In our house we have an EeePC running on Xandros and it works everyday. My two children are surfing the net everyday with it since they are not allowed to use my laptop. I even got the wife to fiddle around with the thing.

For me the keyboard, screen size and the sound are all not great, but it does the job. If we want to type something or surf the net quickly, it does it without any problems. Here we are exposed much more to cloud computing.

If we go out, instead of lugging the bigger laptop (twice the size of the EeePC) around we load a couple of free pdf magazines on it and read them when we have the chance. For more space we use a camera’s SD card. We can view some nice pics too.

Depending on the operating system and the space on the storage device installing resource hungry software will definitely be a problem. For more storage space SD cards and USB keys can be used. It is a viable alternative for somebody who wants to do the simple but powerful things.

Many netbooks are now coming in larger sizes (10+ inch screens with larger keyboards) at just about the same cost as the smaller netbooks.

I want to raise a few points in this discussion:

Realistically, I do NOT use my DVD/CD drive very much at all but now rely on my flash drive for saving large file sizes for backup.

Many netbooks also offer as much as 160 GB of hard drive space.

I live in a wireless world. My home and work environments provide me with almost limitless access to the Internet. Most of the content I now create is “on the cloud”. I use wikis and google docs to collaborate and store my ideas and content – even my own notes!

I would pretty much consider myself an uber-user of technology and would probably be very satisfied with a larger size netbook.

My concern for a place such as South Africa would be the cost of Internet access for those who want to store and interact that much “on the cloud”. However, we are very much moving in that direction of using online storage space by third parties rather than relying on the space on our laptops/netbooks.

Overall, my point is that netbooks do not necessarily compromise THAT much on size. With the cost differential between a laptop and a netbook, in terms of sheer cost benefit analysis, the netbook is a HUGE value without forsaking that much utility.

If you are a hardcore gamer, on the other hand (which I am not), you may indeed want to invest in a different kind of machine.

Hi Kobus,

Not sure about the best way to contact you so I hope this is okay.

Thought you would be interested to know we will be launching an iPhone app for teachers very shortly.

“Featuring inbuilt lesson planning, student tracking, teaching strategies and eLearning tools, Educate provides teachers with a holistic approach to engaging students in 21st century learning environments. Feel free to join our Facebook group http://www.tinyurl.com/EducateApp if you want to be the first to know when Educate goes live. We’ll also be giving away free copies of the app through this Facebook page so be sure to check back!”

Feel free to email me if you have any questions at all,

Cheers,

John Burns
http://www.ikonstrukt.com

Netbooks have a revelation. Initialy it was thought that it would apeal to poor people as an entry to computing and internet, but it turned out to be the latest yuppie toy. It is great to carry around and keep track with your emails, msn skype etc.
They are becoming more and mor powerfull. If you look at how fast they are progressing we will have netoobks running all aplications very soon. Take a look at this lenovo netbook for instance: http://www.laptop-computers.co.za/lenovo-ideapad-s10.html.

Hey there. Im in the market for a new notebook / netbook. Any companys that sell to the end user with good pricing that you can recommend?

Ja ek dink ook ‘n netbook is dalk ‘n beter roep aangesien dit ook die laptops in die toekoms gaan vervang.