A road warrior's guide to netbooks

The netbook is one of the most interesting categories on the market. These small laptops can do most of the jobs of their big brothers while costing under US$500. For some people, such as students, a netbook can be a primary computer. For a business user, it might be a second PC for use when traveling or commuting. Here are five tips to help pick the right one for your needs.

1. Choose your operating system wisely. Depending on the vendor, netbooks are usually offered with Linux variants, Windows XP or Windows Vista. For the most part, I'd ignore the Linux devices. True, they're cheaper (since there's no need to pay for a Windows license), and they're usually loaded with open-source software, so things like an office suite, instant-messaging client and other applications are available from the get-go. But most users will struggle to add new applications to these machines, and the latest and greatest hardware peripherals usually aren't supported.

I'd avoid Vista as well. For the most part, netbook hardware is too slimmed-down to run Vista well. Most users will do best sticking with good old Windows XP. Microsoft recently allowed OEMs to continue to offer XP on netbooks, and that's a good thing. XP brings the breadth of Windows applications and devices, and it's been around long enough to work well on this class of device. The downside: Windows XP netbooks usually come with XP Home or XP Pro, but that's something that's easily fixed.

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