7 Reasons Netbooks Will Fade Away

As global economies continue their inexorable meltdowns, the low-cost, small-form-factor portable PCs known as netbooks are becoming ragingly popular. But while status-conscious early netbook adopters enjoy showing off the tiny machines in offices and coffee shops around the world, netbooks have some serious limitations that will likely prevent them from ever gaining widespread acceptance.



ChannelWeb offers 7 reasons why netbooks, like disco, Cabbage Patch Dolls and the Macarena, are just another passing fad that one day will be fodder for ridicule.



Netbook Screens Are Too Damn Small



Tiny nine-inch netbook screens are fine if you have good eyesight, but what about people who don't? According to the National Eye Institute, blindness or low vision affects 3.3 million Americans age 40 and over, or one in 28 people. That figure is projected to reach 5.5 million by the year 2020. Clearly, a significant portion the above-40 set is going to have trouble with the small screen sizes of netbooks.

Although vendors position netbooks as complementary to a primary desktop or notebook PC, some consumers may develop unrealistic expectations of what netbooks can and can't do.



Given that netbooks have limited processing power, that second list is pretty long, encompassing pretty much everything from editing digital photos and video to keeping the kids quiet in the back seat of the car during long trips. VARs might even have to do damage control with unsatisfied netbook customers, which in the worst-case scenario could threaten their trusted adviser status.

Some solution providers believe that cloud computing could be a big differentiator for netbooks in terms of their ability to deliver an acceptable level of performance when using cloud-based applications. But in the Microsoft galaxy, where the "cloud" comprises software and services components, the limited processing power of netbooks could be a stumbling block for businesses.

Does anyone think Steve Jobs is sitting by and watching netbooks take off without furiously devising an Apple product response? The MacBook Air could be considered a netbook, but it is well outside the netbook price range.



Jobs has been rather coy about netbooks and in Apple's fourth-quarter 2008 earnings call last month, he responded to questions about when Apple might enter the low-cost notebook space by saying: "We don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk."



Jobs then suggested that the iPhone, which currently accounts for 39 percent of Apple's business, could be considered a netbook, and that Apple has "had some pretty interesting" ideas for how it might bring future netbook-type products to market.

Anyone who has ever experienced the nausea-inducing feeling known as Flying Laptop Syndrome—usually triggered by someone tripping over an electrical cord and knocking a notebook off a table or by good old-fashioned clumsiness—can attest to the fact that most notebook PCs don't bounce. Which means that even a minor netbook dropping incident would result in the machine looking like it had been put through some tests in the Large Hadron Collider.

Netbooks are gaining popularity as a sort of "second car," but their limited processing power limits their audience to content consumers, as opposed to content creators. But the hallways of IT industry history are littered with the carcasses of products and technologies that people once thought would change the world. That's why we're going to wait a bit before anointing netbooks as the next big thing in mobile computing.

The small form factor and portability of notebooks is a double-edged sword, offering convenience for users but migraines for IT administrators. Since netbooks are even smaller than your average notebook, they're even easier to lose. Unless a company installs full disk encryption or some other sort of sledgehammerlike security on netbooks, allowing employees to traipse around airports and coffee shops using netbooks is fraught with peril.