First Google made itself to the best and most popular search engine. Then it decided the world needed AdSense. Next we wanted to have Google Applications, Google OS and Google mobile phone. According to the latest rumours, Google will next take the netbook world.

Google's CEO has been quoted to say:

"What's particularly interesting about netbooks is the price point. Eventually, it will make sense for operators and so forth to subsidize the use of netbooks so they can make services revenue and advertising revenue on the consumption. That's another new model that's coming."

In fact, netbooks would be a great way for Google to continue its mission to conquer the world. Most people use just the apps that have been preinstalled to the netbook. Google would probably only install its own Google web browser, that would default to using Google as the search engine. And of course, there would be no ad blockers available.

It seems Google can only win in this market.

Asus has released information about its next EeePC version (1000HE). Asus continues to give material for the headlines as the next netbook should run for almost ten hours on a single battery charge. At the moment preorders are taken, and the price of $399 is pretty reasonable for a computer of this calibre.

The 1000HE is powered by an Intel Atom N280, which chip consumes a maximum of 2.5 watts, which contributes to the longer battery. The system has a keyboard that's 92% the size of a standard keyboard and a 10-inch display which is rather luxurious for a netbook. The machine weighs 3.2 pounds and ships with Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi support. The 1000HE also has a 160-GB hard disk drive. In addition it has 10 GB free online space.

To buy or to wait? That must be the perennial question of every computer user. Each year, even each month the computers get faster and faster, their hard drives bigger and the amount of memory rises constantly.

So it is not surprising that the buyers of netbooks encounter the same dilemma. Every geek would love to have a new toy every now and then, but the knowledge of characteristics of computer markets makes it rational to wait yet another month in order to get something better for less than what one should pay now.

At the moment latest netbooks have specs of laptops or even desktops that are only a few years old. Just about any netbook can cope with office suites or digital photos. They even have reasonable hard disk space.

So why should one wait for the next release? Just to have the latest gadget that is bound to be oldfashioned after a few months?

I would recommend you to buy a netbook now, if you need it now. If you just would like to have a new toy, but there is no real need for it, you might just as well wait for a few months. After all, every geek should have quite a collection of usable hardware still somewhere. Why not spend a few evenings while building a nice lightweight Linux system? It would be a nice exercise before jumping to the netbook wagon.

According to a recent article published in PC World, computer manufacturers at the moment launch netbooks that are more like traditional laptops.

For example, Sony sells its traditional subnotebook of the series Vaio at the moment as a netbook that has a price tag of $900. It is interesting to see how the concept of netbook is conquering all the traditional hardware manufacturers and brand managers as a way to make more and more profits with products that can hardly be seen as netbooks.

We have seen netbooks with DVD burners and 160 gb hard drives. Maybe in a few months time we will see netbooks with 22 inch wide screens?

Ubuntu is a wildly popular Linux distribution. Thus it is no surprise that there is a remixed version of Ubuntu for netbooks. It has been designed for netbooks using Atom processor and having at least 512 Mb RAM.

Hardware requirements:

* Processor: Intel Atom processor
* RAM: 512 MB
* Storage: 4 GB Flash disk (SSD) or hard disk

The selection of software is pretty useful. The following applications are the defaults for Netbook remix:

* Web browser - Firefox 3
* E-mail client - Thunderbird
* Instant messenger - Pidgin
* Media player - Rhythmbox
* eBook reader - FBReader
* RSS reader - Liferea
* Photo viewer - F-Spot
* Office suite - OpenOffice.org

Even some closed source applications are available for the installation:

* Adobe Flash
* Adobe Reader
* Real Player for MID†
* Java JVM

And of course the remix can cope with patented (proprietary) multimedia codecs. So you will have no problems in watching all kinds of multimedia content designed only Windows users in mind:

* MPEG4 (H.263)
* MP3
* AAC
* Windows Media
* Real Media*

If you have a Netbook with Atom and are a Ubuntu user, this might be your favourite choice for the netbook.

Mouse Computer has released in Japan a new netbook with a 160 GB hard drive and a dvd burner. Sounds cool, but is it really a netbook anymore?

(See Digital World Tokyo for more information)

Eeebuntu is yet another Linux distribution that has been tailored for Asus EEE Pc. Eeebuntu is available in three versions, base, standard and netbook. Select the version you like most.

Eeebuntu is based on the extremely popular Ubuntu. See the web site for more information.