Samsung NB30

It’s not hard to notice the grooved hard plastic case that can survive a day in a woman’s handbag without being keyed or scratched. There’s a fall sensor (better known to mobile apps users as an accelerometer) that moves the heads away from the hard disk, making recovery from a drop (up to 30 inches) survivable. A lightweight keyboard seal lets the netbook take spills and drips in stride.

The operative word is lightweight ruggedness. This is not a netbook to take with you to the coal mines but, for life’s little coal mines, starting at $370, it’s a great second machine in the household or travel companion for slobs like me. Good video review from Laptop Magazine.

HP's Mini-clutch was designed by fashion celeb, Vivienne Tam.

At Microsoft's Open House in NYC, a tweetie bird answered tweets from her perch below a treehouse.

Now that all PCs cost about the same and run about the same at any given price point, they’ve become commodities. All except the Mac, that is. The Mac is like the mythical siren, designed to lure us with gorgeous work from bevel to the box, and expecting a premium to be paid for its good looks. PC vendors now are trying (almost too hard) to compete on design and that hip elegance that’s never quite been the PC’s style.

To anchor the new fashion parade, there’s Windows 7, noticeably more attractive and thankfully speedier. If you’re interested in the main new features of Win 7, read this introduction by Ars Technica.

Commensurate with the launch of Win 7 come a bevy of beautiful machines with all sorts of radical designs. First to show off this fall was the HP Vivienne Tam clutch bag PC  (pictured above).  There is no Mac equivalent and women drool when they see it. The guts of this clutch bag sized PC are similar to HP Mini-Notes, the company’s netbook offering. Not much detail yet, but just having HP play a big part in Fashion Week was a novelty.

There was an audible gulp when Dell unveiled its Adamo XPS, an ultra-thin notebook computer that’s under a centimeter in width. That’s a pencil near the photo to give you some idea about how thin is thin.

It’s lovely to look at; more so if you’re a fan of modern minimalist anodized aluminum (it’s available, appropriately, in onyx (black) or pearl (white)). The glass screen (13.5 inches) has no framing. Edge-to-edge, it’s glass, creating a beauty of its own. After the blush was off the rose, the tech folks weighed in, pointing out that the PC felt heavier than it looked, was expensive ($1,499), and lacked an SD slot. I guess being thin has its price…both on the pocketbook and perf

ormance. For a fun read see, the Dell Adamo/MacBook Air deathmatch in PC World.

Of course, Dell had to have an “It” machine worthy of the new Adamo name. That would be the Dell Domo 13, a special collector’s version decorated with Swarovski crystals that form an intricate bejeweled snake on the laptop cover. (Word to the wise: Do not try to put this Dell in your laptop bag.) Available at Bergdorf Goodman only, my guess is that Dell contracted this one long before the recession took hold.

Dell joins OPI brand nail polish to come up with the finishes for Dell PCs available from Dell's Design Studio. No chipping, I hope.

Much more on price point, but equally decadent, is a partnership Dell announced with OPI (a nail polish brand used in most garden variety salons, whose colors I love but whose ability to stay on my hands for more than a day without chipping is lacking). Guys feeling left out? The MLB (Major League Baseball Association) announced a number of favorite team covers. (I’d think twice if I were a NY salesman going to see that client in Boston with my Yankee studded laptop.) The cases are available for Mini, Inspiron, and Studio laptops and will cost somewhere between $65 and $85 extra.

More like a netbook, but with SONY's incredible lightness of being and gorgeous styling.

Sony has built a brand on its elegant design. This year, at a crowded NYC party amidst the work of Thomas Pendelton, tattoo artists, and Cirque Berzerk (an LA based, cabaret style Cirque du Soleil), Sony announced three new VAIOs running Windows 7. Actress Mischa Barton showed up to herald three new VAIOs running Windows 7. One of the systems, the new Sony VAIO X, nudged out the Dell by a little more than an ounce to claim the title of lightest PC, but it has a 2” smaller screen so they’re not really comparable. The Sony has integrated Verizon wireless and a much heftier price tag; many observed that it’s more like a netbook than a notebook ($1,200).

Not to be outdone on color palette, Sony CW series notebooks can be outfitted with some lovely two-tone colors, and these 14-inch screen laptops start as low as $800. For more, see PC World reviews.

The answer of course is a featherweight netbook.  I recently got a new Acer Aspire Netbook to try out for a few weeks.  The Acer weighs under a pound.  The keyboard, though smaller than full size, is big enought.  The battery life is decent enough.  The screen display is has plenty of resolution. I can even get used to the fact that the Aspire running Windows Vista is like asking Roger Bannister to run the four minute mile in snowshoes.

What I can’t give up is having my ALL of my precious data close at hand.  This made me realize that netbooks, tantalizing as they are, are just not ready for me you.  I can’t always be sure whether the next place I’ll be will have an  internet connection and there’s not much you can do with a Netbook that isn’t logged on to the web. I can talk to my PC at home using LogMeIn, but I can’t depend on my home computer to keep running reliably if I’m gone for more than a day. (Curse you Time Warner Cable.) And I’m not too keen on putting call of my most important data “in the cloud” using programs like Google Docs. I can’t back up the data that’s stored on Google Docs

I can’t accept large documents;  I can’t use Outlook — which, dated as it is — is still the best way I know to organize my frazzled life.

I’m not giving up, but I now understand the true limits of a netbook, and you should too.  There are far too many people who think that they’re buying a low cost PC only to get it home and find out that a netbook is a horse of a different color.

I’m going to face my netbook head on and start devising systems to keep my netbook and my PC in synch.  I’ll learn to trust data that’s stored somewhere in the Google ether instead of my hard disk. I will do it or my back will never forgive me. So this time ’round I’m asking you for advice. If any of you have learned to have a full life on your netbook (creating documents, answering emails, opening attachments, sending edited revisions, let me know how you’re managing. For the moment I figure that I have a very inexpensive, very small Internet surfing machine, not a working PC.

The Nick Edition follows on the heels of a Disney announcement for a pink or blue encased ASUS netbook that it calls the NetPals Netbook. Both machines are honest-to-goodness entry-level netbooks, ones that any adult on a budget would be happy to own. What makes them kid-friendly are decoration, software, a custom UI, and lots of parental control software

Beneath the green and white Viacom slime on the cover of the PC lurks a Dell Inspiron Mini. A Nick widget (which wasn’t quite ready to be demonstrated) will take junior right to Nickland. There they’ll find feature games of the week, first-run Nick shows, an MP3 and more. WhyVille, a highly respected social networking site that caters to a “thinking” kid, is also featured prominently.

When it comes to speeds and feeds, both Disney/ASUS and Nick/Dell machines have similar specifications: Atom processors, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, and a built-in webcam. Both run XP. Both weigh under 3 lbs. Dell adds a Lo-Jack–a sensible addition for parents sending kids into a world where they’d forget their pants if they weren’t wearing them. Dell did not announce pricing, but expect it to be competitive with the Disney NetPal.

According to Dell, Maria Bailey, CEO of BSM Media, helped set the mission. Moms and dads are looking for brands they can trust, access to entertainment and education, and a protected environment.

Dell is going to miss the back to school buying spree, but when it does become available in October you’ll find the Nick Edition at Wal-Mart or on Dell.com.

Undecided whether to be in the SpongeBob/iCarly or Little Mermaid/Hannah Montana camp? Don’t worry–I’m sure it’s a matter of moments before you’ll be able to add a few other kid-themed netbooks to the menu. The injustice of it all may be that your kid gets a netbook before you do.