Netbooks offer a lighter, cheaper alternative to traditional laptops.

What to expect in a Netbook

Unlike a smart phone, most Netbooks have keyboards big enough for touch typing, and their displays are big enough to render a legible Windows desktop.  Battery life is also surprisingly good, ranging from 3 to 9 hours, comparable with or better than a full-sized laptop.  Most netbooks don't have built-in 3G communications.  That's a costly extra.  If you don't have it, you'll need a Wi-Fi connection to get online.  The hard drive is usually 160 gigabytes, much smaller than most conventional laptops. To use a netbook, you'll do without a built-in DVD or CD drive, usually live with just 1GB of memory as a norm, and settle for less than blazing processing speed.  But while on the go.... routine applications such as Web browsing, e-mail, and word processing should run fine.  Forget about 3D gaming and video-editing, though. For those, you'll be happier with a full-powered machine.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is just 2.5 pounds.  It comes in a variety of colors as shown. Netbooks are suitable as secondary systems for performing routine tasks.

Resources: Consumer Reports Magazine, June 2009 issue and www.dell.com.  

The economy and online social networks are the latest fodder for scams

 Consider these findings from a national survey of 2,081 online households in January 2009 by the Consumer Reports National Research Center.

You should know:

• On-line identity theft is widespread.  We project that close to 2 million households have suffered identity theft in the past year as a result of Internet-related activity, most often online shopping.
• Phishing -sending authentic-looking but fraudulent email designed to steal sensitive personal information - is a continuing concern.  We estimate that about 7 million consumers gave phishers personal information over the past two years.  That's 1 in 13 online households.  Among scam victims, 1 in 7 lost money, comparable with data from our last survey.  
• Many corporations that keep sensitive consumer data, such as credit-card numbers, need to do a better job securing that data by regularly testing their sites' security and by teaching programmers better ways to create secure Web sites.
• Poorly protected federal computer networks have been attacked by foreign entities and lots of information has been compromised, according to an expert panel that studied U.S. cybersecurity for a year.
• There are 3.7 million U.S. homes with broadband access that don't use a firewall to protect against hackers, we estimate.

Identity theft happens every day to people from all walks of life. What can you do to combat this crime? There is good news! The Identity Theft ShieldSM offered by Technology On Demand, LLC provides a suite of services designed with detection and restoration in mind. Call 904-316-0410 for a complimentary security assessment.