Cellular South Readies NetBook Deal
I can’t tell you how impressed I was this week when I received an e-mail from Cellular South (our Mississippi-based cell provider for most of the phones in our office) touting an upcoming service — NetBooks. Pictured is what looks to be a 10-inch Dell Inspiron Mini, configured with a 160GB drive (current size as the one in my MacBook), Wi-Fi, 3G and, of course Windows XP.
Oops. Why would I be excited about a machine running Windows XP? Actually, I’m not excited about the Windows part. (Although they could do worse than XP.) I’m particularly excited about the fact that so many people have had luck running Mac OS X on a Dell Mini, and that my local cell phone company might make that prospect even easier for me by bundling the 3G wireless access. A little mini Mac OS X machine with unlimited 3G wireless is exactly the sort of thing that I probably don’t need — but that I wish I had anyway for my upcoming trip to Tucson, since I’m giving a presentation there and it would be very much fun to have the coolest gizmo in the room. (Shiny!)
And, OK, even if I couldn’t run Mac OS X on it, I’d probably still find a use for it — like taking it on sales presentations, sneaking off to the coffee shop to write opinion pieces or assigning it out to our reporters and interns who need 3G Web access while they report, blog and Twitter.
Assuming the data plan is as attractive as CS’ Blackberry plan ($50 a month for 500 minutes voice + unlimited data & text) then I may just be an early adopter.


