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Netbooks: A Cheap Alternative to Work Travel

07/17/08 - 10:54 AM EDT

Jonathan Blum

Planet small biz, meet the netbook: a quick and relatively cheap portable computer that not only gets your small business more virtual but keeps your people off the road -- and away from burning pricey fossil fuels.

"Netbooks" (networked notebooks, get it?) are part of new product angle from big laptop vendors like Hewlett-Packard, (HPQ - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), Lenova (LNV - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) and Dell (DELL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr). The marketing notion here is to create a line of computers with average computational power suited to run both standard business applications and the new generation of online business process apps delivered via the Web.

"A year ago, I don't think anybody in this thought this netbook market would be where it is today," says Jeremy Brody, Global Business Notebook Product Manager for HP, based Palo Alto, Calif. (Big note: If you have not at least touched online word processing, spreadsheet and other business applications, stop reading right now and go take a look. These online business tools -- Google's (GOOG - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr)Google Apps , Microsoft's (MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) Microsoft Office Live, Adobe's (ADBE - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) Acrobat.com to similar tools from Salesforce.com (CRM - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) or NetSuite (N - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) -- are excellent ways to get your people working where they live or from fuel saving remote offices.)

Netbooks -- and their desktop equivalents, dubbed nettops (networked desktops) -- combine an interesting mix of features: Netbooks are relatively light, around four pounds. They're nothing like the under-two-pound ultraportables, but lighter than the eight-pound-plus desktop replacements. They are relatively cheap, starting in the $500ish range, with properly configured units running around $700. Again, not as low-cost as super-discount notebooks, but far cheaper than high-end portables like the MacBook Air from Apple (AAPL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) or the Toshiba's (TOSBF - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) r500.

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Jonathan Blum is an independent technology writer and analyst living in Westchester, N.Y. He has written for The Associated Press and Popular Science and appeared on FoxNews and The WB.

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