A few weeks ago I bought a netbook by HP. It's a 10 inch, refirbished machine with 1 GB ram and 120 GB of harddrive. I bought it because I have hopefully 3 more trips this year and am sick of dragging around my laptop. So far I like it and I think it will be good for what I bought it for, but I don't love it.
Pros: It's small, light and easy to carry around. It only cost $250. I actually take this around quite a bit. I'm not really the sit in a starbucks and write my blog type, but I do bring it to work a lot. The keyboard is almost full size and I rarely miss a key because of the reduced keyboard. 3 USB ports, perfect for what I use this for and an SD card reader.
Cons: It's slow, really slow sometimes. I was going through some pictures that I had put on it and it moves at a quarter of the speed of my 2 year old laptop, if you're lucky. I was starting to get used to it and didn't think it was quite as bad until I started editting pictures on my laptop. Wow! This is a problem because one of the reasons I wanted it was because I take so many pictures and want to download them. The small screen - when you pull up a browser half the screen is the margins and bars at the top and bottom - it's hard to see much of a webpage. Also, you view pictures quite small.
Bottom line - for what I paid and what I want to use it for, it will be a handy tool. But when it dies I wont replace it with another netbook. More likely, next year I'll get an ipad... Although the screen is about the same size the apps and the programs that run on it allow for a MUCH better use of the space.
