NetbookTech

Netbooks will eventually disappear.

That’s the belief of AMD’s CEO, Dirk Meyer. At the company’s earnings conference call, Meyer stated “The distinction between what is a netbook and what is a notebook is going to go away.” Basically, future ultra-compact notebooks capable of delivering full PC experiences will be priced in such a way that netbooks will no longer be a factor.

AMD’s reasoning? The upcoming Athlon Neo platform of course (and somewhat realized by the upcoming HP Pavilion dv2 notebook).

Yet this really depends on what one defines a netbook to be. Is a netbook a 10 inch system with an Atom processor inside? Is it a 12 inch system with a ULV Core 2 Duo processor inside? To us at NetbookTech, a netbook is an inexpensive (typically less than $500 dollars), lightweight (under 3 pounds), ultra-portable (ranging in sizes from 7 inch displays to 12 inch displays), long-lasting (3-5 hours) mobile computer. It really says nothing about the processor or graphics component within the system. We believe that netbooks can provide that full PC experience – depending on what that means to you of course.

AMD would of course like you to associate netbooks with low performing systems not capable of delivering the full PC experience (in order to sell you on their upcoming Neo platform), but we’d like to think that future processor and system innovations will float down to the netbook category – resulting in inexpensive, lightweight, ultra-portable solutions that can do it all.

Thus it’s our belief that netbooks as a class or category is here to stay. Will it always use an Intel Atom processor with crappy Intel graphics? Of course not.. but the concept of a cheap lightweight portable system delivering everything you need for daily use has strung a note among many users out there and companies are heeding this note.

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