Pros and Cons of Netbooks

I mentioned the word ‘netbook’ in a post last week about Windows 7. Here it is in the BBC news again with a really detailled descriptions of the pros and cons (advantages and disadvantages) of netbooks.

The first expression that caught my eye in this article was in the fifth paragraph:

The firm’s Eee PC managed to buck the recession with increasing sales when sales of bigger laptops and desktop computers dropped off.

In this sense, ‘buck the recession’ means to defy the recession and continue selling well or even better than normal. An expression we see more often is to ‘buck a trend’ meaning to defy that trend or be different from the other people/organisations in that situation.

Another interesting phrasal verb in this paragraph is to ‘drop off‘, meaning the amount of sales has declined.

I mentioned in my previous description of netbooks that they ususally have slower processors and less storage than regular laptops and the BBC has a nice way of putting this:

High-performance processors are eschewed in favour of components that weigh less and use less battery power.

In this instance, to ‘eschew’ means to avoid something in favour of something else.

There’s a nice compound adjective later in the article where the version of Windows 7 intended for netbooks is describes as ‘stripped-down‘. This means anything unnecessary in it has been removed.

There’s a paragraph right down at the bottom of the article with three more great expressions in it:

However, Google is ratcheting up the competition by announcing it will launch a simple, fast-booting, web-centric operating system.

To ‘ratchet up’ usually means to tighten but in the example above, it means to increase the level of competition. Then we have ‘fast-booting’. To boot is when the operating system of a computer starts up so a computer that is ‘fast-booting’ can be turned on and ready to use very quickly.

The last expression for today is ‘web-centric’. The suffix ‘centric’ means interested in or focussed on so ‘web-centric’ is something that is intended mainly for use with the web (Internet).

Have a great weekend!

Today’s Image is by Steve Woods