Netbooks as the new desktops?

As corporate customers look at their aging fleets of desktop, rather than just upgrading them to the latest models, the netbooks now offer an intriguing alternative.

Lets say your users have basic needs for computing, viz. Microsot Office including Outlook, perhaps some Internet access using IE or Firefox (and including corporate apps hosted in a browser) and not mucn more. Then upgrading an aging desktop to a new dual core machine (a reasonable standard these days ) hardly makes sense. The machines will barely break a sweat and there will be all that wasted computing power.

This is where netbooks offer an intriguing opportunity. Assuming that your users already have keyboards and LCD monitors, then using a netbook instead of a desktop becomes an attractive option. Outfit your netbook with 2G of RAM, Windows XP and possibly one day Windows 7, and you will find with an external monitor and keyboard, users would hardly notice any performance degradation over a standard modern dual core machine. Of course before you head down that parth it would make sense to trial a machine configuration load it up with all the corporate software and just asssess performance.

Besides the cost savings of using a netbook, you now have a way of providing mobility to many more staff than could have been justified with laptops. Have a pool of USB DVD/CD ROM drives around and most users will be very happy with this alternative.

Now staff might feel quiet comfortable taking work home when perhaps their work situation might not have justified a work laptop and pool laptops are very inconvenient. Such an opportunity can only add to quality of life issues for your staff.

I would recommend that until Windows 7 is release, you look at some sort of USB key hard drive encryption on the machines given their mobility and with Windows 7, bitblocker. This will ensure that corporate data is secure even if the machine is stolen or misplaced.