Elgan: Can gadgets be too small, cheap and feature rich?

Computerworld - Everybody knows mobile gadgets get smaller, cheaper and more feature-rich over time. But at what point are they too small, cheap or functional?

Too small

Netbooks are tiny. That's the whole point. But can they be too small? The answer is: Yes.

A Chinese company called uSmart showed off at the Hong Kong Electronic Fair a netbook with a 4.8-inch screen. The gadget is powered by an Intel Atom processor. It even has HDMI support for audio and video, something most laptops don't even have. So what makes this a netbook, rather than a PDA? It runs Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 or Linux!

Small and portable netbooks are great. But if you can't see the screen, and can't use the keyboard, the netbook is just too small. Users complained about the cramped screen and keyboard of netbooks with 7-inch screens. There's no way a 4.8-inch screen netbook running Windows can be anything but miserable to use.

Even devices without screens and keyboards have become too tiny for their own good -- USB thumb drives, for example. The iDisk Diamond offers 256MB of storage for $39.99, and it's literally about the size and nearly the thickness of a fingernail.

Elecom offers a MicroSD MR-SMC03 card reader that's nearly as small. The tiny, $13 device lets you insert your own MicroSD card and read it on any PC.

Both the iDisk Diamond and the Elecom MR-SMC03 are literally small enough to swallow, which is too small, in my book. If you drop it, it's like searching for a contact lens. Fortunately, both have places to attach a strap, which secures the gadget but triples the bulk.

Too cheap

Cheap is good, right? Is it possible for gadgets to be too cheap? Can phones be cheaper than free? We're about to find out.

Wal-Mart is selling a range of phones at absurdly low prices starting tomorrow. Among them are three BlackBerry phones that Wal-Mart will pay you $100 to take out of the store (as long as you leave after signing a two-year wireless contract). The way they market the phones is that anyone who buys one gets a $100 Wal-Mart gift card, and the price for each BlackBerry is zero. But let's be clear. The price for smart phones has now dropped to $100 below zero.

When did laptops became cheaper than netbooks, and netbooks cheaper than cell phones?

The $400 netbook rocked the industry as recently as last year. But this year, you can get a full-size Acer laptop with 2GB of RAM and 160GB hard drive for $250 from Best Buy. That's not far off the new second-lowest price for laptops. Staples and Wal-Mart are selling full-size HP laptops for $300 each.