jmke

Well it did not take long for netbooks to morph into notebooks. We are seeing the same trend in desktops with prices hitting sub $500 levels for fully featured desktops, albeit some with anemic Intel Atom CPUs. The worldwide depression is forcing retail and business buyers to more closely evaluate what they really need as opposed to buying PCs with lots of unused overhead.

There is no doubt in my mind that the dual core Atoms will start showing up in netbooks/notebooks later this year as consumers look to replace overweight notebooks with slimmed-down notebooks, but NOT at prices such as Sony charges for its high-end light-weight notebooks. Manufacturers will look to up-scale the line to recapture notebook-like margins - netbooks are cannibalizing notebooks at an alarming rate for some manufacturers, especially those late coming to market.

At this point netbooks are enjoying a price advantage as most are shipped with Windows XP, although Ubuntu is gaining share at a nice clip. Manufacturers at present are faced with making a future choice to load an emasculated version of Windows 7 to keep costs down, letting users take the option of upgrading, or embracing Ubuntu as the Windows alternative, which will certainly stimulate M$s competitive juices. A third alternative is to load an upscale version of Windows 7, but the OS price as a percentage of the total may be a hard sell.

http://overclockers.com/index.php?op...&Itemid=426 5

__________________