NetBooks Are Going To Be The Next Thing
There's a new style of computer coming that I believe over the next 2 years is going to become very popular.
I was recently in France for a few days with around 20 friends. At least 60% of them had 2 mobiles, one standard phone and a Blackberry for email. I asked if any of them uses either phone for the internet and none of them did. They all complained that the screen was too small and overall the experience was messy and too fiddly.
But the internet is fast becoming a necessity for many people. Even on holiday when we're supposed to be relaxing and having fun it's useful, for example -
- Want to easily check the local weather to see if it's worthwhile heading to the beach tomorrow?
- Doing some online banking, perhaps keeping an eye out for any recent fraud, which is a common occurrence for holidaymakers
- How about changing your flight with Ryanair or EasyJet, it's more costly if you do it by phone
- Lose your passport, apparently most British embassies now have a recorded message which asks you to fill out an online form before they'll deal with the problem
- Want to find out what's happening in the local town, festivals, restaurant reviews etc
Laptops Are Old School
Laptops promise a lot but when you have to lug them around alongside all the extras (mouse, power pack, leads etc) many people rightly balk at the idea. But computer technology is always getting better, faster, smaller and above all cheaper.
So a new breed of computers is starting to be sold, and their nickname is NetBooks. They're small, ultra light machines built around internet access. In fact one could easily make the argument right now that any computer without internet access is pointless.
NetBooks are small enough to be placed in a woman's (large) handbag and the power usage is supposed to be excellent. The internet will come from a 3G or WiMax internet connection and while these are still expensive the price will drop over the next few years.
The price differential between Laptops and NetBooks is going to be highly significant. Now for example the cheapest quality Laptop costs £400 but NetBooks start at around £200.
Within a few years I think you'll see many holidaymakers using NetBooks on the beach, in cafés, by the pool etc. Have you seen for example how so many people seem to be married to their mobile phones, always clutching them and checking the screen as if their lives depended on them? Look for this trend to continue but with NetBooks.
An Asus NetBook Mini-Computer
NetBooks And The Google Investment Angle
Google's aim I believe is to take control of our computers in a similar fashion to Microsoft. 90%+ of readers will be reading this on a Microsoft Windows controlled machine. But in the future Microsoft software could well be obsolete because everything will be run through our internet browsers, so called Cloud Computing.
The exceptional advantage to Cloud Computing is that all our data and programs will be held on servers rather than in the machine we're working on. This means that in the future whichever computer you're using will have all your data and programs on.
So buy a NetBook, take it on holiday, read/write 1001 emails, re-organise your diary and play around with some Word/Excel files from work and on your return to your home or office computer everything has been automatically updated.
Try to do this right now, even if you're good with computers, and it's odds-on you'll run into problems with the synchronisation.
As many readers know, we've been buying Google's stock for near on a year now and it's for this concept of Cloud Computing, not whether the company's online advertising revenue goes up or down in the next quarter.
If Google can crack this concept then there's no reason its stock can't climb to $5,000 - $10,000 over the next several years (currently $550). Google's future is not about search, it's about getting its software and services on to a large percentage of the planet's 1billion+ computers.
Useful Links
More information on NetBooks and some of the available models can be found on these links -
