Smartphone or netbook?

Well, I’ll tell ya; if this ever happens – I would totally go with the netbook.

I own two iPhones right now (me and the wife) – and you are right about the ownership costs. The monthly bill kills me and AT&T Billing is not very flexible.

I do love my iPhones though.

The iPhone has been worth every penny for me personally, for almost any criteria. I also have a little MSI Wind netbook which is great for a second computer, but has nowhere near the portability of the iPhone obviously. Of course for writing more than a sentence or two the full keyboard is much better. The onscreen iPhone keyboard is fine for simple tasks but you wouldn’t want to write a book on it or even a long email. With a netbook you still have to find wifi hot spots which limits the “check email anywhere” criteria, unless you get one of those cellular modems I suppose, but then that is going to cost as much or more than an iPhone anyway, so not a huge savings there. I personally have both, for different uses.

My wife has an MSI Wind and we both love it.

Netbook, hands down. If you want to do some serious writing, you want a tool that makes it easy to write, not harder.

Here in Canada the lifetime ownership of the iPhone and the 3 year contract is more than $2000. That’s more than TWO netbooks! And what do you get out of it? Well not a lot, because you can’t even muck around with the iPhone’s OS legally.

I’ve been very happy with my iPod Touch. The only issue is that Wifi here in Ottawa isn’t as ubiquitous as I’d like it to be, but I’m willing to deal with that versus paying two grand for the ability to find a Google Map on the road.

What ever you do DON’T go with the Samsung! I had one and it turned out it wouldn’t sync with my outlook calendar or my word program. NADA! I even went out and paid the $70 for the extra program they said I needed and turns out that all those sync functions were not allowed!! It was the biggest waste of $300. This time I have a Motorola and it does all that it claims. So go Motorola, Blackberry, or Notebook.

Netbook running Xubuntu, or even Ubuntu.

Super cheap, super portable, and super fast.

i’d say get a smartphone. i don’t have a iphone but i have a blackberry. i love it! i can’t get with the iphone yet but that’s because i’m not really into stuff like that. it took FOREVER to upgrade to the blackberry. i can definitely see the benefit of having both but you can do EVERYTHING from a smartphone. they’re coming out with new ones that can do even more so i’d investigate but if i had to choose…smartphone it is!

Well, wifi is becoming more ubiquitous, and netbooks are beginning to include 3g connections. I’d say go with a netbook (get a Wind!), but wait until they upgrade to include 3g cards. That’ll be any time now.

It depends on how much writing you think you’ll be doing. The iPhone is the greatest consumer electronics device ever made, no doubt, but it is in no way meant for typing large documents.

And that goes for any smart phone or mobile device or internet communicator or what-have-you.

@jackley That is the long and short of indeed. If Apple makes a netbook, on 3G with VOIP capability – I’d be all over it.

Particularly if AT&T subsidizes the price as mentioned in the link I provided above.

Netbooks are so cool….
but so are iPhones….
decisions decisions….
the Dell Mini’s can run OSX :0) (as long as you get a 16gb or larger drive)
that would be sweeet.