In the days where notebooks were too big to carry around with, too expensive to buy a smaller one just for the purpose and too heavy for the bag I tried to get as much done as possible with the mobile phone. Writing a blog entry on the phone, a section for the next book or a lengthy e-mail with a foldable keyboard was practical but never quite enjoyable.
It's not that the user experience could not have been better but the software never developed much beyond it's original incarnation. Over the years I never got a spell checker, no 'app' today to make blogging a bit easier from Typepad and viewing PDF documents on my mobile remains a pain to this day. While it remained the only choice it was better than just keeping my thoughts for later.
The netbook I bought last year, however, pretty much changed the game for me. With a small battery and weighing less than a kilogram, my netbook comfortably fits in my bag, resumes from suspend in just a few seconds and the screen size and processing power is sufficient to comfortably do all the described tasks above plus more. Even opening it up for just 5 minutes to do a quick task is viable and 3G plus Wi-Fi connect me instantly.
That doesn't mean of course that I no longer carry a mobile phone, I just use it less for content creation but more for consumption oriented tasks these days such as web browsing, feed reading and for getting instant e-mail notification. Ah yes, and for phone calls of course. That makes me think that now that the keyboard has become less important I might try a touch based phone again.
good for u, Martin.
i bought a netbook for my nephew, but he thinks it is too slow. Now with iPad is out, wondering if it is a better alternative.
Posted by: Wayne | May 19, 2010 at 03:38 PM
I've been using MaStory blogging app on the N900 for our family website.
It's a great app and the N900 keyboard is pretty good. In the round, thou, it's still fairly cramped. That's okay because I don't blog much. If I did, a netbook would better
I think I could go to a full touch-screen and manage pretty well.
Posted by: Gabriel Brown | May 19, 2010 at 08:05 PM