If  you need the Internet like you need air and girl. you’ll be utterly thrilled by the advent of affordable and portable netbooks, such as the Iphone, and the Asus Eee PC.

We’ve lined up the iPhone 3G against mini laptops in an effort to find out if you’re better off being a netbook ninja or an iPhone 3G thrasher. It won’t be a pretty fight, but we hope at the end of it that we’re closer to figuring out which we value most.

Iphone is very small and against any netbooks, such as the Asus Eee PC, but  a smaller size means a smaller screen — just 3.5 inches across — and while browsing the Internet on the iPhone 3G’s screen is very good, it’s not exactly the same as having a 8.9-inch or 10-inch display in front of you, to show off Web sites in all their glory.

The other obvious disadvantage of the iPhone 3G’s design is the lack of a mechanical keyboard. Admittedly, some netbooks’ keyboards aren’t very good, but we’d sooner type out a long email on an MSI Wind, for example, than on the iPhone.

If IM is down the Iphone can actually talking to people and there’s built-in Wi-Fi and 3G too, which means you can browse the Web or send emails almost everywhere you go. You also get GPS, which helps if you get lost.

Battery life on the iPhone 3G isn’t too bad. We think that the iPhone’s battery copes better overall than most netbooks.

A large screen and a mechanical keyboard make netbooks very appealing compared to the iPhone 3G if you’re planning on doing serious work on the go, particularly when you realise that you currently can’t edit Microsoft documents on the iPhone 3G. There’s also a good deal more storage space on netbooks, which is useful if you want to take your movies, music and work around with you at all times. A standard netbook ranges from 8.9-inches to 10-inches in screen size and while this makes it much more portable than your average laptop , watching the BBC’s iPlayer on a netbook is much more enjoyable than Iphone.

But unlike the iPhone 3G, you can’t make calls via GSM and you’ll most likely have to buy a USB dongle if you want access to 3G data. You also don’t get GPS as standard on current netbooks, which means if you get lost, you’ll stay lost.

When it comes to battery life, most netbooks last for two to four hours of constant use, which isn’t too bad, but since you’re less likely to snack on functions using a netbook than you would using an iPhone 3G, we think the iPhone wins this one.

Sourse