It appears that I am going to go through this about once every two or three weeks. That is the flitting back and forth across the line of whether I think the Google ChromeOS makes sense or not. And if it does make sense, where am I going to use it? I recently went back and looked at some of the articles on the OS, and some of the videos and commentary by other bloggers, in an attempt to reassess where I am on this thing. Right now, I am back on the side of it not making sense.

One of the videos I watched was this one over on YouTube, which made the rounds about a month ago. While I may not be entirely opposed to the concept of the browser-based OS, this video pushed me back onto the naysayer side of the fence because of some of the assumptions it makes about users. Of course, the main dichotomy is that the video is likely making assumptions based on the average user, and I am not sure that I fall into that category.

The first premise is that the OS will be a best fit for users that spend 90% of their time on the web. There are a few ways to interpret the assumption as it is stated. The speaker caveats the assumption with a "if you are like me". Just to be combative, I could assume that Google is trying to say that this is true of most users, but I'll take the angle just as it is put, that the fit applies if you are a user like the speaker. Which I am not. While connectivity is important to me (the two most important things about an apartment or house I am going to live in is the stability of its electrical power, and the stability of the internet pipes coming into the place), I have insisted on being able to function without it.

I do a lot of local archiving offline. I keep important things on a thumb-drive. Most things I need to function as far as data artifacts are maintained on my NAS. I have gradually shifted to some cloud-based tools, but this is predominantly because I am a multi-computer user. The only reason I have items based in the cloud now is so that when I start a project on one PC, I can access that project when I am on a different PC. But I used to do this by storing the files on a thumb-drive, and could do so again.

I have traveled a lot and still spend a good chunk of time on the road. So I can not be entirely dependent on the web and internet access. I have to have locally stored and installed apps. The speaker talks about email. I always download email locally. I have one account that I leave in the cloud, but that is about it. I rely mostly on my smartphones for my current email, and then periodically download it locally. I am not dependent on Gmail. I do not chat frequently, mostly because most of my friends are not that PC-based. Texting has become much more prevalent in my life than online chats. Reading news? Yes, I use the web for it. But the frequent access that I need most readily is, again, based in my smartphones.

The other items he discusses I do almost entirely out of the cloud-realm. While I do stream movies from NetFlix from time to time, I spend a lot more time consuming video entertainment from tangible media sources. I play very few games that require internet access on the PC to play. Most of these are retail games that I have purchased on optical media that require a check-in via Steam. But again, it is not an actual browser that I need for that functionality. The one use I guess that I am absolutely dependent on my browser for is purchasing items. However, that only extends to major items of significant expense that are tangible products. Things like movie tickets and music I buy via my cell phones or iTunes, not in my browser.

Where he talks about the new innovations that have led to the rise of the eminence of the browser, I only actively participate in two of the four, blogging and micro-blogging. The latter I do much more so from my smartphones than my PC. Social networking and YouTube-as-a-hobby are still PC-based events that have not interested me.

The video goes on to discuss a lot of the issues with boot-times and the performance overhead of managing critical computing resources and infrastructure. It is hard for me to imagine people who still boot their PCs frequently. Pretty much the only time I boot my PCs is when I go on or return from travel, and that is usually just the PC that I am taking with me and returning. My laptops remain in standby and are available about 5 seconds after I pop the lids. I am all for faster boot times, but I can not say that straddling myself with an anemic, under-powered OS is justification to shave 35 to 40 seconds off of my boot time.

And that is the thing that would most hamper me in terms of real-world productivity; the fact that, in most cases, a cloud-based tool inherently under-perform a locally installed equivalent. I do not think that I could ever propose that a web-based tool, that has to overcome latency and packet transfers, would ever rank ahead of a local tool that leverages a PC or Mac's hardware performance. I am never going to go to editing my photos via Flickr or Picasa's online tools over iPhoto or Photoshop or Nero. I am never going to edit audio via an online tool instead of Garage Band. Windows Movie Maker has left my bag of tools as it is now only available via Windows Live. A cloud-based productivity infrastructure, at least today, is simply not as robust as a locally based one. As I look at my own uses of cloud-based tools, I have migrated to them for the simple tasks, most of them text-based, that do not require a lot of performance. But I still do too many things in the multi-media space for a cloud-focused OS to ever be my primary computing platform.

