These small machines seem to be the image of the democratization of technology

Several years ago, the computer industry was expanding at such an impressive rate, as the PC you bought one day would have been old fashion within a couple of months. In addition, more than the sheer computing power, there were also other revolutions that hit the IT market, such as the worldwide adoption of the Internet.

People were getting used to upgrade their computer every two years, or even more often, in order to keep up with the latest technologies. The best illustration of this golden era of the industry was the video games market, as developers were rolling out better games each month.

However, these days, the state of affairs of both the software and hardware industry is not so reassuring. Moreover, for the last few months, the big manufacturers focused on the design of their machines, rather than on implementing new technologies.

And more importantly, as the economic recession has started to hit everyone’s pockets, people looked for affordable pieces of equipment that were just powerful enough to cope with everyday tasks. This is where Asus won their netbook bet.

Having 8” to 10” screen footprints, netbooks are fit just with  the basics, as there is a low power 1.6 GHz processor, a mere 1GB of RAM and the long-known Intel 950 integrated graphics unit. For many people who love the latest technology in computing, these specs will not be impressive at all, but a netbook does its job in being a docile machine that does a good part of the average user’s tasks, such as emailing, web browsing and movie rendering.

The good part is that some netbooks come with larger batteries than can keep up with the job for about five or six hours from a single charge. This means that long document writing sessions are now a reality, and the cumbersome hunt for a power plug is mostly history.

Nevertheless, the single most appealing feature of a netbook is its price, which usually ranges between $350 and $600. Some may argue that a budget laptop costs about the same and comes with slightly better specs, but no standard laptop weighs three pounds and have seven hours of battery time.

Therefore, it seems that the netbook is the most recent revolution in the industry, as most people aren’t keen to spend a lot of cash on the latest GPU card, as they used to do before. The netbook really is the sheer illustration that people are more appealed by a low-cost machine that delivers reasonable performance, all in an ultraportable design, thanks to the widespread addiction to the Internet.