Buy Netbook
Right now netbooks are such a hot commodity--some 10 million of them shipped last year, according to the number crunchers at IDC—that I almost expect the word to burn a hole in my flat panel display as I write it.Sure, the petite footprint coupled with the petite price makes netbooks irresistible. And if you're a person who never met a tech trend you didn't like, by all means netbooks are for you.But if you tend to agonize over your tech purchases, here are a few considerations that may give you pause before opening your wallet to buy one of these mini-laptops.1. Price.It's undeniable that netbooks are cheap. You can buy one for as little as $250. That's almost an impulse purchase (Radio Shack sells them for $50 if you sign a two-year mobile broadband deal with AT&T for $60 a month).If you already have a laptop, though, a netbook isn't going to give you anything you don't already have and, in most cases, it will give you considerably less. From that perspective, the choice before you is not between buying a $250 netbook or a $400 notebook, but between spending $250 or $0 by standing pat with your existing hardware.If you don't have a laptop, the netbook is no substitute for one. Even netbook stalwarts admit that the boxes are designed to be "secondary" computers because what they do best is work "in the cloud" and they do not have the muscle to handle robust onboard applications.
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