I am aware that Google is going to allow some level of caching so that you can still work locally. As I see it, this will be an allowance that will have much more strict ceilings than I have on any of my current machines. As far as other general users, of course the OS effectively eliminates rural and underprivileged communities who are still trying to get reliable connectivity to the extent that the ChromeOS will depend upon.

Where I do see this OS making sense for me is residing in a MiD of some type. I have the purchase of such a device on my technology roadmap, and this is an environment that I can see myself stomaching a dependence on connectivity. This, of course, would be because I would not have as heavy a requirement on productivity from this device; it will predominantly used for consumption. And this is where I currently see the ChromeOS making sense. In spaces and for users that are primarily focused on consumption and online interaction. For "power users" or whatever we are calling non-generalist PC users these days, ChromeOS might be a good fit in companion devices that are used for consumption. Funny that Android is being deployed as a solution by hardware vendors for that application, and it wil be interesting to see where and when the ChromeOS will be preferable to Google's own Android. When it comes to actually creating content, multi-media development, and productivity, locally installed and embedded OS' and apps will continue to be where I need to be.

- Vr/Z..>>

What a week. I am safely at my girlfriend's flat after being stranded for 4 days due to the winter storm that blew through here last weekend. Somewhat ridic since the only real reason that I was stranded was because the subdivision area I live in and the local DoT, betwixt the two of them, could not figure out how to get the main drag plowed 4 days after the snowfall. So what's a geek to do? I packed several bags of gear for the stay, since I have no real idea when I will be back.

My largest science experiment was figuring out how to make the GearWERKZ audio studio suddenly portable. Most of this gear has basically gone unused for the two years since I bought it, and hence I do not have the schema in my head that I do for other equipment loadouts that allows me to make quick emergent pack-outs of gear. This was all new. I'll be addressing some of those issues in a later post.

What I was able to pack quickly was my camera kit for this off-site period.

The gear pictured is as follows: Dolica ST-300 Tripod, Sony DSC-S750 Point-and-Shoot Digital Camera, Bower SFD2965 Flash, Compact Flash Cards (32GB and 2GB), Minolta 50mm FFL Lens, +2 Macro Lens Filter, Sony Alpha a350 dSLR Camera w/75-300mm Telephoto Lens and orange Color Filter attached. Not pictured is my gearbag for this trip, a LowePro CompuDaypak.

Today was a day to wrap up Christmas shopping, so there was not much time for picture taking. I am still struggling with ideas for a good photo shoot, what with all the snow still piled on the side of the roads. Might be a good time to hit Flickr and try and get some ideas. I'll post something here if I figure out anything worthwhile. Until then, Happy Holidays!

- Vr/Zeux..>>

Finally. After being grounded behind my desk for I don't know how many months, I am finally back out on travel. Yeah, ok; I don't need to be out here 80% of the time like I was for a 2 year stretch. But some time in the saddle out on the open range is always healthy; at least for me.

If you track the Twitter feed, you'll have noticed the contents of my Pack-Up kit for this week. I brought a lot of gear. Some of it is working out great. Some of it, not so good. Out of necessity, I took along two laptops: the Gateway P6860FX for entertainment, and the HP EliteBook 2730p for work. The HP, as always, is working out fine, but I have not spent a ton of time on it, as my workday (training) activities are leaving me little time to dial back into the home office. The Gateway is working great now as an iTunes player and web-content creation workstation. I also got to watch The Talented Mr. Ripley on the big (17") screen, so that, in some way, justified me having lugged it along.

