In a recent discussion here at Shutter Photo, long-time reader Lisa Newton – owner/operator of the Travelin’ Local website (a travel site  geocentric to Southern California) – mentioned that she was considering getting a Netbook for her photographic work.  It’s a natural thought progression:  Lisa’s work with the site takes her to places away from home, and having a traveling photo lab would be a benefit.  But myself and other readers – for reasons I’ll discuss shortly – advised that a Netbook is perhaps not the best tool for photography work.

Fast forward to this week.  I have a few friends (several, in fact) that I am trying to drag into – or back into – the photography world.  One of them recently came into a sum of money and is looking to set himself up with some new digital equipment and has been asking for some advice.  He also brought up the question of the Netbook because he is planning to do a lot of traveling abroad – and figured it would serve a dual purpose:  In Field Backup coupled with a Workflow Studio.  Again, I advised against the Netbook, at least not for the Workflow aspect.

There are many reasons why a Netbook should not be used for photo editing and workflow – it is not a viable photo studio.  Such reasons include (but are certainly not limited to) the following:

• Picture Quality – To clarify, I’m speaking of the quality of the Netbook’s screen, not your photographic works.  A Netbook’s screen is usually in the 8-10″ range with a maximum resolution of 1024×600.  To view any of your photos at 50% or even 100%, you’re going to need to pan around a lot.  You will just not be able to get a good idea of the picture quality.
• Performance – Netbooks are not designed as primary machines.  They are really intended to be used for light applicaitons:  E-mail, Internet Browsing, Chat and maybe some light word processing (though the form factor is too small to be comfortable for even that).  Photoshop and other photo editing software is demanding, and the Netbooks just can’t handle it well.  The processor speed is no longer a measure of system performance.  Many of these Netbooks have 1.3 Ghz processors, but they just don’t have the faster BUS systems and faster memory to back it up.  For that matter, they don’t have much memory – 1 GB on average, which is about a third of what I’d recommend.
• Storage – Hard Drives on these things aren’t nearly as large as you should have.  Most are 160 gigabytes, which seems like a lot until you install all the software you need and start downloading RAW files at 10-15 MB a pop.  And there’s no room for expansion.  To boot, the hard drive response times are pretty slow.
• Comfort – It’s hard enough to edit photos with a touch pad – I prefer to use a mouse – but the pads on these things are small and notoriously difficult to use.  The keyboards are small too, making them hard to use for serious typing.  Comfort is important when working on your photos.  Discomfort breeds impatience.

So I think the case is stated quite well as to why Netbooks aren’t good for your photography.  But that’s not to say that they don’t have their place.  As my one friend indicated…it may not be a bad as a companion.  You can use it to back up photos while in the field, and proofing on the Netbook is  an improvement over your camera’s 2″ LCD.  But I still wouldn’t recommend wiping your camera’s cards, and I wouldn’t recommend any workflow (not even deleting of photos) until you get back to a good computer.  So that all begs the question:  If it isn’t ideal for your needs – why get one at all?  Wouldn’t you rather have a new lens, or contribute that money towards a better laptop?

What are your thoughts?

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