Originally posted on March 10, 2010 @ 6:41 am
In three years, netbooks have entered the computer market and have been successful beyond any computer manufacturer’s dreams. If there’s anything the Asus Eee PC 701 and its descendants proved, there are people willing to sacrifice a bit of computing power for a huge price difference and portability. But I wonder, how far have netbooks gone? There’s really no other way to look at it than seeing it in graphs and the like so we’d be able to take it all in.
Fortunately, the guys at GigaOM has done us a favor, and they’ve made a graphic charting the lowly netbook’s meteoric rise to fame. You can visit their site, or you can view the charts here.
Unfortunately, there isn’t anything else the graphic tells us. For instance, the reason why netbooks have been so popular have been glossed over. I don’t have any scientific study behind me to prove anything, but a lightweight, cheap, small, and relatively sturdy laptop that can do almost any basic task its bigger brothers can: it’s a sure winner in my book. Yeah, you can’t edit videos on it, nor can you use it as a primary computer (trust me, I used a netbook as my primary computer for a while, it was a nightmare), but it’s good enough. That there is the bottom line: good enough. Good enough to travel with and to work with. That’s what the majority of computer users do anyway, this writer included.
What about you? Are you into using a more powerful computer or is a netbook enough for your needs? Tell me about it!