Should i buy a netbook or not?

I’ve been wondering whether i should buy a netbook or not for quite a while now, as a replacement for my every day laptop that’s way too heavy to carry around (around 6 pounds). And i’m sure there’re many of you having the same problem as i have. That’s why i put together a couple of pros and cons of a normal everyday netbook.

The pros:

• they’re small and light
• they have good autonomy (2-5 hours)
• they’re fairly inexpensive (300-500$)
• they’re not heavy at all: around 2-3 pounds max
• the latest ones have decent hardware and can even run Windows XP or Vista

The cons:

• the hardware inside is still pretty slow
• being so small, most of the netbooks are uncomfortable to use for a longer period of time (small screen, small keyboard, etc)
• overall build quality and materials is low for the cheap-medium models

The good part is that netbooks are getting better. There are already a couple of 12″ models on the market and more to come. Those provide a good enough screen and keyboard layout without sacrificing portability.

And, by the end of this year, Intel is going to launch their new ultra low voltage architecture, the next ATOMs, based on the Nehalem technology. And this is scheduled to bring a big performance boost, though netbooks equipped with it will be quite expensive in their early months.

So, nowadays i find netbooks still not good enough for a savvy user. They’re good as a backup of your laptop or when you only need them for 1-2 hours a day (like when you’re traveling). But, if i were you, I’d wait till next year when netbooks will truly become mainstream and will be truly worth full, or better yet till touch screen laptops take over the market.