More Netbooks In Depth

The hidden dangers of touchscreens

Smartphones, tablets, and now touchscreen PCs all can lead to stress-related injuries of your hands, arms, back, and eyes -- unless you use them right.

iPad 2 vs. business class tablets

Tech lovers have been flocking to the iPad 2 and other tablets in order to watch movies, read books, surf the Web and make video calls on the latest, greatest, thinnest, lightest, coolest devices. But where do tablets fit within the enterprise? Insider (registration required)

Making iPads enterprise ready

CIOs continue to test the popular iPad tablet for enterprise applications. These pilots show potential, but the devices still have lots of limitations. Insider (registration required)

Dell Latitude 2120: Slightly rugged, wildly overpriced

Dell touts the Latitude 2120 as the ideal netbook for business. That engenders the question: is an old-school, underperforming, under-screened netbook can really be an ideal solution for business computing?

Gadgets for cloud computing

A flood of simple computing devices is hitting the market, aimed at pushing the cloud outside of the enterprise. Samsung and Acer have announced Chromebooks. Startup ITWin is offering a USB device that helps users access files on remote computers. And Panasonic has shown a Viera tablet for its TVs.

Visual tour: Google's Chrome OS

Google's all-Web computers are due to hit stores June 15. Here's a look at what to expect.

Samsung NC110 Netbook: Slow but Stylin'

Netbooks are so formulaic these days, it's difficult to stand out from the crowd. Samsung, in a small way, has managed that with the $330 (price as of May 11, 2011) NC110. With only the standard netbook 10.1-inch display, the typical 250GB hard drive, and the usual accoutrements, the NC110 instead makes an impression through a combination of styling, battery life, and software. Unfortunately, it also stands out as a slow performer.

Toshiba Mini NB305-N600: Style Over Substance

The Toshiba Mini NB305-N600 ($380 as of April 5, 2011) comes from the higher end of Toshiba's two-part netbook family. Nothing if not eager to meet your netbook needs, Toshiba offers its two basic models--the Mini NB300 and NB500 series--in a total of 11 configurations, and figuring out how they differ requires going through spec sheets with a magnifying glass. Of course, specs don't tell the whole story, anyway--and overall, the story isn't that compelling.

Toshiba Mini NB505-508GN Netbook

Toshiba's Mini NB505-508GN has two things that separate it from the netbook pack, albeit only slightly: a somewhat better-than-average keyboard and longer-than-average battery life. Okay, make that three things--it's also better-looking than most of its competition with its smooth styling and lime-green lid. Otherwise, the unit is the epitome of the cookie-cutter netbook.

Skooba Design Harmony iPad/Netbook Satchel

Skooba Design advertises its Harmony Collection line of laptop and iPad bags as "designed by women, for the way women really work and travel." I recently had the chance to test out the $100 Harmony iPad/Netbook Satchel, and while the bag features several interesting design flourishes, the overall look and feel leaves something to be desired.

Acer Aspire One 522 Netbook

The Acer Aspire One 522 (model BZ897) delivers a good, classic netbook for a very reasonable price ($330 as of March 18, 2011). Petite and slim with a handsome 10.1-inch widescreen LED-backlit display, a 250GB hard drive, an integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam, and a multitouch touchpad, this portable does a solid job with multimedia and boasts pretty good battery life: nearly 7 hours in our tests using the provided 6-cell battery.

HP Mini 1103 Netbook: Solid, Old-School

The business-oriented HP Mini 1103 netbook is good-looking and solidly designed, and it has great battery life. Two years ago it would've earned high praise. Today it reminds us how inadequate Atom-based netbooks are for all but the most basic computing tasks. If the basics are all you need to cover, however, at $299 (as of February 28, 2011) this machine is a good deal with nice ergonomics.

Visual tour: The Android tablets of MWC

Mobile World Congress 2011 was the launchpad for tablets from tech heavyweights LG, Samsung, HTC, Toshiba, Acer, and ViewSonic. Here's a roundup of what debuted.

Intel's mini-SATA SSD packs a performance wallop

Intel's Solid-State Drive 310 Series is one quarter the size of a credit card and can be used in handhelds as a primary drive or in laptops, netbooks or PCs as a secondary boot drive. Diminutive in size, it offers respectable storage and performance.

Visual tour: Top tablets from CES

Take a gander at our picks for the most intriguing tablets from CES. Is one of these new models in your future?

QuickPoll: What will be the biggest announcement from CES 2011?

New tablets, 4G smartphones, Web-TV convergence devices and more will be on display this week at CES 2011. What will be the biggest announcement from the show?

Visual tour: Tablet Wars of 2011 loom

The iPad rules the tablet world right now, but an Android army has begun its attack. Soon to join the fray are even more tablets, equipped with the Windows, WebOS, and Sugar operating systems. Here's what to expect in the year ahead.

Apple's new 11.6-in. MacBook Air: Don't call it a netbook

Yes, it's small and has a modest processor. But with a full-size keyboard, top-tier design and construction, and speedy onboard flash memory in place of a hard drive, the tiny new MacBook Air is a standout laptop.

Hot tech buys for the holidays

As the holiday shopping season nears, many companies are launching products that could be popular sellers. With its starting price down to US$999, Apple's lightweight MacBook Air laptop is high on my shopping list. Canon's new PowerShot SD4500 IS, a point-and-shoot digital camera that can shoot 1080p high-definition video, is another product I may buy, but only if its $349 price comes down. Other coveted products expected to be out soon include Dell's Venue Pro smartphone and Adam's Notion Ink tablet.

A new MacBook Air? Playing the guessing game

Rumor has it that at Wednesday’s Mac-themed event in Cupertino, Apple may introduce a major revision to the MacBook Air, a product whose exterior has remained unchained since it was introduced three years ago. The Air is near and dear to my heart—I have used one almost every single day of its existence—which may qualify me as its biggest booster and critic.