Asus N10 Netbook
by, Zack Davis http://www.photographyconnect.com
Netbooks have been around for a few years but are just being pushed in the mainstream market this last year. These ”Mobile Internet Devices” (MID’s) as they were referred to before they got their ”Netbook” label are great little machines depending on what kind of mobile computing you need. They lack many of the features we expect to come with a full size laptop including a DVD or CD disk drive. The monitors are not as high resolution and instead of saving money when purchasing smaller sizes the price actually increases. But could you find these little portable computers an option over a more expensive laptop?
There’s a few things to understand about these devices before making the leap into a purchase. The first is they are not a laptop replacement, they’re not as powerful nor as fast. So using a few basic guidelines listed below might be helpful for you to decide if a netbook suits your needs.
Do you need to be able to Photoshop on the go?
Netbooks lack the memory and processing speed that Photoshop would require (unless you’re planning to use Photoshop 5). Netbooks on average ship with only one gigabyte (1gb) of RAM and only hold a maximum of approximately three gigabytes (3gb). The processors on Netbooks are also slower, and do not offer multiple cores like most full featured computers today. Couple all that with small screens that a general lack of higher resolutions and these little machines are not very useful (at least the current generation) for photo editing. Due to this, you definitely want to look into a laptop that offers more memory and a larger processor.
You want some portable storage.
We all love this idea, portable storage on the go! We’re at the wedding, on a session or just having some fun on our own and want to get those images off the card and onto some more long term storage. Netbooks do offer a decent amount of storage for the price, with the average Netbook coming with 160gb of storage. With today’s larger raw file sizes and increased card sizes that doesn’t sound like as much as it used to I know. But, if you don’t need a full size laptop and want the storage on the go you could easily increase your storage capacity with external USB drives such as thumb drives or portable hard drives; both of which will fit safely inside your padded camera or netbook bag. Note: I would not recommend external storage options such as USB drives or portable hard drives for traveling photographers. Instead look into a service like mozy or carbonite that will keep your images safe till you get home.
You hate to surf the internet on your cellphone!
Most of have tried it, and a lot of us have smart phones with those data plans. Problem is, really who wants to surf the internet on a screen only a little bigger than a package of Trident? Again if you don’t have a laptop or a “dongle” (a little USB thumb drive sized device you plug into your computer giving you cellular internet access) you can actually pickup many netbooks today with a 3G adapter and WiFi built in. This basically means if you’re not in a hot spot you can use the same cell phone signal as your smart phone and surf the internet on the go. The downside to this is the cost of the data plan but if you’re facebook addiction… I mean business requires more flexibility than your phone can provide and you want something that can fit easily into a bag or purse this might be an option for you.
Summary
So those are just a few of the many questions I’ve been asked by friends, photographers, and family when they’re considering a laptop or a netbook. In the end if all you want to do is run a few light programs, surf the internet, review some images and have some portable storage you should be able to utilize a netbook and not need a full size laptop. Though, if you would like to be able to Photoshop, edit slide shows, or run any other graphics or memory intensive programs a full size laptop will be a good place to start.
