Netbook Scoop

We are back to normal operations, after taking time away from posting for personal reasons. 

First off, I want to express our sincere appreciation to our hardcore fans.  Despite months without any new blog postings, we still have a respectable volume of daily visitors and a sizeable number of subscribers to our RSS feeds.

Our first priority will be updating our product database.   During our idle period, we kept the price comparison charts up to date.   The urgent work will be to add all of the new models that have been introduced over the past several months.  This work happens behind the scenes, so you probably won’t see a lot of blog activity until that the database is up-to-date.

We have decided to remove all netbooks with Vista operating systems from our product database and replace these with Windows 7 versions.  That will speed the process for us.  Most of these units are gone from the marketplace – any remaining will be purged soon.

We will be making some changes to our site. 

1. Our daily “Falling Netbook Prices” posts were very popular, but required a lot of labor.  Some days there were only one or two items.  We will continue to publish these – just not daily – but whenever there are enough to be meaningful.
2. Our Buyer’s Guide section will be removed.  We envisioned an expansive set of articles to help buyers make decisions on the right product.  However, the current content is skeletal and not up to our standards. 

The biggest change that we have chosen is the scope of products that we will be covering.

We’ve debated this issue for a very long time.  Do we stick to just netbooks?  How do we decide what is and is not a netbook?  What about ultralight low-cost laptops?  What about smartbooks?  And so on…  

We have decided not to be bound by a strict definition of a netbook, because there is no clear definition – and the definition keeps evolving. 

Instead, we have decided to cover anything that is close to a netbook.  That will allow us to cover a wider range of exciting products.  After all, many of our readers are interested in netbooks, but may find that they need more horsepower.  Why not provide information on some of the better ultralight,  low-cost laptops.  Or, they may be bound to the price range – in that case, why not provide some options for full-size budget laptops?

Along the same lines, we will no longer attempt to include every netbook in our product database.  In the past, we invested a lot of time and energy including products for which there was little interest – and on products that we would not recommend.   In the future, we will cover only those products that we believe are of interest and worthy of our coverage.

So, in summary, we are back and on a mission to make our site more useful to you.

As always, we are interested in your opinions.  Do you agree with our plans?  Do you have other recommendations?  Let us know below.