Don’t ignore your netbook audience (please!)

With my current travels in mind I recently jumped on the netbook bandwagon and got myself a very nice little ASUS 1005.

It’s pretty good and it can do most things a normal laptop can, however, there are a few drawbacks when viewing the web. The annoying thing is most of these drawbacks can be easily avoided, the problem is people haven’t considered netbooks.

A few years ago this might have been excusable but now with netbook use so widespread (yes I can confirm it appears their use is widespread in Japan) people need to consider making their designs netbook friendly or having netbook versions when the the usual version is too big and the mobile version too small.

Thanks to these issues I’ve had to stop using Hootsuite to view twitter posts as I just can’t see enough on the screen. All they need to do is let me hide a few sections, but I can’t so Thwirl it is for now.

Unlike Steve Jobs I don’t think netbooks are going away any-time soon (they will one day, but not for a few years yet) so people best start considering them if they want to deliver a good web experience to their entire audience.

Image: jpm