What the Gateway has not done well, or at least has not done well in conjunction with Windows 7, is play legacy PC games. I tried to get both Freedom Force and Darkstar One to run on the Gateway to no avail. Freedom Force ran, but had a sound glitch and a click-move glitch (when I would click on one spot on the map, the characters would run to a different spot, or the mouse indicator was always the attack symbol, so that whatever I clicked on the cahracters would attack instead of just move or talk-to). It [Freedom Force]lost its chance at survival on my hard drive when I was unable to reliably save content in-game, or load datafiles that I had saved from my campaign. Darkstar One I could not even get to launch.

And so I was off to work on developing more content for the site. Which requires web access in a lot of cases. Which brings me to my next hairball.

First of all, I think any hotel that does not provide free internet access is an atrocious business model. If a Best Western or Days Inn offers it, a business traveler ****hotel like a Hilton is just being greedy by not providing the same, in my opinion. So I have had to rely almost exclusively on my Sprint Sierra AirCard 598U USB Wireless Modem. I have been on travel with the modem before, and it works great. Even in a place like Bridgeport, WV, which is not a major metropolitan hub, my service has been great.

Can Sprint not figure out how to get it right in Baltimore, of all places? I am less than a mile from the airport [BWI]and you would think I was out in the boonies somewhere based on the speed and reliability of my connection. To be truthful, we did have a spot of weather last night, so I'll check my connectivity in the AM and see if the problem is endemic to this area, or if it was the weather that caused all of my woes this morning. [update: it is the next morning, clear skies, and I'm on 1XRTT, not even EV-DO, and my signal strength is between 1 and 2 green blips; for whatever reason my signal was much better the first night in the same hotel room, but has been poor since yesterday).

It has been a while since I used the model of generating my blog posts offline for a later upload. I have been using GoogleDocs as my central draft engine in order to get away from the problem I used to have of starting a blog post on one machine, not being done when it came time to switch workstations, and winding up with a half-dozen half-written article ideas strung out across multiple machines. To say nothing of my lack of motivation to pick up a stream of consciousness some number of weeks old and trying to finish it out.

The lack of free wireless and my spotty 3G connection have forced me back to generating content locally again, at least until I get back to Virginia. The interesting thing this has turned up is the new functionality within Sticky Notes in Windows 7. Sticky Notes now supports text entry, as well as ink (in fact I wrote this post out in that very app). This might now give me a way of putting sticky notes up about article ideas I get while working on a given machine instead of some of the other data repositories I had been forced to use (and lose) under Windows Vista. Now where is that blasted MS Word file again? - Vr/Zeuxidamas..>>

This Week's Stuff

Before I get into what I've been into this week, I just want to show some props and give my host provider a shout-out. I have been with Hostmonster a skosh over one year, and my time with them has been nothing short of excellent. The 'WERKz has been in existence in one format or another for some 10 years. In that time I have been with 3 host providers. The first was utterly abject from jump. The 2nd grew long in the tooth, initially offering excellent customer service, and then sliding into complacency. If you have been coming here for some time, I reckon that the number of times you come to the site to find it unavailable are few and far between. I know because I check its availability just about every day, and typically several times a day. Hostmonster provides both the backbone for the main site, as well as my email and some of my other online services. I can not even recall so much as an email blip in the last year. Kudos to you HM; and here's to another great year ahead.

Now, on to what has been going on in the batcave. First of all, I am hanging out at Panera Bread for a little blogging time. I am working from the Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T, in the Ubuntu partition. I have been a little cranky with the Acer's performance this week (again, when using it in the Ubuntu OS). My web surfing experience in Firefox has been spotty at best, and there have been some wonky episodes with interaction with my home network. I suspected a slightly wonky LINUX driver/Acer HW interaction. Switching to Opera as my browser has made things a little better. That combined with watching my first video on the Acer's LINUX partition (an MPEG4 encode of an episode of the Discovery Channel's "How It's Made"), has lead me to a "smile's up" outlook on the Acer as I continue through the weekend.

