I say that if his $200 tablet has no compromises he can bash netbooks all day long. I’ll even help. With that said, I expect I’ll be using my Wind for a few years.

Could it be he is biased because he is working on a webtablet for under $200 which he thinks is a better option?

http://www.techcrunchit.com/2008/07/21/the-techcrunch-web-tablet-project/

There is always a motive behind his posts.

I am normally inclined to think Arrington is full of crap, but I must admit I enjoy a superior web surfing experience on my Core 2 Duo, 14.1″ widescreen Tablet PC, and his three points were part of my justification for the purchase.

That said, my tablet is my primary computer, not a secondary device. As a secondary computer and Internet device, I really don’t see why a netbook isn’t good enough. My even smaller and less powerful iPhone works well enough in that role for me.

At first I couldn’t understand what Mike Arrington expected in terms of performance from a netbook. I don’t know what his computing requirements are, but one of his responses in the post comments shed a little light:

“I’ll try to do a video next week showing typing speed relative to say a Macbook Air, and show how poor the browsing experience is, particularly video.”

We can debate whether the Air is a netbook or not (I tend to think not, FWIW), but you’d be hard pressed to debate that they’re different products for different market segments. There’s a 4x to 6x cost factor involved when comparing a netbook to the Air so I’d expect the performance difference to be drastic. I’d also be curious to see how many MacBook Airs have sold as compared to netbooks.

I don’t know who Arrington thinks his audience is with this piece. One thing’s for sure, they aren’t the dummies that he, apparently, thinks they are.

He may have made a case for himself if he had gotten his facts straight. Unfortunately, his article is littered with inaccuracies, which makes it look like he’s lying, lazy or simply lacks the knowledge necessary to speak out on this subject.

His article is pretty transparent. He’s shilling for this cheap tablet that he’s, supposedly, developing. It’s a shame that he tried to pass it off as an unbiased opinion.

I also felt that the TechCrunch article was a bit to definite. I believe all computer purchases are very personal. In the realm of “regular” laptops some people find a 14″ display to small, and others find the 17″ displays to large. It all depends on what you need.

Thanks
sean

ps…happily posted from my EEE PC 901.