Five reasons to seriously consider buying a netbook

Netbooks represent the latest consumer electronics craze. They're small, they're portable, they're dirt cheap, and, in 2008, consumers bought somewhere in excess of 14 million of them. At last week's CES, all the major players introduced new netbooks, stimulated by that consumer demand: Sony introduced the Pocket P; HP debuted the Mini Mii; Asus brought out its S121 with a 512GB solid state drive.

Power users are often skeptical of small, underpowered devices and we at Ars can understand that. Now that CES is over, here are five points to consider that might change your mind about netbooks and how you might use one.