Honolulu Weekly

For most of us, a significant–almost scary–portion of our lives exist on our computers. We use our laptops for work, school, socializing and slacking off. Sure, computers can be used to edit movies and record hit albums, even to map out the human genome. But come on, most of us are checking Facebook and trying to find a streaming episode of Entourage, right?

Whatever your purpose, netbooks have been indispensable to the computer-reliant population for years now. They’re tiny sub-12” screened laptops. Usually with undersized keyboards and trackpads, these cheap laptops are light, good on battery life and perform just about every basic function.

And as bigger (figuratively) things continue to stretch out before us on the horizon of a rapidly evolving tech world, the current batch of netbooks is dropping in price. Windows 7 is coming soon, which will drastically change the game for netbooks, providing a quicker and more modern user interface. But it’s always smart to wait a generation when new products are released (not to mention keeping your pursestrings tight given the state of the economy), so getting in on the netbooks that are about to be replaced isn’t a bad thing. You can find a large array of netbooks from companies like Dell, HP, Acer, ASUS or MSI right now for easily under $300 as they try to push their old inventory out for the new stuff.