Top 10 Reasons why a $100 netbook has a lot of appeal

1. It is cheap.
Obviously at $100, it is cheaper and much more affordable than high-end and even most mid-level mobile phones.

2. It will have to be easy to use.
At that price (and slim margin), manufacturers will not be able to afford to provide tech support. Thus, they will make sure it is extremely easy to use. Turn on, click Email, write Email, Send Email. Grandma should be able to use it.

3. It will be sturdier than conventional notebooks or even higher priced netbooks.
At that price, it will most likely have no moving parts, making it less fragile than more expensive notebooks. All the components will also likely be off-the-shelf commodity items whose reliability has been proven over time.

4. It is cheap enough to be used as a dedicated e-book reader.
At $100, it is considerably cheaper than the Amazon Kindle. Or just about any other branded e-book reader. And definitely a lot more practical. You can go to www.gutenberg.com and select from over 27,000 free ebooks. Download your favorites and you have your own portable library.

5. It is cheap enough to be used as a dedicated digital photo frame/portable media player.
You can also put all your vacation photos (and even movies) on SD cards and load them up anywhere, anytime, anyplace you are lucky enough to have a captive audience. Or you can put your favorite MP3/MP4s on SD cards or flash drive and entertain yourself the times you can’t get hold of a friend to watch your homemade videos.

6. It is more data-secure.
Without sufficient internal storage, you will be forced to store your data either on SD cards or flash drives or online. So that means if you lose your $100 netbook (and chances are much higher you will than with higher priced notebooks since you will treat it even less kindly than your more expensive mobile phone), you don’t have to worry about your data.

7. The proliferation of ubiquitous WiFi hotspots, HSDPA modems, and increased bandwidth simply begs for a cheap Internet access device.
With free (and affordable) public WiFi available just about anywhere in the modern urban jungles, neighborhood café seats and airport lounges, among other public areas, have become de facto hubs for surfers, emailers, and chatters. The $100 netbook, by being a cheap,”throw-away”, bring-it-anywhere net access device, simply completes the picture.

8. It can serve as disruptive technology to bring down communications costs via VoIP and IM.
The increasing availability of free or affordable broadband sufficient to do VoIP (and of course IM) has resulted in the increasing uptake of such services as well. With WiMAX and 3G HSDPA providing blanket coverage, mobile VoIP and IM stand a good chance of replacing cellular-based calls and texting. After all a $100 netbook, though a tad too big to be a handset, is light and small enough, to have a permanent place in the ubiquitous messenger bag of the metrosexual. Bluetooth will do the rest.

9. The Wintel duopoly will finally be broken.
The $100 netbook has a price point that is just too low for Intel’s processors. So not surprisingly, $100 netbooks use processors from companies like Ingenic, Samsung, etc. These processors are usually non x86 compatible, meaning they cannot run Windows as is, meaning they use Linux, or in the near future, Google’s Android. Besides, Microsoft can’t really stomach the minuscule licensing fees it can impose on netbook manufacturers, much less $100 netbook manufacturers, having finally killed Windows XP after grudgingly extending its life to stave off the Linux onslaught. So with netbooks projected to become the largest market segment, the Windows-Intel combo will likely finally see its dominance end. But then of course Intel (and Microsoft) can always argue the $100 netbook is not a computer but a glorified PDA. But their respective bottom lines will still be affected.

10. Negroponte’s OLPC dream will finally become a reality.
Nicholas Negroponte had a vision of providing One Laptop per Child with the Laptop costing $100. His pursuit of this happiness unfortunately stumbled upon so many problems that have so far prevented him from achieving his dream. However it was this initiative that arguably inspired Asus’s Eee PC and enabled the paradigm shift that followed. The $100 netbook is just the natural progression of this movement. And in some odd way, given that it will likely be sold in 3rd world countries, the fulfillment of Negroponte’s dream.