Thoughts on NetBooks and some apps

Okay, I love toys and have been thinking about two in particular for a while. (This doesn’t mean I’ll get either one though). I’ve been reading a lot about e-book readers like the Kindle, Sony PRS 505 and the FoxIT eSlick reader (hello Calibre!) I’ll save that for another post though.

The other toy I’ve wanted for a while has been a netbook- I even wanted a pepperpad! But c’mon, a pepper pad is crazy price and netbooks are well… let’s just say that’s a lot of “wine money”.  Netbooks are those little sub laptops like a small Mac Air, but $3000 less. But I really wanted one after seeing the model that a co-worker had bought for his CalTrain commute and was using to get on the work VPN -something I can’t do on my Mac at home.

When I was in SA, I got to use my Dad’s Acer Aspire One during my visit. His is set up to use WindowsXP, has a 6 cell battery, and is the 10″ model, not the much smaller one. I used it for two weeks straight, and now I’m an even bigger fan than before.

There are some things I would do to tweak or customize the machine though- mostly for using the trackpad. It has a built-in page scrolling thing that I thought was too sensitive, but otherwise it was great. The keyboard on his was really nice too. Some of the other netbooks I’ve played with in stores were too cramped or had made too many compromises for space.

The netbooks wouldn’t be a good machine for those who don’t have another computer, but as a secondary one to have in the house or for frequent travel, they’re great. (They’re much lighter than regular laptops).

The one app I highly recommend though for everyone, whether they’re using a netbook or not is Dropbox.

I’ve been using it for a while already and installed it on that machine so I could sync some notes and pictures while I was traveling. I was really glad I did so as it turned out I could use some of my previously stored files while I was in SA.

Dropbox is free, so go download it (or be cool and use my referral link so I get more storage space ).

The other app I’ve been playing with a lot lately is Evernote. I don’t use it nearly as much as I do dropbox, but I think it’s definitely worth looking at – especially if you have an iphone and have a weird habit like I do of taking pictures of things to remember them. (I’m looking at you Marc)

Take some time and check out their screencast. It’s a bit long, but try to get to the part where he takes the pic of his ticket stubs and the text-recognition system kicks on. It’s pretty cool.

The last app I’d re-recommend is Skype. I’ve been a user like most of you for a while, but I used it on my dad’s netbook a few times to check the built-in webcam. I keep forgetting how awesome Skype really is. And using it with that netbook was great- if you have skype-out minutes and one of those lil’ machines while travelling, you’d be set for some remote-work fun.