Small Business Center
Netbooks: A Cheap Alternative to Work Travel
07/17/08 - 10:54 AM EDT
- Article Tools
- Email this Article
- Print this Article
- Rss Feed
- Related Articles
- How to Create a Portable Office
- Free Google Calendar Keeps Telecommuters in Sync
- Seven Tips for Starting a Fitness Center
- Top 7 Hiring Mistakes for Start-ups
- Software: Mac Automator a No-Brainer for Small Biz
- Apple Spreadsheets Long on Problems
- Del.icio.us
- Digg
- StumbleUpon
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.
Create a mobile office and watch the bumps on the road to a working vacation disappear.
To keep your mobile team in the loop, get as much free software as you can.
Consider the advice of these gym owners before you take the financial leap.
Avoid these pitfalls and build a team of talented employees.
You can program it to do all of the boring, repetitive stuff that bogs you down.
Excel 2008 for Mac = XL headache for small businesses.
These forgotten Internet stocks are being accumulated by hedge funds.
Raspberries for Apple; You'll be sorry, UBS; Fortress or Fort Knox? Wholly unappetizing Foods; give Liberty AOL or give them...
The GOP presidential candidate raised $27 million in July.
Some credit and debit cards give you some cash back on purchases. But you need to manage it well to benefit from it.
Sponsored by:
RSS
