Netbooks, which can also be referred to as ultra-light or ultra-portables, are a class of laptop that are exceptionally small. They are in fact, the smallest laptops you can find and typically have screens less than 11 inches (~28 centimeters) when measured diagonally. Netbooks are also about 6 inches wide (~15cm) and around 1-2 inches (~3.8cm) thick. You can see why ultra-portables appeal to travelers but may be wondering what you give up in terms of quality and hardware for the small frame.
Netbook Advantages And Disadvantages For Travelers
Another good reason that travelers should take a look at netbooks is their price. They run anywhere between $250-400 for a standard build, which is usually enough for most people’s needs. Netbooks also have great battery life and will give you power for an average of 5 hours (although some go up to 10) on a single charge. You’ll also need to consider the smaller screen and keyboard of a netbook. While many people don’t find it bothersome, if you’ll be online or working quite a bit while you travel an ultra-light might not be for you. Also, if you tend to do a lot of graphic intensive work or like to game in your spare time, the smaller screen might hinder your experience.
Optical Drive
To keep their size down most netbooks don’t have built in optical drives. That means if you’ll need to buy an external drive to use any CDs or DVDs or learn how to burn them straight to the hard drive. Processors on netbooks aren’t as powerful as their laptop counterparts and if you’ll be running programs like Photoshop or anything requiring a lot of computer power you may find a netbook to be a bit sluggish. Most netbooks also come with less memory than a comparable laptop so you won’t be able to mutli-task quite as well. For most people these drawbacks however are easily manageable and don’t negatively affect the user experience.
Hard Drive
Hard drives on netbooks do have one big advantage over larger drive – they are solid state. That means less moving parts and more reliability in the long run, not to mention better battery life as a result. The capacity of hard drives in netbooks has also increased quite a bit in recent months and now are on par with larger laptops. For those travelers who take a lot of pictures with point and shoot digital cameras, a 500GB drive should be more than enough. Photographers taking pictures in RAW format will need to consider external hard drives or backing up into an online service.
Operating System
The vast majority of netbooks will come preloaded with Windows although some manufacturers like Dell also give you the option of using Linux to save yourself some of the money. Apple doesn’t make a netbook, the closest to an ultra-portable they have is the Macbook Air although the Dell Mini 10 can be configured to run Mac OS X as well.
