Now, there’s an interesting conversation to be had about laptop size, I think. In the nineties, as the luggables faded away, one started to see most laptops around a fairly consistent size and weight- 5 to 7 pounds with a 12 or 13 inch screen. Anything bigger was a desktop replacement; anything smaller was an “road warrior” sublaptop. You’d pay a huge premium for either of those.

Over the next 15-odd years, laptops seemed to grow more than shrink. LCD screens got cheaper, and I suppose that it was easy to sell a big screen. The Toshiba Libretto was one of a very few pushes to sell a smaller laptop to consumers, and it didn’t make much of a mark. I think part of the reason netbooks are getting positioned as a separate category is because average notebook LCDs got so overgrown.

My wife uses my older Toshiba A30 with XP, and I also have my Dell 9400 (XP) and my Mac Mini and they serve their purposes well too.

What’s with the three posts to get the netbook suckage point across? Methinks you doth protest too much.

When I bought a laptop for my wife I got her an EEE. Unlike the T42, it fits in our diaper bag and she can put it on one knee while holding the baby. But it’s more functional for long facebook updates, editing google docs, etc. than any phone. She loves it.

I’ve thought about getting a netbook of my own but you’re right, it doesn’t hit a sweet spot for me. I think the netbook zone of suck is a developer-specific thing. For people like my wife they are perfect.

I’m wary of people saying that 2005 specs are “good enough” for most people’s computing uses — it seems too reminiscent of the famous line “640K ought to be good enough for anybody. Yes, a lot of people are using web applications, but in an increasingly JavaScripty/Ajaxy/RIA world, I suspect they’re going to want more and more processor cycles.