I have never liked the term Netbook too much - for me, a device like the MSI Wind U100 is a cheap and extremely portable notebook. I chose the device fully aware that it is slower than my old notebook was…and thus am happy with it.
Unfortunately, Intel’s marketing department felt that customers are too dumb to grasp this concept - and coined the term Netbook. This decision now seems to back fire - AMD’s Dirk Meyer stated the following in a recent CNet interview:
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“We’re ignoring the Netbook phenomenon–just thinking about PC form factors above that form factor.”I think that is a pretty unambiguous statement. But if that wasn’t clear enough, here’s what Bahr Mahony, director of notebook product marketing at AMD said: “We’re going to offer the Congo and Yukon platforms as an alternative (to processors and chipsets for Netbooks). There are a fair number of people that are not satisfied with the experience they’re getting on these mininotebook platforms.” (AMD uses the terms Netbook and mininotebook interchangeably.)
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I personally think that most of the “dissatisfied” customers purchased their boxen not knowing what to expect. If you expect dual core performance, you need to lug around a 12″ device. If you want to go ultraportable, CPU performance suffers…understanding this makes sure that there are no nasty surprises in stock…
What do you think?
