Netbooks are all the rage right now, and why shouldn’t they be: they’re small, they pack tons of functionality (that’s perfect for the on the go traveler), and their cheap! At least 25% of us (for those of you doing the math, that’s me.) here at iTourAZ.com are gadget geeks, and with so many people gearing up for holiday travel we thought it the perfect time to write a post on one of our absolute favorite travel companions: The Netbook!
Photo by nDevilTV
Netbooks, What are they?
Well, for those of you less new gadget crazed out there, a Netbook is a lightweight, small form-factor, less than full featured, & cheap laptop computer. Wikipedia defines a Netbook as:
“a rapidly evolving category of small, light and inexpensive laptop computers suited for general computing and accessing web-based applications” – wikipedia
What makes a Netbook so cool?
Well, I suppose that depends on the person using them… but from our perspective it’s the fact that they are a perfect complement to you full featured Laptop or Desktop machine that you have at home. Additionally they have all the features you want while traveling to the great state of Arizona! Specifically our favorite features are as follows:
- Super fast boot up and wake from sleep: Have you ever sat their waiting for your laptop or desktop to come out of sleep mode or boot up? Of course you have! Well you don’t have that problem with the Netbooks they wake from sleep almost instantly and depending on the operating system and type of hard drive you have they boot up very fast.
- Most (but not all) come with Solid State Hard drives: In layman’s terms these things are pretty durable! There’s no moving parts to the solid state hard drives so there’s a lot less likelihood of that hard drive you just upload all your days photos to crashing because you’re traveling so much and that hard drive is bouncing all over the place.
- Built in video cameras & microphones: Most (but again not all) have built in video cameras and come pre-loaded with software that lets you do on the fly video chats with family or friends back home. It also allows you to quickly take fun snapshots or record video journals of your trip. Some of our favorite software for video conferencing is Google Talk and Skype.
- The form factor: These things are just the right size for Traveling (like to the great state of Arizona) with! They are typically about 3lbs and have a 9 inch screen.
- Battery Life: Some models advertise 9 straight hours of continuous use before you have to charge them up again!
Why don’t I already have one of these fantastic machines!
Well, they are a relatively new category of computing machine. They’ve really only been on the scene for about 3 years. Additionally they don’t do everything you want or could do with a full featured desktop machine. They simply don’t have the kind of horse power under the hood that you need. These machines are designed to consume very little power but the tradeoff there is the amount of computing power you have available to you. Specifically the things that you can’t do that most buyers have a use for are as follows:
- Play graphic intese video games.
- Stream and view HD Video.
- Use other client based software that is CPU intensive like editing videos, editing photos, running multiple applications at once.
- Anything you need a built in CD/DVD ROM device for… um these things don’t have one.
Where can I get one and how much do they cost?
As to where you can get one well… just about anywhere! They sell these things at Target, Walmart, Bestbuy, and just bout every online store! We recommend a tried and true purchase online with Amazon.com to find the best deals with a trusted source. You can expect to spend between $200 and $500 on one.
Why are you talking about NetBooks on a site like iTourAZ? What does this have to do with Arizona?
That’s an excellent question! Our answer here is that we suspect if you live in Arizona you’ll be doing some amount of traveling over the holidays that are coming up…. if you don’t live in Arizona and are checking out this site it’s likely that you’ll soon be taking a trip to our beloved Arizona and this is the perfect travel companion for that trip of yours!
What makes it a perfect travel companion?
Well, lots of the things we stated up above in this article… but… if we had to break it down into a list for you it would look something like this:
- You don’t want to lose those photos do you? With a Netbook you can easily transfer the pictures you take each day onto your netbook for quick simple editing like cropping but more importantly you can use the built in wireless connection to upload to your favorite photo sharing and archiving site (ours is Flickr). This also keeps you from filling up that memory card right before the “oh so perfect” shot materializes!
- Blogging!!! Using your netbook you can easily journal your entire trip as you are taking the trip and share with friends and family in near real time how your adventure at the Grand Canyon, Sedona, or the Cards game is playing out.
- Video Chat! Trying to keep in touch with mom and dad … or the kids if you’re brave enough to leave them home along and want to keep a tab on them and the “No house parties” situation. These Netbooks are just perfect for that!
- Quick access to Google each night: If you’re traveling and want quick access to Google to get directions, updates on traffic, read up on your tourist destinations for the next day, or shoot off some emails to friends and family this device is just perfect for that!
Are there any particular machines you recommend?
Absolutely! We really like anything that ASUS makes they seem to have the best value for the money! We are currently particularly enamored with the latest offering from ASUS: It’s called the ASUS Eee PC T91MT Tablet and its’ fantastic! This little gem of a Netbook weighs only 2.2 lbs and features a multi-touch (think iPhone) swiveling screen, a gig of ram, and 32GBs of Solid State Drive goodness! ASUS also gives you 500GBs of online storage (think a constantly backed up hard drive in the sky). You get all of this for $532 shipped to your door in two days if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber! You can also check out this great LifeHacker post on the 5 best Netbooks topic. There’s lots of other ASUS Eee PC’s out there. We’ve listed a few here for you to browse through:
Good luck on finding the yourself that perfect Netbook! Hit us up in the comments and let us know your favorite thing about Netbooks or if you have any questions we can help answer! Also be sure to check out our Black Friday posts for some fantastic deals on Netbooks!
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