Netbooks: Revolutionizing the Computer Industry
Competing with their laptop predecessors, netbooks are a relatively new computer device that has emerged recently in early 2008 and are storming markets everywhere. Consumers now have an inexpensive alternative to laptops and notebooks, as netbooks meet the needs of consumers with dulled down features at a fraction of the cost.
The netbook philosophy is to utilize the Internet applications such as presentations, spreadsheets, word processing, and even storage, as hard drives have just recently increased up to 250 GB from 160 GB. As these are actually larger hard drives for netbooks, some are even justified to come with solid-state drives that are fast and small, but usually do not exceed 32 GB. Netbooks are not powerhouse machines, but are portals to internet-based applications and products.
In addition to small storage space, netbooks are also known for their low processing speeds and are usually equipped with low amounts of memory. As these computing marvels are not designed to run much more than an internet browser, 1 GB of memory has become the industry standard for netbooks, while some even run 512 MB. Processing speeds are currently hovering around 1.6 GHz.
Netbooks are also known to not come with an optical drive, but will have a USB port for an external hard drive, USB drive, or even an external optical drive. With a screen size ranging between 7″ to 10″, it is not only difficult to incorporate an optical drive, but also defeats the “portal to the internet” philosophy.
At the beginning of their development, manufacturers of netbooks tried to keep features and specifications at the minimum to keep pricing low, as not to deter laptop and notebooks sales; the profit margin for more expensive laptops and notebooks yields more than low cost netbooks. This concept was later altered when netbooks began to impact the mobile computing market, lowering the sales of laptops and notebooks. Now companies are beginning to invest more into their netbook product lines with such high consumer demand.
Original equipment manufacturers (OEM), such as Microsoft and Intel have had to meet the demand of netbooks, and have developed products for these tiny marvels of computers. Microsoft has introduced Windows XP at low costs for netbook users, and even claims that their operating system is running on 96% of netbooks. Linux has also introduced an operating system to the netbook market, but only shares less than 10% of consumer’s OS purchases. Intel’s Atom processor line offers small, low-energy, as well as, lower powered processors for netbooks.
On average, netbooks are hovering around $300, and are inexpensive alternatives to laptops due to their reduced computing capabilities. As a gateway to the Internet, netbooks are finding themselves in homes that never had a computer before, and are revolutionizing the computer industry.