Apple Touch-Screen Netbook?

je ne sais quoi writes "The Apple rumor mill is churning today. Reuters and the DOW Jones news wire are reporting that an anonymous source in Taiwan has leaked that Apple has ordered some 10-inch touch-screens from WinTek, the maker of the touch-screen for the iPhone. It looks like an Apple netbook could possibly be in the works for a delivery date in Q3 of this year, in time for back-to-school sales. CNET and Engadget have completely unsubstantiated mock-ups."

Comments

Who wants this?

[cayenne8]

Obviously I am not in the market for one of these netbooks, but, I'm just wondering, WHO is the large target audience for these small screened, underpowered computers?

Is it for people that ONLY do a little websurfing and email? Even with that...why not pony up just a few more $$ and get a real laptop?

This is a question in general about the netbooks, not just the Apple one.

Re:Who wants this?

[nicolas.kassis]

Cause they already have a laptop but it's a pain to carry the thing around for your average meeting or what not. Plus, tons of people get them for college since they are cheap. The couple hundred bucks does make a difference. And they aren't really that underpowered. 2 years ago a mini9 would have been a perfectly good laptop.

Re:Who wants this?

[prefec2]

The good things about netbooks are:

- They are cheap
- They normally run hours without a recharge
- They are small and lightweight so it's easy to carry them around
- For most day by day tasks they are good enough
- They boot fast, so it's more or less like using a real notebook (I mean these paper pencil things)

The bad things are:
- The screen is too small to do big tasks
- They cannot be used for complex calculation problems
- They have not enough storage for your torrented movie collection

But the important thing is, netbooks are gadgets. They are cheap and they are good at the tasks they are designed to do. They are not fully fledged work machines. But hey, a fun car is not a truck either.

Re:Who wants this?

[onefriedrice]

This may not apply to you, but most of us don't use our mobile computing devices to simulate weather patterns or crack encryption algorithms. We have beefy desktop or server machines for that, and if we need that power while out and about, we can always just ssh or remote to the powerful machine. Otherwise, a netbook is perfectly capable of everyday tasks with the added benefits of increased mobility and better battery life (i.e. the new eeepc 1000he can get 7-8 hours realistically). As a developer, a netbook isn't my primary machine, but it's perfect for my mobility needs. I'd expect it would be an equally good mobile device for a network admin or student.

You may not be in that target market, but at least now you know who they are. For many (most?) of us, the extra computing power of traditional laptops goes grossly underutilized, so why buy more than you need and get a less mobile computer in return?

Re:Who wants this?

[chunk08]

I'm currently looking at getting a netbookas a college student. Not because of cost concerns, but simply because I want something to type notes on with a battery life that will work for my 7 consecutive hours of lecture. There are uses for these things, not every computer has to be able to run folding@home, Crysis, and my web server at the same time.

Re:Who wants this?

[Corporate Troll]

An iPhone is cheap? Since when?!?

Dirty Screens

[Spazztastic]

Now you can have a netbook with smudgy fingerprints all over the screen to match your iPhone.