SlashGear JapanNokia’s first PC (as opposed to the phones they refer to as multimedia computers) got a lot of hype when it was announced and is getting a lot of mixed reviews from folks who complain mostly about price/performance and that you can get better specs in a netbook for less money. After spending some time with a Booklet 3G, I’m once again reminded that there’s more to a purchase than speeds and feeds, and that value, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So I’m not going to discuss the relatively slow processor or hard drive. We can agree that the Booklet isn’t a speed demon. It is, however, how a good PC experience should be and that’s worth paying for in my opinion.
I love watching excellence in motion. Watching Fred Astaire dance, reading a poem by Robert Frost, watching Michael Jordan play ball, Tiger Woods play golf or opening new products that have the ability to bring a smile to my face. They all share one thing, these folks make it look so easy. The result of hard work and tireless practice is that the performance appears almost effortless. Of course, that’s never the case.
Last week, the buzz was clearly on the 
I had lunch recently with someone who was a recent transplant to NY from Silicon Valley. They commented on what a great thing it was to finally ditch their car for getting around as it’s a bit of a hindrance to own a car in Manhattan. I thought about this for a while afterward, mostly remembering the few years I lived in NY when I owned a car and kept it in NY. I never drove it anywhere for fear of losing the most sacred of things in NY, my parking space. As a result, it mostly sat unused except to move it from one side of the street to the other, twice a week. (I initially had dreamed of just garaging it until I discovered that for the same money, I could have gotten it three bedrooms and a 2 baths in a nice area in NJ). The key was, I had the potential of using it anytime I wanted to. Today, I live in the NJ suburbs, no more than 15 minutes from Manhattan without traffic. Ask me why, and I’ll tell you it’s to have the advantages of the suburbs but still be close to the great museums, theater and culture of NY. Of course you might want to ask me when the last time I went to one of the great museums or saw a show on Broadway. There’s an aspirational theme associated with all this. It’s not what I do. Rather what I could do.
Leading computer manufacturers along with Intel and Microsoft have inadvertently created a monster. And like Frankenstein, it is a monster they’d like to destroy. Although the industry’s hot-selling brainchild is physically quite small –perhaps more analogous to a gremlin in scale— with its small 10-inch screen, underpowered Intel Atom processor, cheaper version of Windows and under $400 price, netbooks are devouring corporate profit margins.
