2BMobile

With the average cost of a 10" Netbook  under $400 and the 8" average  under $300 US as of April 2008 why would I pay almost $ 89 for a replacement battery for one them? If you also consider that Netbooks come with a one year standard product warranty and after the warranty period is over it will cost you $75 to have a technician diagnose the problem why not just replace it with a new unit. If Netbooks are combined with backup storage (either external disk drive or online storage ) and SaaS software applications then transferring of important data is relatively easy and fast. The Netbook's job is to be our web browser as more software applications use it as the universal framework to standardize the client experience. Couple that with the trend of products to support offline application, the need to have personal application software on your device continues to decrease. Netbook usage creates a very good business case that it is more cost-effective to get rid of a currently broken Netbook (hardware) and replace it with a new one than to repair it or do any type of maintenance that approaches 30-40% of the product's original purchase price.

The Math

Software: SaaS would be a constant for either a laptop or a netbook so we will ignore this for this comparison.  

Netbook Asus 1000 HE @ $ 390 with XP home and a 1 yr. warranty ( a high-end in the netbook market).

Current average selling price of laptops are $560 plus you local software.

MS Office $ 300, MS Project or Viso $ 400, VPN Client $ 50.   

Total Laptop w/SW approximately $ 1,310 per user.  

Of course you could do exactly the same thing with your laptop computer and get more features and capabilities, and that would be great. But as the price of the devices increases,and the more local the functionality the more content remains on the unit, we become more dependent on keeping it as it is  less likely to be easily replaced.