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Not quite. There is Textmaker:

http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofp_en.htm

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http://openpandora.org/

Although primarily a gaming device, it seems to have all the right checkboxes ticked off, including 10+ hours of battery life.

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Us tech geeks think we know it all. Early adopters of technology go for the chrome and the fins (as in 1950s motor cars or Apple merchandise). Will it be ARM64 versus Intel versus AMD versus Motorola, Will the underlying instruction structure be Harvard or ARM or Intel. Will the system use conventional RAM or flash.

But a netbook is probably going to be a device to read the internet, emails, literature and books. The system that best does these tasks that will eventually claim the largest market share.

On the other hand, the consumer may push the netbook in a completely different direction. The company that adapts their product to match this shift will then succeed. How’s this for an example of a product changing direction and morphing. When IBM launched their PC in South Africa 1983, I bought my third computer. It had a spreadsheet program and some games, nothing more. You would not have persuaded me that I would use it as an oscilloscope, listen to music, chart my stock market shares and design an anniversary card. In the same five days this week, I also produced the artwork for a printed circuit board, wrote emails to my brother and daughter overseas, researched the obscure “Miller Effect” in transistors, programmed an imbedded microprocessor (PIC) and wrote this response!!!

Whenever I start quoting fancy technology a friend always brings me down to earth by asking, “What’s the functional spec?” What the s#!& is this thing going to do?”

So now the difficult question “what the s#!& are netbooks going to do?”

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The South African tech consumer is dire need of enlightenment.

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Certainly when one looks at the Amazon bestsellers, the Acer Aspire One (with it’s 8.9 inch screen) is topping the list, with netbooks being more popular than laptops. What this suggests is that people want the smaller form factor. Perhaps they buy it expecting it to be a full replacement for a laptop/desktop (especially since it comes with XP pre-loaded), which it may or may not be, depending on their needs.

Whether or not Acer is selling one every six seconds or less, I don’t know. What I am suggesting is that perhaps if netbooks stuck with Asus’ original winning formula, but with my suggested implementation, they might sell more than one every six seconds.

Additionally, there would be no confusion in customer’s minds about whether or not the netbook is a replacement for their desktop - it does not come with Windows XP or Vista.

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What Toby is saying is true. People buy because they are not enlightened. That is why in Europe they had a lawsuit against Microsoft which forced them to produce Windows XP without Media Player because there are better media players than the microsoft one.

Moreover, I’d love to see how many people know, let alone use, the Windows Movie Maker that comes with XP and Vista.

Well said Toby.

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God bless capitalism - and may the netbook evolve 50 times more in the next 12 months!

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