the onda

CNET has a story about some Intel exec making disparaging comments about the new "netbook" category (very small laptops with diminutive specs and low price tags) which argues that people in the industry are beginning to see the netbook as an extension at the bottom of the traditional laptop category instead of a new category in and of its own.

For a while, the dream of the netbook as a new type of computing device was fueled by the OLPC foundation and its mission to equip the other 6 billion people in the world with $100 laptops. Since Asus jumped into the game with its $400 EeePC last year though, netbooks have become broader all-purpose computing devices with even giant PC companies like Dell and us jumping into the game. I have HP's first entry, the 2133 and have written about how while it is a well built piece of hardware, as a "cloud computer" it's got some fairly crippling limitations.

In my view what has really killed the emergence of a potential new type of product from the netbook form factor is not the inherent weaknesses of underpowered hardware and small screens but rather the emergence of smart phones— and especially devices like the iPhone with screens that are not that much smaller, constant high-speed connectivity, instant-on browsing of the Internet, and perhaps most importantly, software that is tailored specifically to that all important 15-60 second usecase that could have given the netbook its true opening. In the time that it takes the latter to come out of suspend, a user has pulled out his iPhone (or Gphone or Storm, etc.), accessed the Internet, read something, posted something, and put it back in his pocket.

Until the netbook manufacturers (us most significantly) begin to appreciate the need for fundamentally new types of software in the devices, all the emergence of this new ultracheap laptop will achieve is an erosion of the healthy premiums that laptops have carried since the beginning of the personal computer industry.