Jake Ludington

PriceGrabber.com recently completed a Consumer Behavior Report titled: Netbook Trends & Solid-State Technology Forecast. The report is based on a survey of 1,545 US online users of Pricegrabber.com conducted from January 6 to January 14.
The stats are interesting from a consumer adoption of Netbooks standpoint, but I don’t think the stats accurately reflect one highly probable reality: many people will buy netbooks instead of buying a new full-sized notebook PC. Pricegrabber.com cites the fact that all of the consumers polled who currently own a Netbook, 91% also own a laptop and 87% own a desktop. This is not a real stretch since very few U.S. households don’t already own at least one computer. Those stats also indicate that many netbook owners own both a laptop and a desktop.
According to the stats, 1 in 10 consumers purchased a Netbook. If you dig a little deeper in the survey, you’ll see that Netbooks represent 19% of all laptops sold on Pricegrabber.com during December 2008. 15% of all laptop purchases on Pricegrabber.com during November 2008 were Netbooks. One thing the survey doesn’t indicate is how many people purchasing Netbooks during those months ALSO purchased some other form factor.
Pricegrabber extrapolates from their data that consumers need more than one form factor because the Netbooks can’t handle local computing functions. While I wouldn’t edit video on a Netbook, or design a multi-layer Photoshop image, there’s not much I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing on my Netbook. I went 10 days with an HP Mini 1000 as my only PC and could have easily gone longer if necessary.
Read the full survey on Netbooks (PDF)
How about you? Do you have a Netbook? Would you replace your current notebook with a Netbook or do you need both?