Oon Yeoh

Wong Nai Chee is a lawyer-cum politician based on Melaka. He doesn't consider himself to be a heavy computer user but he believes the Internet will grow in importance.

Wong Nai Chee finds the Netbook to be "neat".

He finds a handy device like the Netbook to be very useful for getting information on the Net, which he believes is crucial in today's world. "One day it (ability to access the Internet) will become indispensable," he says. "Now already it's indispensable, what more in 10 years' time?"

He sees this as a global trend. "It's the click culture," he says, adding that if you don't get into it, "you'll be left behind."

Beyond the functionalities of the Netbook, he also likes its look and feel. "It's very handy, it's attractive, it's neat... it's neat."

In Melaka, I visited news journalist and editor, Veera Pandiyan, who travels to and from KL and Melaka every week.

Veera tries out the Netbook

During workdays, he's in KL but on weekends, he goes back to Melaka where his family is. He's the classic road warrior.

Veera's first impression is that it's very handy -- something you'd carry when you move around outside. "It's a great tool for journalists and people on the go," he says, adding that he thinks it looks very "cool."

When I asked him whether he'd be buying a Netbook for his daughter, he shot back: "You think I'm too old for this? Are you implying I'm outdated?". We had a good laugh about that!

For the second leg of my Mobility Tour, I visited Dr. Zaliha Mustafa and her assistant Roslee Shariff.

Dr. Zaliha and Roslee of Johor Baru check out the Atom-powered NetBook.

A medical doctor and a politician, Dr. Zaliha travels quite a bit but she doesn't carry her laptop with her everywhere because it's a bit too heavy to lug around. She does carry a PDA but it doesn't give her access to the Internet.

Roslee, a mechanical engineer by profession and a computer buff, would prefer a laptop with full specs but Dr. Zaliha thinks something smaller and lighter could be just what she needs. "For a simple person like me, it's good enough," she says.

Internet entrepreneur, Erik Chang, considers the arrival of the Intel Atom-powered NetBook to be a godsend.


A NetBook is what Erik has been looking for all along.

Erik says he's been looking for something handy and lightweight, yet powerful enough for him to do his Internet work, for the past six months or so.

"I had seen an earlier version of this kind of notebook but it was not as solid as this one," he says, referring to Acer's Aspire One Netbook.

Although Erik had never used a Linux computer before, he quickly took to the NetBook and was so thrilled by it he sat down and played with it for nearly half and hour.

He was delighted when he loaded his company's website called MindX, which can best be described as an online directory with multimedia elements. Currently in beta stage, it's about to be launched very soon.

He liked the NetBook's size too. "A PDA is only two inches plus (in screen size), that's too small for my eyes," he says. "People like me are old. That's too tiny a screen. If someone can come up with a cross between a PDA and a notebook, that'll be ideal."

An Internet true believer, Erik says he does most of his work online, so such a device would work well for him. "It's very suitable," he says. "Anything you want, you can get online so even those who are doing their work, they can do it on this NetBook."

Erik dubbs the NetBook as "this generation's notebook", a device for the Internet generation.

Jeff Ooi, Malaysia's famous blogger-turned-politician, was tickled pink to find the NetBook to be around the same weight as two smart phones.

 
Jeff says that the NetBook could be ideal for road warriors like himself.

One of the first things, Jeff, the consummate blogger, asked about was which browser was installed on the device. He was happy to see that it was Firefox, his favorite browser. When told of the price point, he found it "iressistible". 

Jeff's initial impression? "Sufficient computing power," he says. "Once I log on to Wi-Fi the downloading of heavy traffic websites seem to be quite fast. I'd love to have this as a traveling mate."

He also likes the fact that the start up time is very fast.

The most important things for a road warrior, he says is that battery life is long, storage capacity is decent computing power is sufficient to do basic tasks like surfing, chatting, creating documents and so on.

"This is not a workstation," he says. "But a good travel mate. When you travel you don't want to laden yourself with heavy items... It's suitable for blogging in parliament even," adds the first-time MP for Jelutong.