Wirelessnorth.ca

The thing about notebooks is that people tend to greatly underestimate the difference a pound or two makes. Shave off a pound or two from your notebook and you’ll surprise yourself where and how often you’ll want to bring your notebook with you, especially with with wireless networking increasingly everywhere. There’s a magical point around 3lb when you can comfortably hold onto a notebook with one hand or drop it in a bag/purse and almost not notice the weight. Your average 13.3″ notebook (like a macbook) weighs between 5 and 6 pounds.

Late last year, Asus released the EeePC, a notebook missing a few things – like a proper hard disc, or CD drive, and missing half the screen size of traditional 15″ notebook (but notably less than half the weight and price). Surprising a lot of people, maybe even Asus themselves, the little things are selling like smarties. Since a lot of big name OEMs have been rushing to pile in (pictured Asus, MSI and Compaq micronotes). Most of these new breed of micronotes are close to full PCs with 7-9 inch screens, respectable resolutions, small solid-state drives and WinXP or Linux operating systems. And weighs two pounds.

Relevance for WirelessNorth.ca? If it’s not even the case already, you are going to see notebooks/pcs of all description taking over as the primary bandwidth drivers of 3-4G wireless. And the breaking wave cheap/versatile micronotes and other hybrid MID devices will accelerate the trend.

At $300 to $400, with a full keyboard, running firefox and the weight of a paperback the EeePC or any micronote is pretty tempting, even if you already have a larger notebook. When these things hit $200 with built in wimax and/or 3G modem, why wouldn’t you own one. Why wouldn’t you own a couple?

You know these things are only going to get svelter, sleeker and cheaper. (Here’s a roadmap). Beware the stampeding pittler-patter of a million twittering little rubber feet.

If/when the Apple version ever lands, your network capacity managers at your favourite carrier shalt rub hands with glee, if not break down and weep.