I bought my daughter a Dell Mini, and while she's generally satisfied with it, I was dismayed to learn that Dell failed to design it to be compatible with existing notebook locks. Dell Sales has yet to call me back with any compatible locks. This is a problem because my daughter is about to spend six weeks attending a summer college program. Not ideal.

Content creation? Perhaps updating your Facebook profile or sending a quick email. But if you mean working on a lengthy Word or Excel file or editing a webpage, then most netbooks will be a letdown. Even on my full-fledged notebook, if I can, I'll use Google Docs before firing up Word. And my iPhone is good enough for surfing for info (not entertainment) especially if the website is kind enough to have a mobile version.

Netbooks are a solution still searching of a problem to solve.

I have been a notebook user almost as long as there have been notebooks.

Currrently I have 2. One for work that I travel with and a larger one in lieu of a desktop at home. Both of these are powerful machines with lots of RAM.

I have to travel a lot for work. I am getting tired of carrying or rolling through customs or security.

Last week I had to go to the UK. I decided to try an experiment. I picked up one of the new Asus 1008 units. The goal was to see if I could live on this thing all week.

I don't play 3D games or do complex financial modelling, but I do put a machine to the test.

Before I went I loaded Windows 7, Office 2010, my VPN, soft phone, Office Communicator and tweaked it to my liking. Off I went.

I did get through the whole week, although there were times when I brought the netbook to its knees.

When I returned, I took it apart and doubled the memory to 2 gigs. The verdict is that in future this is my travel machine. $30 for a 2 gig RAM stick, took it from OK to actually usable.

If they shipped these things with more RAM, I think there would be greater satisfaction.