Man, this is something that I have to deal with every few years as my notebooks do, indeed, need that ever-loving hardware refresh from time to time. For most people, notebooks seem to come down to weight, display size, battery life, keyboard layout, product reviews, general specs and, of course, price. In the past, I was one of these people. I needed my notebook to have a certain level of power to it… especially when connecting it to my TV to watch Hulu.

But this time around, perhaps for the first time, I am thinking I may very well end up going for a netbook instead. Why? Besides being a lot cheaper with my money than I used to be, there are a few other factors that have me thinking along these lines.

1. No notebook will every replace my dual-monitor desktop. Sorry, but it’s not happening. So do I really need a desktop replacement for simple Web work? No, I don’t.
2. If I drop it, I am not screwed. Nothing says ‘crap’ like dropping a $1000+ notebook. Sure, it might survive… but I’d feel a lot better about having a sub-$400 netbook crapping out on me, personally.
3. Speed — how much do I really need? For the OS and apps that I run on a notebook, I have found that I really don’t need the power of an Intel Dual-Core CPU as I might have once thought. As it turns out, with the exception of  Hulu, most Netbook CPUs do the job just fine. Yes, even Flash does okay for me.

So there you have it. Clearly the smart money is keeping my existing notebook… with its dual-core power. But I am also giving serious consideration to a cheap netbook with crazy battery life next time I need to head out of the house. For the money spent, you really can’t go wrong.

[awsbullet:asus netbook]