resolution that works, even with chrome-heavy MS applications. This is my new buddy for note-taking, photo storage, email etc.

However, in the long term the iPhone seems like the better solution for walk-around computing (messaging, maps). Waiting for July when I see what Apple comes up with.