Agreed. That's a great way of putting it. A netbook is a convenient travel computer because it has a full keyboard (or close to a full keyboard) and is fine for basic everyday browsing, emailing, reading PDFs and DOCs, etc. But I wouldn't use a netbook for graphics-intensive work, or if I had to type a massive essay.

I have both a laptop and a netbook. When I'm MR-ing or otherwise traveling for a short period and don't anticipate needing to do much typing, I'll take the netbook in order to have less to carry and still have access to the Internet/email with a real keyboard (my iPhone just doesn't cut it for emails longer than a couple of sentences). But for longer or work-related trips, I'll take my laptop instead.

Note, though, that my Acer Aspire One runs SlingPlayer software perfectly, so I absolutely CAN connect to my SlingBox flawlessly over the netbook. Big thumbs up to Acer!


Another nice thing about a netbook is that it can be a second laptop that can stay at work, or at home, or in the kitchen. You can keep Outlook Express open and pinging for messages every few minutes so that you won't get behind on email while you're cooking/eating dinner. (That way, you don't have to schlep your main laptop around the house.)