Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"As someone who doesn't reside in the USA, I was wondering what would be the best way to get internet for my computer in the US for a couple of weeks? If it were Europe I know I'd look for some prepaid data. Is there anything similar offered by American carriers? A MiFi or a data SIM that I can tether from would work, but I'm trying to maintain a tight budget. Help!"
There are some people out there who think there's something wrong with creating operating systems that can run on weaker hardware. Let me rephrase that. There are some people out there who thinks there's something wrong with creating operating systems that can run on ANY hardware.
Operating systems aren't computer games. If you 'need' a high-end computer just to be able to run an operating system on it what are you going to use it for? Watching screensavers? There's something seriously wrong with the assumption that people need to have powerful machines for running operating systems. Some people might not remember this, but operating systems are for operating the darn machine.
A good operating system knows how to adapt to its physical system as long as the machine has all or most of modern interfaces for the operating system to latch on to. It's fully possible to use advanced OS techniques in platforms aimed at weaker hardwares. Last time I checked Windows systems weren't better than Linux or OS X in terms of engineering. People just need to come to terms with the fact that Vista in the beginning was a marketed product, not an engineered product.
As for people talking about marketing netbooks for third world countries, don't kid yourself. Sure, the hip urbanites in China and India will gobble them up, but last time I checked those guys were richer and had faster internet than an average U.S. citizen. The poor populations of third-world countries still swear by big beige boxes that are one fifth the price of netbooks (or given away for free, actually). Not to mention netbooks are designed as secondary computers, and lot of third world computing structure still relies heavily on physical medium like cd to transfer information.
Netbooks are results of semi tech-savvy consumers in developed nations realizing they don't need 4GB RAM and 3D acceleration to view the youtube and update their facebook profiles, contrary to what MS and others had been forcing them to believe with lazy engineering.