Four years on we're buying better laptops than ever before and, with the netbook class now more or less deadI still cannot get over the second part of that sentence. It's true though, but I could cry bitter tears over it: when netbooks first arrived on the scene I felt happy like a little elf: small, light, cheap computers made to run Linux? That was exactly what I had been waiting for all these years.
And a netbook has been my main computer ever since I bought one. It's ideal for my personal usage in which I basically run four programs all the time: a browser, an email client, shells, and Emacs. Add a compile every now and then and you have a description of >95% of my computing time. I can code on the kitchen table or on the couch, on the bus, even in bed if I feel like it. It's fun.
I used to have a 12 inch laptop before but the netbook clearly beats it in terms of portability. And the battery life is decent too, even though the device is a few years old by now.
And I paid around $280 for the device.
And now the market for netbooks is dead. Taken over by tablets. Except, I have no use for them. I mean, it's a selfish way of looking at it because apparently many more people want tablets than netbooks. So let the market decide. Unfortunately for me, the perfect match will slowly but surely stop being available.
Ironically, I'm not even using a netbook the way it was supposedly designed to be used: for browsing the web anywhere. As I've outlined above I use it exactly like I use a desktop computer, except that I run heavier jobs remotely on other machines.
Anyway. I am not even sure what point I am trying to make. Probably none. But it does make me sad that a type of computer that is perfect for me is being replaced by another type of computer that is unusable for the same tasks.