The netbook is hardly the device of the advanced video editor or audio recording professional’s dreams. The sophisticated chipsets and processors needed to run applications at the upper end of the processing spectrum with heavy memory and processing capability are not the netbook use profile inclusive requirement. But the advent of the netbook as the current popular sales item shows the market is more ready for a simple surfing machine  “with benefits” than heavier laptop manufacturers had anticipated.

The limitations of netbooks should not be overlooked or underemphasized. These are hardly laptops or notebooks keeping pace with the most application heavy portable devices. But how often does the average computer user utilize the full suite of utilities, and memory capacity?.File editing capabilities, or other applications with more complex formats will require desktop replacement units or at last more extensive computing components than the typical netbook.

The savvy netbook manufacturers have cunningly detected that the bulk of computer use gets done via light email, memo typing, internet based chat or forum participation. But netbooks lack the chipset processing power and enhanced memory processor for video editing, massive audio utility interaction, or advanced game play and graphics. Aggressive pricing between vendors has made this the right time to buy a netbook. MSI, Acer, Asus and vendors like HP and Sony have rushed to break device versions into the netbook retail consumer market.

The thinking of netbook manufacturers is that most people have those advanced functions on one machine or other at work or home they can use as appropriate. But the netbook functionality allows ease of use and portability that taxes nobody with back stress and aching shoulders. Netbook manufacturers have tapped into a market where users will upgrade their user profiles with additional software, circuitry, and memory to fit. No out of the box anticipation of overclocking or expensive upgrades is present. The “low end” netbook is simply the more affordable one. The needed feature expansion can be applied as necessary or as further applications installation can require.

Many road warriors for business travel may seek to adapt the netbook into a part time power use as complemented by hotel or workplace guest workstations. But the upper end of the envelope is actually not as close as critics of netbook capacity might believe or allege. The high end netbooks come with DDR2 memory and up to 160 Gigabytes of memory. The newest series of netbooks in the luxury range provides even more memory, advanced processor speed, and programming features. When given more memory, the netbook becomes enhanced to standard laptop usability.

The new market in netbooks has spawned an impressive co-market development in advanced USB or flash drive capability. SanDisk and other flash drive manufacturers have built some impressive capability into the flash drive architecture. Now, in tandem with a limited processing speed netbook and USB ports, the flash drive can host resident versions of applications which run and execute the netbook processor and keep all data functionality and records storage on the flash drive. These drives are currently designed for consumer sales availability approaching 64 gigabytes.

As a practical device the netbook becomes much more than a “dumb terminal” with limited or hiccupping processing ability. Thus guest privileges can be executed without data loss or security risks. For the netbook user, sophisticated application features can be used after initial versioning or documents or records have started. Work product can be staged. A heavier device can be left at home or work, and Internet operability and thumb drive or Internet resident applications can execute solidly on the netbook architecture of the current version devices.

Thumb drive use and memory intensive resident applications from the flash drive can result in more secure computing and the variable task planning per device availability. With more options than ever, and prices coming down, and footprint reduction and weight fractionality of conventional notebook computers, the netbook is poised to saturate consumer demographic Internet and computing users for years to come.

Only the design evolution of the processor to drive the netbook architecture further will increase operability value. With the possibility of replacing such a product in current netbook devices when it does become available, the combination of flash drive memory access and storage with small size makes the netbook an absolutely industry standard device of optimum true computing efficiency.