A year after the Asus Eee kickstarted a tiny revolution, the massive machineries of mainstream vendors are making their moves. Dell is the latest to join the ultra-portable party with its Inspiron Mini 9 — clocking in at the industry-standard kilo, with Wi-Fi, webcam, solid-state drive and a choice of Ubuntu or Windows XP.
But the marketing message is resolutely consumer: 'Teens, tweens, travellers and social networkers' are the target audience. This is a missed opportunity. Those of us who have been using netbooks at work know just how easily they fit the daily round, and how much better they are than their larger siblings for many tasks. On the principle that the best camera in the world is the one you have with you, a connected device you don't mind carrying is worth much more than one with a higher spec but too much hassle. So why are there no enterprise netbooks?
Fear. For such a small, unthreatening device, the netbook has created a climate of terror among hardware makers. It is a low-margin device with the potential to cannibalise much more lucrative product streams, and one that potently demonstrates the power of 'good enough'. Unwelcome ideas in marketing; good news for the rest of us.
Fortunately, we're the ones who count. Instead of hoping that business doesn't notice the netbook — a bit late, now so many consumer variants are used at work — vendors should use them as spearheads. The enterprise wants cheap hardware that improves productivity: pretending otherwise is a bad strategy in the short term, catastrophic in the long. But add the rest that enterprise needs — manageability, security, configurability — into the mix, and you've got your margins back. Add in service and subscription models, and netbooks stop looking like a liability and start smelling of serious money. You could give them away and come out on top.
There are plenty of other strange gaps in the market — nothing needs extra expandability, big external screens and full-sized keyboards more than a netbook, so why do none of them have docking stations? All it takes is acceptance that the product category is here to stay, and strategies fall over themselves for consideration.
A bit of imagination goes a long way in business IT: this opportunity, though, is staring the industry in the face.
Talkback
The irony here is that having had my Asus Eee 1000 for a few months now, I am finding that it's actually more useful for work than entertainment.
Obviously, netbooks need to be low-spec compared to traditional notebooks so that they can be cheaper, smaller and lighter, however a lot of the things that you want to do with your notebook for fun (and I am not talking one-handed surfing) like watching DVDs and gaming just aren't possible with a netbook,
Aside from the fact that there obviously isn't a DVD drive, I have downloaded movies from iTunes onto my Eee and it crawls even on greediest power-setting. Not tried gaming but can't imagine that is going to be a better experience. Which means that the Eee is really better suited to word processing and writing articles but then netbooks were also going to be a winner with journalists.
This is what i would most use a netbook for. General notes out in the field, a photo or two (so lets have that camera detachable/steerable), a PDF reader, and some spreadsheet capability.
A docking station would be great for synchronising with other kit, but if push comes to shove I can manage with USB sticks.
The only thing holding me back from buying any of the available ones at the moment is battery life. I want to be able to go an entire 8 hour working day without access to mains power. Swapping battery packs while bouncing around in the back of a Landrover is simply not an option on a regular basis.