Most of my computer time this weekend has been spent in a vigorous effort to move my entire workgroup over to Windows 7. I have migrated all of the Windows-based machines over to Win7 successfully, with only the Acer remaining. Not a big deal, as it was the last machine I submitted my request for my free upgrade for. While I am entitled to a free upgrade to Windows 7 on the HP 2730p EliteBook, I wound up ordering a separate license for Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. When I registered for my free upgrade, HP could see that I had Windows Vista Business 32-bit installed, and so that is all they would send me. Despite the fact that my TabletPC actually came with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Vista Business 32-bit, and Vista Business 64-bit. Oh, well, not a big deal. I have Win7 Pro 64-bit installed and the 2730p is positively humming along now. It was the right call.

Most of the installs went down without a hitch. The only thing bugging me now is that on the Fujitsu U820, I have been unable to get the hardware buttons and keys on the laptop chassis to work. While some of the buttons are not important, I would like to have the functionality of the light, the display rotation button, and the scroll keys. These are buttons I actually use and I consider the Fuji as not giving me the full functionality that I want without them operable.

I had some time slated to get some gaming time in on the Gateway P-6860FX, which would have marked my first opportunity to observe gaming performance in a Windows 7 environment (since the official release). Unfortunately, my Playstation 3 crew threw a wrench in that plan, so it will be a little while longer before I can comment on my own perception of gaming in Windows 7.

My video interests this week have swung towards watching some of the video I have downloaded to my XBox 360 Elite from the XBox Live Video Marketplace. Specifically, I had time to catch two of the History Channel specials I had on the Elite's hard drive. I found both 10,000 BC and The True Story of Charlie Wilson's War entertaining and educational. Since my specialty in History was European Diplomatic History and post-World War II History, I missed a lot of the stuff on the ancient world, so seeing some of the theory's on North American development just after the ice age was interesting. I had already seen Charlie Wilson's War (the Hollywood movie), so tying it together with a presentation of the actual history behind it was poignant.

I am hoping that this will be the configuration of the 'WERKz for some time. I have done too many OS installs this year, and re-set the clock too many times on my own gear. Now I am just ready to put this stuff to use:

Main Tower - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, GeForce 8800GT, 4 GB RAM, 200 GB + 250GB HD, 23" Acer Primary LCD and 19" Viewsonic Secondary LCD, Blu-Ray Drive and DVD+/-RW - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Gateway P-6860FX now running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

MacBook Pro February 2008 Update, running Windows XP Service Pak 3 via Boot Camp

Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T (soon to be) running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit alongside current install of Ubuntu Jaunty Jackelope

HP 2730p EliteBook TabletPC running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Fujitsu U820 running Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit

Ok, that's it for now from the coffee shop. Hope all is well with you and yours. On the agenda for tonight: figure out how to create my new comic book in LINUX, record the November edition of the CAG Podcast with the crew, and then maybe some gaming in between?
- Vr/Zeuxidamas..>>

Thanks a lot Apple. With the announcement that Cupertino's holiday product line-up is set, the rest of the computing industry seems content to do the same. Sure; if I peeled the onion back from the consumer level view, I am sure there are dozens of neat things just preparing to hatch. But I am talking about actual new product launches between now and Saint Nick taking his annual ride. The only cool thing I see hitting the street that is not already on a shelf somewhere is the Barnes and Noble Nook. A product which I am already a supporter of before its impending launch.

If I were in my less mature and frivolous youth, I would have already purchased a Viliv something or other, and maybe another netbook. Maybe. I did just complete a major sell-off of all of the extra workstations in the 'WERKz because so many of them went unused. But the sheer lack of anything interesting and new on the market is making me downright antsy.

For those feeling the same way, and in better financial times than I am, some companies have the answer. That is to pick up something not new, but previously out of your price reach. Verizon is one such vendor. They are subsidizing the Sony Vaio P for a mere $199 with a 2 year contract.

The Vaio P is a respectable piece of kit. Over-priced, as is the case with the majority of Sony's product lines, the Vaio P is a hard sell at its normal price of $850 or more; $300 more than the most expensive NetBook, and more expensive than the new trend of razer-books. Being able to buy one at less than 50% of its stand-alone street price should be tickling more than one techno-nerd looking to score a piece of self-funded gadgetry before the holidays hit.

