Recently announced: Best Buy will be carrying MSI’s offering in the itty-bitty "netbook" style laptop, called the "Wind". It will come with Windows XP Home Edition, an Intel 1.6 Atom processor, 120GB HDD, 3-cell battery and comes in black or white.

I’ve been following the netbook-style laptops for a while now and the industry has proven that there’s definitely a market for it. The reasons? Price and portability. These things are on the lower end of the price spectrum and obviously provide the best portability in a pint-sized computer.

Most people who haven’t used a small-screen unit like this would probably say "A 10-inch screen? How can anyone read anything on a screen that small?" The answer is that the native resolution accommodates for the smaller size. You’ll either get 800×400 or 1024×600 native resolution. If those numbers look "odd" to you, bear in mind netbooks are widescreen format. These smaller native numbers make for readability on a netbook screen fairly easy.

If you’re in the market for one of these, I’d recommend going at least 1024 wide on the native because most modern web sites require that when viewing them. Your only option with 800 is to deal with a horizontal scroll bar or use CTRL-Minus to size down the site in your web browser of choice. All major web browsers have this ability.

Most major manufacturers have netbook offerings. Dell has their recently announced Inspiron Mini 9, we all know about the Asus Eee PC, HP has their Mini-Note, there’s the MSI Wind listed above and more are coming. In 2009 you’re sure to see more companies getting into the biz of "smaller is better".

Things the netbook-style laptop has proven

1. More than a few people really don’t care about the optical drive.

Netbooks don’t have optical drives and this is part of the reason they are physically smaller. However it seems that people who buy these units really don’t miss them. True, you can’t burn discs or watch DVD movies on one of these things – but how often are you going to do that compared to everything else you do on a computer? Probably not that often.

The lack of an optical drive is something customers of these units are very aware of, readily accept and have – surprisingly – easily dealt with it.

To note: You could easily attach an external optical drive connected via USB to it if you wanted to if you needed to install apps that were disc-only.

2. It has escaped toy-like status.

When netbooks first appeared most people didn’t deem it to be a "real" computer and shrugged it off as more of a novelty than anything else.

That attitude has changed.

People have found that netbooks – many of which are in the sub-$500 price point – do pretty much everything one would want to do with a portable computer. And that small size is oh-so nice.

3. It "saved" Windows XP.

Vista can’t run on netbooks strictly for the reason that units that small do not have the horsepower to run it optimally.

There is no netbook that I’m aware of that even offers Vista, so for people that want Windows they are given XP Home Edition instead.

Nobody has really complained about this.

And for those that think I’m Vista-bashing, I’m not. The blunt honest truth is that Vista is too "heavy" for netbooks, plain and simple. That’s why it’s not offered on them to begin with.

4. You can easily escape the "Windows tax" by using Ubuntu instead.

On most netbook offerings, ordering one bundled with Ubuntu will shave $50.00 of the total price. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for example is $349 with Ubuntu and $399 with XP Home.

This is an excellent example of how using Linux can truly cut costs in a great way.

5. Most people don’t need a super-powerful box anymore.

Netbooks are not for gamers, videographers, graphic artists or anyone that needs computer boxes with gobs of storage, memory and speed. This accounts for the vast majority of computer users out there.

Said honestly, the netbook fits in very nicely in today’s computing world. We’ve finally got laptops that truly embrace their portable nature more than any other – and they’re cheap.

This is definitely a form of computing that’s here to stay.

In a move that’s seemingly insignificant but actually very significant, Ubuntu Linux is now available for purchase off-the-shelf from Best Buy.

Reasons why this is important:

When a software product “graduates” from the internet to being an actual in-store item, this means that non-nerds see it and will probably buy it. Why? Because it’s only $19.99 – far below the price of the cheapest version of Windows Vista.

The fact Best Buy carries it means they now have a reason to carry “Ubuntu compatible” items for not only software but hardware as well. Vendors will be very interested in producing hardware and software specific to Ubuntu now that they know it’s actually on the shelf.

Linux purists will obviously see this as absolute heresy. Charge? For a Linux distribution! BAH! WRONG! BAD!

No, not bad. Good. You *nix guys want to see Microsoft go down the drain so bad you can almost taste it. If there’s a boxed item directly next to those shiny copies of Vista with a much lower price tag, this is a step in the correct direction. You’re going to have to deal with some corporate junk in order to put a dent in Microsoft’s stranglehold on PCs.

Want to know what’s even better? The sale comes with 60-day support. Yep, this means someone who buys Ubuntu actually has a real live phone number they can call to speak with a real live human for help. That’s just plain awesome.

