Once upon a time, a little over a decade ago, the computer industry came out with tiny, cheap, laptop computers called netbooks. The idea behind netbooks was that some people just needed a little laptop computer to do basic tasks like browse the internet. As it turned out, they also ran Microsoft Word just fine, especially when you weren’t running a bunch of other programs at the same time. For a writer cranking out articles before a deadline, they were perfect.
This was before tablet computers were a real thing, and frankly before anyone would have considered doing anything important online with a cell phone. Microsoft killed off the entire category because the lower-powered computers embarrassingly couldn’t run its bloated Vista operating system. So, Microsoft declared the maximum specs that could still keep running Windows XP which doomed the whole sector. It finished it off by insisting vendors use a severely limited version of Windows 7.
With vendors unable to innovate with a little more memory, or a little faster processor while keeping the small, fast and light configuration, netbooks died out. In their place rose Chromebooks, Google powered laptops that ran fast and light and eliminated Windows altogether. It’s one of the few times Microsoft ever got a bit of karma for its market bullying.
Modern Netbooks?
Fast forward to today, and small, fast, light laptops are everywhere. Unfortunately, they often turn out to be pretty expensive as the market, and industry reviewers, demand better graphics, more speed, and so on. And, that’s fair. For most people lightweight tasks get handled every day on their phone, or maybe a tablet.
For professional writers, things are different. I need a keyboard. I need a REAL, physical keyboard with keys I can feel. No matter how good that on-screen keyboard is, I can’t touch-type on it. Slow typing equals slow production, and for a freelance writer, producing written content fast is everything.
Sure, you can throw a keyboard on a tablet, but by the time, you get a fast enough tablet, and that keyboard, it’s expensive again. You might as well have gotten a pricier laptop, and that defeats the whole purpose.
Certain Chromebooks also can fill this need, but if your an old-timer like me, Microsoft Word (locally-installed) just feels like home. Plus, you can use it even when you have to go to a cousin’s basketball game out in the cell service-free boonies.
I’ve complained a lot (probably too much) about how much I loved and miss my virtually disposable netbook computer.
Enter my wife, and Christmas time.
The Acer Spin Writer Laptop Netbook
It’s hard buying a laptop for a computer snob. I spent a decade working in computers — that’s how I ended up being a professional freelance technology writer. But, you listen to a man complain enough, and you start to get an idea of what he might want.
Somewhere around Black Friday, my wife found a sale at Staples. They had a super cheap laptop. It was the Acer Spin 1, and it only cost $239.99.
By every spec, it’s a piece of junk. It has an old Pentium processor, not even an i3 or m3. It only has 4 GB of RAM, and the graphics are nothing. However, if all you want to do is write blog posts in WordPress and bang out freelance writing articles, it’s brilliant, plenty fast, and my kid even runs Minecraft on it when he needs a laptop.
Honestly, I’m old enough that my preference is to do everything on my desktop computer with dual 24-inch monitors anyway. If I just want to browse the internet, all I need is my phone. In the end, the only reason I want a laptop is to bang out some writing. This cheap writing laptop does just that.
It’s light. They keyboard is real and sturdy. There’s no touchbar, or anything silly to get in your way. It just types. It even has a touchscreen, which I always forget about until I try and wipe away a piece of dust on the screen and end up scrolling away in ways I never thought possible.
I’m not here to talk up the Acer Spin in particular, although I really do like how solid it feels compared to a lot of other cheap laptops, but if you are a freelance writer, and you need a cheap, writing only laptop, these lower end laptops can give you everything you need, and for just a couple hundred dollars.
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