Only 3 Months and $250 Away: The First Android Netbook

I learned my laptop lesson the hard way last week.

Rather than pack up my luscious lime MacBook and spend half my trip worrying about it,  I decided I was going to wing it for a couple of days on the road with only my Blackberry. I could subsist on email, text and random social media updates, right?

Wrongo.  What I hadn’t counted on was an avalanche of response from CNN Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen’smention of this blog in a (terrific) story about Facebook Addiction. Zillions of pingbacks, trackbacks, tweets, re-tweets, emails and posts later, my swollen Blackberried thumbs were ready for a spa weekend. I was relegated to the Fairmont Hotel business center, where I tried to catch up on a kludgey PC with no sound and dubious download times.

The upshot, my friends? I am soon to become a Netbook owner. After years of searching for smaller, sleeker, lighter, slimmer, there are now a range of practical options for those wishing to avoid Thumb Hell.

CNET reports that in just a year since their arrival, the tiny, inexpensive laptops known as netbooks have taken a 7% bite out of the global laptop market. To be sure, others have experimented with mini-laptops — I am the owner of two Sony VAIO Picturebooks plus a Sony VAIO lightweight 505.  I loved these juicy precursors to true pocket-sized PCs but ultimately they were a non-scalable deadend.  Over the past decade’s worth of tech-innovation Focus Groups, I’ve discovered multitudes of frustrated laptop users tired of lugging pricey machines through airports and commutes. This pent-up demand is evident in next year’s projections: Netbooks are expected to have a 12% share of the market.  Sales in Europe are skyrocketing — more than eight times higher than in the U.S.  If Apple enters the fray with a 10-inch touchscreen version – which Steve Jobs is supposedly working on during his medical leave– zowie.

Another big boost for Netbooks?  3G mobile carriers AT&T and Verizon are teaming up with netbook producers to offer them at huge discounts as long as buyers sign up for a two-year plan (much like the iPhone).

Today, these very basic netbooks — typically a keyboard, screen and a simple processor– generally cost somewhere in the $300-$600 range.  Used primarily to serve as a hub for online activity, most have a minimal amount of memory and little software beyond a basic typing program. But with so many new options for online storage, from Flickr to Facebook, who needs a fully-loaded machine?  As it is, on average, users seldom use even 50% of productivity software’s features and capabilities.

IOGEAR lists some worthy Netbook options:

• The Dell Inspiron Mini 9is one of the better known Netbooks with prices ranging from $249 for the entry level unit running Ubuntu Linux to well over $500 for a fully loaded unit with Windows XP.
• The Acer Aspire One, just over two pounds with a ten-inch screen, is one of the most customizable and feature rich laptops with enough options to make your head spin. Acer offers dozens of pre-configured models so it should be possible to fill your needs with just about anything they offer.
• If there was a grandfather to the Netbook revolution it would be the Asus Eee PC, offering cheap, small, feature rich Netbooks to the masses.

But the big news is the iminent arrival of the First Android Netbook.  The first Netbook running Google’s Android operating system is expected to be available in the next three months and cost about $250, according to a Computerworld report, says CNET’s Steve Musil.  The Alpha 680 is going through final testing at Guangzhou Skytone Transmission Technologies.

Guru’s Note: Can my thumbs wait three long months till (the rumored) Android Netbooks from HP or Dell? Or shall I immediately get myself that Acer I’ve been visiting?

Steve Jobs Presents Christmas 2008

This morning at Apple’s Let’s Rock event in San Francisco, a still-thin but always-cheeky Steve Jobs introduced what’s certain to be on everyone’s Christmas List this year. The no-brainer stocking stuffer is the juicy new fourth generation nano, hotter than ever in nine new neon colors. This thinnest iPod ever sports a sleek new design with a curved aluminum and glass enclosure. It also incorporates Genius technology and features a built-in accelerometer that automatically switches to Cover Flow when rotated and automatically goes into Shuffle mode when lightly shaken.

iPod nano (4th generation) comes in 8GB and 16GB models, starting at just $149.

Catch full liveblog coverage from Yerba Buena Center via Gizmodo.

Uber Oops. Bloomberg Publishes Steve Jobs Obituary.

Gawker is gawking at Bloomberg’s bigtime blunder: inadvertently publishing a ‘test’ obituary for the guy with more than a few corporate lives: Steve Jobs. Jobs battle with pancreatic cancer and recent wraith-like appearance at the new iPhone launch has been the scuttlebutt among investors and fans for some time, with rumor-mongers pointing to such possibilities as Laurene Powell Jobs’ propensity for pushing radical vegan diets on her husband as the culprit.

Putting aside the utter macabre of it all, what’s fascinating is the list of Who’s Who to call upon :: shudder :: his expiration. On the hot list : ex-girlfriend and SV power player, Heidi Roizen; best friend Larry Ellison; Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak; Jerry Brown; Bill Gates, Al Gore; one of the first Apple evangelists, Guy Kawasaki; Nolan Bushnell and more of the industry’s luminaries.

Guru’s Note: As one who worships on the altar of New Products, Steve Jobs is indisputably one of my gods. His companies and his products tend to have nine endlessly intriguing and eclectic lives. Here’s hoping Steve does, too.