I guess those ads with hip teenagers buying PC’s instead of Macs are working.  A recent survey by Retrevo found 34% of students planning on buying a computer were looking into getting netbooks.  Another 49% of the participants were planning on buying full-sized PC laptops.  Thus finding the majority of student laptop shoppers were not considering buying a Mac.  

I know I’ve been saying it for a few months now, “I want a netbook.”  

Besides editing endless hours of video, pretty much everything else I do on my computer involves the Internet – email, research, reporting, reading news, entertainment, and the list goes on… So when not editing video, why am I lugging around my $2,500 MacBook Pro that weighs about six pounds everywhere I go, putting my expensive machine and software at risk of being stolen?   I mean seriously, this piece of metal, with all the software and hardware in it, could probably be valued at $5,000 bucks.

That’s why I want a netbook.  It’s an inexpensive solution to everything else I do on the computer these days, heck, I don't think I need a single piece of software installed on my machine to get things done.  Even writing and spreadsheets I can get done up in the cloud with Google apps.

So for the Facebook posting, blogging, tech saavy, social media-indulging students, it makes perfect sense as well.   The idea of installing a 12 disc digital encyclopedia on their hard-drives, dead, one word - Wikipedia.  Downloading photos to an internal hard-disc library, dead - why not just upload to Flickr or Photobucket?  The need for Microsoft Office to write essays, dead - Google Apps.  Taking it further, even broadcast television can be watched on the computer using Hulu or YouTube. 

Beyond the fact that almost everything can be done through the Internet and cloud based applications, Netbooks are extremely inexpensive alternatives to laptops.  The one shown above, the Acer Aspire One netbook in white sells for $349 at BestBuy and there's plenty of other models out there that are even cheaper, for as low as $200 bucks.  

That's probably why rumor has it Apple is hard at work to get out a $600 dollar touchscreen tablet computer in the next few months that will apparently blow netbooks away.

Unless you need a really need a powerful machine to get processer intensive work done, netbooks are the way to go.