Having one of these to cart home would be an enjoyable capture. While it is true that you have to invest in a 2-year data plan with Verizon, that seems almost a commodity these days. A 2-year plan, at least in the US, is the norm, so it should not hit the average buyer as anything uncomfortable.

Truth be told that if I had not just switched to Sprint, this is a deal that would definitely have had me jumping. The Vaio P, at least in design and aesthetics, is a far step and away from the rest of the bargain basement fodder typical of the netbook strata.

Oh well. I'll have to leave this to some other lucky sucker and be satisfied with my other gadgets. Still. Black Friday is just around the corner, and I think eTailers have finally figured it out. They need to offer competitive prices online that encourage users to stay at home instead of getting in line at a brick-and-mortar shop at 5 AM.

While I am supposed to be abstaining, if something absolutely incredible goes live on an online Black Friday sale, I am not certain how I am supposed to resist. I might need to go camping and leave all gadgets at home so I can not possibly even look at a BF website out of curiosity (or fear).

So I wonder how much more a second data line with Verizon would really cost me?

- Vr/Z

I have been a proponent of the TabletPC platform since its inception. Maybe I am one of the few; the outlyers. To me, the platform and what it does just makes sense. And I do not qualify it with that questionable statement that it has a place in vertical markets or for niche uses. That is just crazy talk. How people can not see the common sense in simply writing, in working in the paradigm that has dominated human culture since the arrival of the written word, and creating that in a persistent digital environment, I just can not fathom. As it is, I frequently find myself alone in looking at a device and seeing the sense in it not having a keyboard.

What I have not done is presented a step-by-step guide to doing the initial configuration and then managing the life-cycle of a TabletPC and integrating it into your work and personal life. And I am not going to have time to that today either.

But one day a few months ago, 5 months into my Motion LE1600's tour of duty as my primary work laptop and the PIM Workstation in the 'WERKZ, it seemed like a good time to take this on as a writing project. Unfortunately, shortly after I startewd that article, I decided that the LE1600 was not cutting it and that I needed more oomph at work. So I upgraded to an HP 2730p Elitebook. The HP is serving with aplomb, and eventually, I will get back the original concept behind this post. We'll do a complete walk-through of how one should expect to employ a TabletPC in every-day life, we'll wrap up with a quick review of what is currently on the market, and some of the more prudent means of going about attaining one.

Until I get back to that original intent, I did want to post what I had written those months ago, as it may be of some use to someone in the market for a slate-****TabletPC:

"First, let's start off with a description of the capabilities and limitations of the LE1600 and why I specifically chose to go with this model over other choices. The LE1600 is a slate-****TabletPC released circa mid-year 2005. The manufacturer is still going today, although I do not know that I could say going strong. A spin-off of Gateway, Motion now operates as a sole corporate entity, continuing to produce high-end TabletPCs for the professional and consumer markets. I say high-end because, despite not having keyboards or screens with high resolutions, slate-****TabletPCs are the more expensive of the genre. With no keyboard included, in order to utilize the LE11600 as a standard notebook, you have to pair it with a USB keyboard or a proprietary board from Motion.

The LE1600 has a 12" screen. My specific unit is equipped with the View Anywhere Screen, which reduces glare on the screen and enables a user to employ the tablet outdoors. It has only two USB ports, both on the left-hand side of the tablet. It also has a fingerprint reader (which I find invaluable on a laptop that does not have a keyboard for you to enter a password every time). There are indicator lights for the HDD use, power, power source, and the status of the wireless antenna. Finally there are shortcut buttons down the right-hand front face to enable customized shortcuts to features as best benefits the individual user.

