I enjoyed the recent Labs round-up of netbooks and was sorely tempted to cash out. These days I spend quite a bit of time working in the browser producing cms-based websites, so a lightweight system dedicated to making net access effective and pleasurable would really make sense.

But then I thought about it…

The idea of a dedicated net device is great but it looks like the current netbooks all fail miserably at their supposed primary function. The problem is ergonomics: web browsing with its mix of cursor navigation, page scrolling and occasional text entry makes special demands and, while today’s awkward mix of keyboard and trackpad / trackpoint input is just about workable (especially if the trackpad offers scroll areas), it’s certainly not efficient or pleasurable. 

So what’s the answer? A live screen with handwriting and speech recognition would look to fit the bill. However, while I love my tablet PC’s slate mode for taking notes in OneNote or working on images, I always end up opening it up to get at the keyboard when browsing.

The bottom line is that we need some new input system dedicated to working in the browser. As this needs to work when the keyboard is hidden it needs to be an onscreen solution so it’s down to the operating system (this also has major advantages in terms of universality and no hardware costs). Here Windows 7’s touch-screen capabilities look particularly interesting.

Currently the new Microsoft Surface technology seems to be focused on kiosk-style applications as recently demoed by Ross Burridge at CES. I’m more interested in what this might mean for everyday use and the particular demands of working in the browser.

Presumably it shouldn’t be too difficult for Microsoft or OEMs to come up with an onscreen solution. In fact small panels in the bottom left and right, one offering thumb-based navigation/scrolling and the other thumb-based mobile-phone style predictive text input should do it, with a full-width onscreen keyboard for dedicated text input.

Does anyone know if this is being worked on? In any case, I’ve decided to hold off for Windows 7 for the netbook purchase.

PS. You might want to check whether your trackpad has scroll areas – generally indicated by lines to the right and bottom – that you didn’t realise were there. They’re easy to miss and could save you a lot of unnecessary and awkward onscreen navigation.