At first glance it appears that the Netbook craze may take over the laptop market. Many consumers are getting involved with Netbooks because of the portability and the cost efficiency of them.

In the economic downturn that exists, many products are losing sales as people tighten up their budgets. Laptop sales for example, are expect to fall by approximately 12 percent in 2009. In the meantime, Netbooks are actually experiencing a dramatic increase of sales. There are supposed to be nearly 21 million Netbooks that ship this year alone. To put that in perspective in terms of growth, that’s nearly double the number of Netbooks that was shipped last year.

Why the explosive growth you may ask? The biggest factor is the price point. Many companies are offering Netbooks at an extremely low cost. One example that you may have heard of is the 2 year plan through AT&T where you can get a Netbook for about $50.

While Netbooks seem to be the product everyone’s turning to, it’s unlikely that we’ll see laptops disappear. A Netbook may seem like a great investment at the time however after hours of use you’ll start to notice the downsides of a Netbook. Since the device is much smaller that means everything that you’re used to is going to be much smaller including the keyboard and screen. This can cause problems if you plan to use your Netbook for business or for extended periods of time as you may start to feel the anti-ergonomic effect of a Netbook.

The bottom line is that Netbooks are here to stay because of their inexpensiveness and their portability. However it’s unlikely that they’ll be the main use of portable devices by consumers that use laptops for work. If you are thinking about a Netbook you will want to weigh the cost effectiveness to the ergonomic disadvantage before you buy one.

Source: PC World

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Fujitsu clearly wants to connect with the real world. With the introduction of the new Fujitsu Lifebook that is AT&T BroadbandConnect-Ready mobile computing becomes more mobile and more connected.

At least that’s what the press release of the Fujitsu’s U820 tries to tell us. The new laptop is customizable and can be purchased with that BroadbandConnect feature.

The product comes bundled with two options. First is the one with Vista Home Premium preinstalled and integrated HSDPA, and the other with Vista Business. They come with 120GB hard drives and are tagged $1199 and $1499, respectively.

The U820 mini tablet has a 5.6-inch WXGA touchscreen, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 60GB 4,200RPM hard drive, built-in GPS / Garmin Mobile PC, Ethernet, a webcam / fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth / WiFi and a 4-cell battery.

Source: Pocketables

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AT&T earlier made an announcement that the much anticipated BlackBerry Bold will be hitting the stores this coming November 4.

According to the company, they will be the one and only network provider for the said smart phone. AT&T will first release the phone in over 300 key areas around the United States, other countries and areas will soon follow.

BlackBerry Bold, the phone that is formerly called the BlackBerry 900 is one of the most anticipated iPhone competitors to date. It was first announced in early May, along with the rumored BlackBerry Thunder by Verizon Wireless.

The BlackBerry Bold sports a small screen and QERTY keypad. It is powered by a processor running on 624-MHz speed. Its 1GB memory is expandable. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 support. It supports multimedia playing, both video and music. It is tied up with AT&T’s mobile music services along with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Source: PopuTech

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