The full specs are as follows: Motion LE1600 TabletPC: Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005, Intel Pentium M 1.5 GHz CPU (400MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache), 12" 1024 x 768 ( XGA ) LCD, 1.5GB DDR2 400MHz, 60GB Hard Drive, Intel 915GM integrated GPU, LAN, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi antenna, Bluetooth, 1 PCMCIA Card Slot, OnBoard Audio Chip/Sound Processor, SD Card Reader, 2 x USB 2.0 Ports,VGA Out"

While the LE1600 sits in a corner, awaiting shipment to Dell for recycling, I continue to use the HP 2730p, as well as a Fujitsu U820 UMPC, whch has core TabletPC characteristics. I do not think I could ever continue my computing hobby without utilizing at least one TabletPC in my arsenal. I also see the point in the recent slew of Tablets that are emerging. If I was not currently pursuing other financial interests, I would certainly lay out the money for a Viiv X70.

There are some key themes that run throughout this blog. Most can note my interest in gaming, which is where my whole online content pursuit began. After that initial venture, I grew into a strong interest in multi-media. Today, my passion is with ultra-mobile computing on the go. A key pillar supporting that is my in-tranisit use of TabletPCs. I get it. I think a lot of other people do, too. Here's to hoping that Microsoft and hardware vendors understand that a lot of us do get it.That despite the naysayers and negative nancy's in the media, that there is sense in continuing to meet the consumer demand for better and better TabletPC devices.

- Vr/Z..>>

Laptop Magazine: I am all for as much CULV "my razer-book kicks your netbook's butt" love as can be spread around. In that vein is this review of the HP dm3, even more timely because I have a buddy in the market for a razer-book. If you are, too, peep this review. Oh, and remember to stay away from MSI. Their X-340 (which I owned) broke, they're customer service support was horrible. So bad that it was less stressful for me to simply throw the thing away. There are better razer-books on the market, as this shootout shows.

Liliputing: May as well keep going with the general theme, as Liliputing has posted a review of Asus's latest razer-book, the UL30A. So if you are really in the market for something in this stratum, which of these two do you pick?

Gizmodo: ...annnnddddd....this is why it's called the Trifecta. In another coincidental twist, Gizmodo just recently ran a shootout between the top razer-books on the market. So now you know the answer to my question above. At least according to Gizmodo. Peep the feed.

After much dorking around with Microsoft in the spring of 2007, when my XBox 360 broke, I replaced it with a 360 Elite. When my first (single Ethernet port) router finally burned out in the summer of 2002, I replaced it with my Siemens Speedstream router, which continues to run to this day. When I left my first iPod 5G 80GB on a plane, I replaced it with...an iPod 5G; albeit a white version vice the black version I had lost.

Being a computer geek, when things get lost, stolen, or break, it is often more a cause for celebration than sorrow. I am on a more stringent procurement cycle than I used to be, but even back then, there were some levels of requirements as to how long a gadget needed to be in play before it was allowed to be replaced. So many were the times that I sat and waited. While more desirable options for numerous gadgets of mine entered the marketplace, I waited. When something finally gave up the ghost, it sometimes meant being able to buy an upgrade a year earlier than I had been planning.

But the euphoric joy does not carry the day in every situation. Sometimes, a crisis occurs right after I've just bought an upgrade package. Sometimes the unit to be replaced was something I was looking forward to not having to monkey with for some time. Such is frequently the case with internal PC components. I am all for a new video card at the drop of a hat, but I am not interested in having to go back inside a case after I've already built it.

Sometimes there is not an acceptable substitute on the market. This might leave with me with the choice to try another unit of the same device that has already failed. Or it may cause me to consider replacing it with devices that originally lost in the neck-down analysis that led me to the one that broke in the first place.

The events of this summer were somewhat in this vein. I got rid of a netbook, with an intention of funding a suitable replacement. Getting another netbook was out. I had already recently gotten rid of an UMPC, and had deemed no other devices in the stratum on the market worthy of my attention. I had also eliminated another MacBook (not yet the MacBook pro at the time), and was unwilling to consider another TabletPC.

