Until we can get decent devices with virtual displays that don’t require a ‘real’ screen, voice recognition which works consistently despite background noise, or devices which depend on mentally-operated controls, I doubt we’ll see ‘a lot of progress’ of the sort you’re looking for. Netbooks are compromises as much as laptops or PDAs are, albeit with the concessions made on the size front in favor of usability (PDA and the ultra-small UMPCs are pretty damned hard to work with, and hard to type on, and their displays tend to be pretty tiny… and you have the whole battery life issue along with limited CPU power).

As far as netbooks not doing ‘real’ work, I have to wonder. Sure, it is not a power player for big games, graphics, and other CPU-sucking apps, but I find it perfect for meetings, word processing, etc. I can run my whole Office 03 suite on it without a hesitation. I do actually use it for all three of my jobs and for my main hobbies- and so far it has behaved at least as well as my older desktop or my Fuji Lifebook laptop as far as doing what I want it to do.

Part of this is certainly that Julie was able to get us the free memory upgrade, and they have the 60Gb hard drive. A smaller RAM and drive would certainly limit the amount of ‘real work’.

It was very cool that it had Windows in ROM but of course with the many updates that Windows requires you quickly filled up the small RAM disk with updates. Had the OS been put into flashable memory it might have been better.

I’ve noticed over the years that HP is many times ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and often their products die off as the rest of the market catches up. I recall the days of HP Touchscreen computers with the 2 1/2″ hard case floppy drives. No one else had anything like that.

I agree with the other poster that said this machine was too underpowered as a replacement for my laptop/desktop PC and too large to fit into a pocket. I think as long as we keep trying to put keyboards and pointing devices into our computing architecture we’re not going to make a lot of progress.

Nuno Pedrosa.

The Netbook category, I would have to agree with Geoff, is for mobile computing minus the whole ‘power user’ aspect – if you’re browsing the Internet or editing a Word document, you can do just as well on a small netbook (current generation, not the first-generation Eee) as you would on a full-sized laptop. And, unlike more ‘pocket friendly’ devices, has controls and a screen which don’t require a child’s or a neurosurgeon’s skilled fingers to manipulate or eagle eyes to view content… like the iPod Touch or iPhone. I have friends who complain that they can’t use the Touch since it wasn’t designed for fingers that weren’t child-sized or skinny.. and they’ve got slightly larger-than-average hands.

Personally, I’d have to say the Mini looks like the sort of device you’d use for around-the-house browsing or on-the-go browsing at Starbucks or similar, rather than ‘serious’ work.. although with the full-sized keyboard, this along with the power adapter would let one work on Excel spreadsheets and Word documents with no issues, and let you watch video without problems as well. It won’t let you play current FPS games, but it wasn’t ever designed for that sort of use in mind; web browsing, general simple computing tasks, and so forth are more its metier… and its looks and size make it a good substitute for the Netbook-style Mac that Apple has yet to release, or even admit to working on, whose absence may be filled for the time being by the HP Mini 1000 and 2140.

I think a surprisingly large number of people use their laptops primarily for e-mail, surfing, IMing, Skyping, and Office work. People who need audio/video/image editing or 3D gaming won’t find what they need here, but the rest are in luck.

I use mine (the original Eee PC) as a “PC companion,” with a powerful desktop at home for the rest.

Good job again!!