This is a very strong move forward into making Linux more mainstream.

Don’t Make Me Think is a book about web usability. It’s an older book but required reading for anyone who designs web sites. In a nutshell it states that if you want a successful web site, make it stupidly easy to use. Go complicated are it’s nothing but a big ball of fail.

In the world of tech commerce there are basically two types of consumers: The 18-27 market and everyone else. I fall into the “everyone else” category as I’m 33 years old. Many PCMech readers also fall into the same category as well – and that’s just fine.

Given our choices with internet tech shopping, who wins and who loses? Let’s find out.

I’ll be using a 1 to 5 scoring system. 5 = best, 1 = worst.

Apple

Score: 5

Design is a cornerstone of Apple philosophy concerning all their products. Their own web site is no exception. This is one of the absolute easiest places to shop. Right on the home page it’s obvious you click on “Store” to go to (duh), the online Apple store.

Product pages are easy to navigate, easy to read (important) and prices are listed up front. There’s no hassle involved.

Dell

Score: 4

The recent redesign of the Dell web site is a welcome one. It puts a fresh face on Dell and makes their products look more attractive.

The reason this site doesn’t score a 5 is because it’s not entirely obvious that you have to hover (yes hover, not click) over “FOR HOME”, “FOR OFFICE”, or “FOR DATA CENTER” and then select from the drop-down.

When on a product page you’re greeted with lots of itty bitty tiny text. That’s bad. All the nice large text on the front is gone at this point. But at least the prices are listed up front.

NewEgg

Score: 4

NewEgg’s home page was redesigned a while back and it desperately needed it. All text on the home page is very legible. The SEARCH field is placed on the left side which is smart.

Considering the monster inventory of stuff NewEgg has it’s actually fairly simple to get around and find what you’re looking for. The left sidebar on any product screen is helpful to sort by manufacturer or other options presented. Prices are also listed up front for just about everything.

CDW

Score: 2

CDW is a bit of a mess. Too much really small text. Menus at the top that stretch out to the right.

The links on the left are more or less worthless. If you click on Small / Home Office, you get this:

This tells me nothing. I don’t want to “discover” anything. I want to see the stuff you have for sale, get a price and BUY.

In addition there’s a poll on the home page. There is no reason for polls to be there. This is a place to shop, not take polls.

Circuit City

Score: 3

Circuit City puts categories direct on top of the home page in very easy-to-read format. The drop-downs only go one way – down. And that’s great compared to the down-and-to-the-right way CDW does it.

Product pages suffer from the same fate Dell does – lots of itty bitty tiny text. But prices are listed up front.

In addition, Circuit City puts links on the right that are actually useful, such as the Outlet store, Consumer Reports buying advice and other items. Very nice.

Best Buy

Score: 3

The first thing I notice about the Best Buy site is that it’s aligned to the left. This is 2008! Center your web site!

Aside from that this site is fairly easy to get around and the Outlet Center is directly linked on the home page – that’s good.

For products listed the price couldn’t be any easier to spot. It’s in bright yellow. Ugly? Yes. But effective and I appreciate it.

Alienware

Score: 1

Yeah you just knew I had to put a “1″ (worst) in here, right? I won’t disappoint. Alienware has an awful web site designed with all the “cool factor” in the world but very little in the way of being helpful.

You are immediately greeted with useless Flash animations and images on the bottom that you don’t know you’re supposed to click on unless you hover over them first. On Web Pages That Suck this is called Mystery Meat Navigation.

The product page has LED-looking bars that basically say nothing. It looks like stats for characters in a video game – which is exactly the intent. And it sucks. Bars don’t mean anything.

This is what you get when a company tries to target the 18-27 market. Lots of fancy useless Flash, information that’s worthless and a doomy dark look.

No thanks.

Even though Alienware is under Dell’s umbrella and has been for some time, you can obviously tell Alienware is totally gunning for the 18-27 market.

Y’know, you gotta hand it to the crack staff that runs the Best Buy web site. Granted, it’s cool they sell the Asus EeePC..

BUT..

Does it make much sense to recommend Microsoft Office and Norton Anti-Virus for Windows as Linux laptop accessories?

Here are screen shots taken from Best Buy’s web site today.

Click for large version – taken from here. Note the part at the bottom that states the operating system is LINUX.

Click for large version – taken from here. Note the recommended accessories listed.

Hey Best Buy! It’s a distinct possibility that Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 for Windows and Norton AntiVirus 2008 for Windows WON’T RUN CORRECTLY on an EeePC with Linux.

Just a hunch.