Netbooks…just say No!

I have had a long standing feud with my Macbook.  I don’t like it and it has never liked me.  Oh, I tried, I bought the thing hoping that I could be one of those people who convert after years of PC use.  I mean I loved my iPod, love my iPhone even more but the Macbook and I just agree to disagree.  I guess it just boils down to me being a PC guy but I just never warmed up to the Mac way of life.  I can’t figure out how to the thing works.  It’s just so alien to me after decades of PC use and I find myself always thinking about how to do something before I can actually do it.

After almost 2 years of trying (you can’t fault me for giving up too easily) I finally gave in and sold it to a friend who has now completely converted to a Mac household! It was liberating, I finally got rid of that one thing that was niggling at me.  Ok, well it wasn’t the only thing but it was the thing most easily removed from my life, so its gone.  Almost immediately I felt lighter, happier and full of hope.  My plan was to get me one of those shiny new Netbooks everybody is talking about.  The plan was perfect, I only needed something to browse the web, do a few emails, and maybe a bit of video Skype action.  My primary machine was, and still is, a heavy duty Dell XPS 630i with lots of grunt and a slightly flawed operating system so my laptop didn’t need to be a big powerful machine…or so I thought!

After a bit of a wait I got my Dell Mini 1210 machine about 2 weeks ago.  Its the 12″ netbook variety.  I popped it out of the box, booted it up and within an hour it was loaded with what I need, connected to my network, and sharing my iTunes library, my printer, and my ADSL connection flawlessly (I’d like to see anyone do that with a windows network and a Mac! Hah!)

But that is where the joy ends.  After a couple weeks getting used to the slightly smaller than normal keyboard the thing I can’t get used to, refuse to accept, and can’t figure out how to remedy, is that it just doesn’t have the processing power to do what it is advertised to do.  I’m not running MS Office or any resource heavy applications.  I’m not playing PC games or MMP’s or even running a lot of video.  I just want to browse the web without it slowing to a halt every 2 minutes or locking up because I refreshed a page. 

In the end, I’ll probably get rid of that too and settle down with a nice comfortable mid-range laptop. Its too bad though, the netbook craze really seems to be much ado about nothing.  Without the processing power to be of real day-to-day use I don’t really see the value even if they are cheap.