While I think the netbooks are a pretty cool product, I’m not sure what I would ever use it for.
What say you all?
I use mine for travelling, and for powerpoint presentations. I have a big clunky laptop for everyday use, but it’s too heavy to be ideal for those two things.
My work has strict webfilters. So to keep in touch with my virtual communities, I surf during my lunch hour at the coffee shop downstairs. That’s where I am right now.
Mostly mine is a writing & editing beast - I can take it on the bus with me, or out to a coffee shop with the local writing group, and either type out new words or go over old chapters and try to spruce them up. 
I’ve also got a few simple, fun games loaded on it, and some simple database programs that I wrote myself in GAMBAS.
I got mine for a novelty. It was pink and cheap. I keep it in the kitchen and use it to IM and surf when I’m cooking dinner and stuff. It has a solid state hard drive, so I let my kid drag it around the house and play with it. I also toss it into my bag for weekends away. It’s light, tough, sufficient for casual surfing or googling local things to do, yet I don’t worry about leaving it in the room when I’m out like I would my beloved macbook.
-Reading/movies in bed before I sleep or when sick.
-Travel… makes a great movie player, and 120gb hdd can hold a lot of movies.
-Games while traveling. I can’t play crysis, but it does homeworld 2 just fine, and neverwinter nights okish.
-Reading while in the bathroom.
-If I have a project around the house that I am using an online guide for.
-Entertainment when the power goes out(mostly rare, but somewhat common in the springtime with all the thunderstorms).
-Maps while traveling. Not as useful as a GPS, but then I really don’t need realtime instructions anyway.
-A separate PC for when I need one to troubleshoot my main.
Basically… Its handy, but not anything I couldn’t live without. Reading in bed is probably its biggest use, but I’ve been very happy to have it on more than one occasion for other reasons.
I haven’t bought a netbook yet but I fully intend to when they reach my standards. I’m a dedicated desktop user at home and I don’t expect that to change but there are times when having a laptop would be really convenient. Generally speaking I dislike using a laptop for most applications so I’m not likely to buy a full featured one with all the bells and whistles so a netbook is a good multitasker when it’s called for.
What I envision myself using it for are as follows:
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Traveling. I really like traveling light and I never could cope with the prospect of lugging a carry-on suitcase and a laptop bag. A netbook would be small enough to fit into a small backpack with my odds and ends and would be light and durable enough to not need it’s own case.
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Surfing on the couch. Pretty much the only downside to the desktop is that I can’t really browse the web from in front of the TV. A netbook would let me putz around with Fantasy Sports during a game or the Dope during Lost.
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Surfing on the go. Sometimes you know you’ll be stuck on the bus/train/back of a car for an extended period of time or sitting in a waiting room. It would be nice to have a laptop small enough to not be cumbersome that would let me browse or play a simple game to kill time with. Sometimes I’m just bored being only partially employed and I’d just like to be able to sit in a bar/cafe or on the beach and still be connected.
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Mobile media. When I travel I always have my Zune on hand but so long as I’m away from the PC I’m unable to add podcasts or make new playlists. Coupling it with a netbook would allow me to sync more frequently and manage my PMPs. I suspect modern PMPs (Zune HD) will start handling this themselves making this need moot in large part.
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Watching/streaming videos to my HDTV. Hulu is an awesome gadget to watch videos on and I often watch shows my DVR misses that way, but my 19 inch monitor leaves something to be desired. At the moment there’s no way to watch those streams on my plasma. However my plasma accepts a PC input and a netbook would be a cheap and easy way to connect the web to my big screen so long as the XBox won’t allow it.
It’s this last one is the real bugaboo now. The video abilities on these machines are really poor. They just can’t play video files without getting blocky or having to run at a really low resolution. The new NVidia GPUs that will be added to netbooks in the upcoming months will probably rectify this issue so I’m holding off.
Also I’m waiting to see how well Windows 7 runs when stripped down for netbook use. I don’t really want XP or a Linux shell and Vista is too bloated. I hope Windows 7 (or a future Windows CE for smartbooks/netbooks) turns out to have an ultralight configuration that will allow it to run quick on a netbook without sapping the battery.
I use it to do .net development during my lunch hour/late night in bed. Also, to watch TV and play classic games when I’m sick/bored.
I dumped the xp that came with it and put on windows 7 RC. Works better than XP and it’s free (until next year).
Surfing the web from the sofa.
Email/surfing while traveling (boy howdy is it smaller then my 7yr old laptop)
offloading pictures from the camera, when traveling.
Hooked into powered speakers, as a way to play music outside, from the internet or our MP3 collection.
As soon as I can find software for it, I plan to use it as a book reader, while travelling.
In short, all the things that people with iPhones or Blackberrys do, without having to carry it in my pocket all the time, and with a bigger screen/keyboard.
The traveling part was the tipping point for us. At $130 I’m much less worried about what happens to it. At about 2.5lb, it’s easy to carry around.
I’m running Windows 7 on the netbook I’m typing this on, and the battery life seems on par with the XP installation it came with.
Videos on the bus and long car trips.
Surfing on the couch, mostly–I’m on it right now. I have the ASUS and the key board is 95% of full size. It’s also great for traveling or working in committees: the smaller profile is less obtrusive at trainings and other meetings.
We bought it to also be a tool for table-top RPGs: eventually we want everyone to have one so that we can all have access to campaign docs immediately without cluttering up the table.
Basically, there are only half a dozen times a year that I really wish I had a lap top–almost all the time I prefer a desktop. The wasn’t willing to pay big bucks for something I only really needed a few times a year, but the netbook is cheap enough to make that feasible.
Let us know when you do find something. I’d be extremely interested.
That’s great news. I’m curious if Microsoft will add, remove or improve anything for netbook use between RC1 and roll-out. As the various version are finalized some ultra-lean version of Windows 7 would probably be a moneymaker over the paltry fees they collect for XP on these machines.
For you guys who use it for videos – I thought netbooks don’t have a DVD player. Do you download the movie to the hard drive first and then play it from there?
Mostly what others have mentioned. We’re a laptop only family, but as anyone that has had a Dell for more than 2 years knows, the batteries turn to shit after about 18 months (or at least mine did). Since it’s about $150 for a new battery, I just got a Netbook (Dell Mini9) for the kitchen. We can check email quickly or look something up real fast if we need to without having to go upstairs and unplug the laptop from there. I also take it with me on travel because it’s lighter and less expensive to replace if something happens to it. I only have the 8GB SSD in it, but I just take along an external USB drive with a bunch of movies loaded and I’m good. I need to get around to replacing the Ubnutu it came with with XP, mostly because the software for the networked printer is only for XP or Mac, it won’t run on Linux.
Good question. Also reports on blogs have said the the video capabilities are really poor for things like Hulu on those machines.
I’m using mobipocket reader, which seems to work reasonably well. At least, until I can find something that’ll draw slightly yellowed, textured pages with not quite perfect fonts, and animate page turnings when I pull my finger across the touchpad…
Thanks to you guys reminding me I wanted one (and a little tax windfall), I just bought an ASUS Eee PC 1000HE to replace our old W2K vaio music server. Woo-hoo!
I stream my videos onto my netbook from various sources. Netflix, Hulu, and my local network: mostly from either my main PC (bit torrent episodes of shows I’ve missed) or my HTPC (either live TV, recorded shows, or ripped DVD’s).