Once I had essentially whittled myself down to only considering a razer-book with a CULV proc, I was in a happy place. I went with an MSI-X340. Things seemed to be going well between us until the hard drive sputtered to a halt one day. Now I was in a bind. I had already eliminated many first tier options from consideration. I had gone through all of the options, and determined all but one unacceptable. Also, having recently laid out a bit of cash, the price cap for the replacement was now more restrictive than it was when I bought the MSI.

There were several devices I was interested in, but many of them were not yet on the market. In a fortunate turn, Acer released their new Aspire Timeline products that very weekend and models started showing up in stores later that week. A trip to the local Staples netted me the 4810T at a great price. A device that was cheaper than the X-340 that I wound up losing money on, and was of higher quality. The Timeline has served venerably for a few months now, and is likely due for a mid-term review. Every once in a while when something breaks, things turn out ok.

I just hope that I can avoid the any experiences in the opposite vein for the near future.

- Vr/Z..>>

Netbooks are boring. I think that if I see another headline announcing the release of another netbook, I am going to vomit. I am not sure how many more variants can be rolled out with the same specs and there be an expectation that anyone will care. Honestly, each major manufacturer should only be producing one netbook. That would give us a total of about 14, and I can not for the life of me see the reason for any more than that on the market. Of the current models, they virtually all have the same specs. There are something near 60 models on the market today, with hundreds of thousands of the things also available in after-markets as models are superseded. I am not sure that any of this is necessary. Netbooks are functional computing commodities, but little else. They meet the needs of the most bland users for the most bland of functions. So, by definition, a whole lot of differentiation is not needed in this particular market sector.I had a netbook once. An Acer Aspire ONE. I enjoyed it a good deal while I owned it, but it did not fulfill the use space I really needed filled. While it was necessary to re-arrange my network mix in order to get to a place where a netbook did not make the most sense, the truth is that it is a network cfg that is better suited to my needs. So when I look back, I question whether I ever needed a netbook in the first place.My own netbook was good for coffee shop deployment, but not the best. It was a neat little ultra-mobile blogging machine. It was neat being able to take off with just my netbook and its very light carry weight. Or take it as a companion to the Gateway FX-6860FX so that I could work on something on the plane (the Gateway was too big).But outside of those 2 or 3 uses where it was good to great, it was a compromise machine for any other use that I tried to use it for. In my network reconfiguration, there were a few items that I bought based on the intended eventual departure of my netbook. The machines that fill that gap are the Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T, my HP 2730p TabletPC, and the Fujitsu U820.OK; right; this list makes it sound like I needed 3 machines to replace one. That is not the case, for issues stretching beyond the context of this article. Besides, we all know that I would have bought 3 machines anyway, so what funcitonality they were initially purchased to cover becomes less important.
The point is that for several functions, the netbook came up short, as many of them do. Do not get me wrong, I am not advocating the wholesale departure of providers from the industry. I am just saying that, since a netbook can only do so much anyway, do we really need the market flooded with 60 different models? And when I say models, I do not simply mean color-swaps. The models that are out there are versions that make one or two tweaks off the baseline and get thrown out on retail with different part numbers.The Aspire ONE did not have a screen as big as my Acer Aspire Timeline. It's keyboard was not as well designed as my HP 2730p's. It did not have the digital ink capability or convertibility of my Fujitsu U820. It did not have the hard drive space or battery life of most of the models I chose to replace it. As much as it was a companion device, I could not pick it up and start writing on it, and so it never became my all-around travel companion. That duty now goes to the Fujitsu U820.In each of these cases, the replacement device that I purchased was only marginally heavier than the Aspire ONE. For the tradeoff being the expanded capabilities that I added to my arsenal for the incremental bump in weight (in the cases where there was), that analysis was a no-brainer.I wish that the rest of the industry would get this figured out; or maybe that consumers would boycott buying netbooks for a week or so. Netbooks don't do a lot. We don't need 60 different machines that all do the same function. And I certainly do not need to read about a new debut of a netbook every day. Ugh. - Vr/Zeux...>>