I ordered a netbook online this week. I had been looking at the netbook or a really powerful laptop. I liked the idea of the netbook if it had the right amount of battery life, and I liked some of the powerful laptops too - the i7 quad processor from Vaio had me pausing. I went with the netbook from ASUS the 1005PE that claims a 14 hour battery life (review in link and my first running down of the battery looks like it will be about 10 hours)- in a 2.5 lb package.
The Netbook comes with the Windows 7 Starter OS -and it has IE8 installed by default. I happened to do a search on netbook browser and saw an article that claimed Googles Chrome would be a likely choice for a netbooks in the coming year - it was an old article - so I just kept moving about with IE8. I did detect the sluggishness with IE8 on this machine - even if it claims to be a 1.6ghz - I could tell that IE8 was sluggish. I downloaded Google Chrome - and already I can tell a difference. Maybe too early - but I would suggest you try it if you are using a netbook.
Last year at Devlink.net there were a good number of netbooks in use from attendee and presenter alike. Chris Smith from Microsoft did presentations for Visual Studio 2010 on a netbook - but it seemed to be a special build for the machine he was using (that was my impression). What I saw was a lightweight portable way to take notes and get to the web that did not weigh 7 or 8 Lbs. At this point the netbook fits what I want to do with it - reading technical blogs and viewing online technical videos like those on Channel 9, PDC,and MIX. All without a lot of weight in my lap - and no wires or plugs needed.
One thing that I noticed when I was shopping around in the stores was that the network connections being advertised were using a lot of N-Dual or Dual Band Wireless 802.11n and how it had a much better range. In our house the wireless router is old, and there are a couple of dead spots for the computers with older wireless hookups. I walked into the known dead zones with the netbook and it continued to function which made it even more practical in using it around various parts of the house.
So for now - I can see using the netbook for looking up information, reading,some web based email, and watching online content. I can use my investment in the i7 desktop I built last year for the hard core programming learning I want to do. That feels like the right machine for the right job.
I have seen the videos about the new IE9 tonight that is being released as a preview and how it uses the GPU (which also exist in netbooks). The HTML5 and SVG with CSS3 sounds like web development is about to get a huge shot of demand to use these new technologies. I may be trying that on the netbook too. It sounds like they rewrote a lot of the aspects of IE for the new version - and performance was a key point that I was hearing from the developers involved. A perfomant browser will be key to surviving on low voltage devices - netbooks and phones - and they may become some of the more prevalent devices out there.
The IE9 Preview really is just that - seems like a presentation of what they are working on - perhaps an iteration proof of concept of various pieces of functionality. The hints of HTML 5 and its impacts are starting to be seen.