I broke down and bought a netbook a few days ago. After doing my research, I immediately threw out all the research and decided on a Dell Mini 10v. I couldn’t find the ASUS Eee anywhere (way too impatient to order it online and wait for delivery), and compared to the HP and Acer netbooks, I found the Dell had the most comfortable keyboard and touchpad.

The first thing I did when first firing up my new netbook was install google gears. Then I setup gears with docs, gmail and calendar…which automatically created Chrome application shortcuts. Immediately, I understood where Google is heading with their announced release of Chrome “OS.”

My netbook is incredibly portable, and doesn’t sacrifice a whole lot in terms of keyboard and interface. And it’s completely built for the web. Combined with gears backing up all of my docs, gmail and calendar data locally, a netbook is a powerful tool, if used for what it’s intended for.

With gears, I can read and queue emails when not on a wireless connection, just like I would using Outlook offline. I can read and edit docs and spreadsheets offline, and they just sync with my online docs when I get to a connection. Works the same with google calendar. I’m free from the dependency on an internet connection and retain all the benefits of a web application:

• All documents and revisions are stored on one web host to be used by my multiple computers, instead of different versions being scattered on different hard drives;
• All the sharing and collaboration benefits of google documents;
• Did I mention google apps are free (for personal use anyways)?

Netbooks are cheap, portable and extremely productive when utilized correctly. I now see what the buzz is about. Granted, gears would work just as well on any computer, and I don’t know why it took me this long to finally get what gears is all about. Something tells me it has to do with Office not being pre-installed on my netbook.

With Chrome “OS” slated to come out in a year or two, and the continued expansion of gear supported web applications, the possibilities are just beginning.  Working on the same document from any device, from anywhere and easily keeping your data in sync is a promising proposition.

If you have a netbook, check out google gears. It’s really a must have.