Inexpensive Atom-Powered 'Netbooks' Popular at Launch

I consider the iPhone and the Touch to be their "compact laptop" They can do more, and have more storage than the Asus Eee PC - plus they're cheaper

I'm sure Apple will address the netbook market, question is whether that's in the next few weeks or next year.

Personally i can see room for a netbook from Apple, targeted at Students which is traditional clamshell, but folds over into a tablet and runs in an iphone style UI when in that mode and a key feature will be ebooks.

Expect a $100 premium on other netbooks, but will blow the competition away.

The reason i see this fitting in and not killing macbook sales is the fact that netbooks don't make good primary computers. All the people i know that use one, have either a desktop or full size laptop as their primary machine.

M.

I consider the iPhone and the Touch to be their "compact laptop" They can do more, and have more storage than the Asus Eee PC - plus they're cheaper

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-8-9-inch-Processor-Battery-Sapphire/dp/B001EYV9TM/ref=pd_ts_pc_1?ie=UTF8&s=pc

$399. 160GB hard drive. 1GB RAM. 8.9" screen.

I'm not saying it's the same market. But they are more robust than you think.

arn

It's inevitable Apple will want to run this market. The Air fell between the netbook/ultraportable and high-end gadget markets, satisfying neither, which is perhaps why there's no sign of an update or renewal of the Air format in sight.

I wouldn't be surprised if the forthcoming portables lineup included an ultraportable that combined the design cachet of the Air with the functionality of the Macbook at a

It's not too surprising to me, I use an MSI Wind as my primary computer -- I guess you could call my iPod touch my secondary computer ;). All I did was upgrade the memory from 1GB to 2GB and upgrade the wireless card from 802.11g to 802.11a/g/n to better suit my hardware needs. I paid $375 after the Microsoft Live Search Discount for the machine itself.

But even with the 1.6GHz Atom processor, it serves all of my daily needs while running Windows XP Home SP3: Google Chrome/Firefox 3.0, Word 2007/Excel 2007, Photoshop CS3, and iTunes. I use other apps every once in a while, but these are the main ones I use.

Most of the time, my MSI Wind is sitting on my desk hooked up to my USB hub, 250GB external HDD, and 22" monitor. When it's not on my desk, the keyboard is a blast to use and the 10" LED-backlit display is gorgeous. I usually have a Bluetooth mouse with me for extended use away from my desk.

My only complaint: the 3-cell battery isn't enough; I'm waiting on MSI to release the 6-cell as a separate option.

I guess I've gotten to the point with computers where I don't care about outspec'ing the next person -- I just want something that works and is affordable.

...which is perhaps why there's no sign of an update or renewal of the Air format in sight.

Or they could be doing what they do with the iPods and iPhone and updating once a year.

I doubt that apple will go for this market...
I can't decide if it would be cool though.
We'll see, apple knows best :D

It's not too surprising to me, I use an MSI Wind as my primary computer --

You know that puppy runs OS X beautifully right?

I consider the iPhone and the Touch to be their "compact laptop" They can do more, and have more storage than the Asus Eee PC - plus they're cheaper

All the people i know that use one, have either a desktop or full size laptop as their primary machine.

I agree - mostly!

I have a MacPro under the desk and take a 1st gen MBP to college. The MBP is a bit too large to lug around all day and doesn't fit well on aircraft/train tray tables. The iPhone is great for watching movies on the go and obviously is a phone as well, but isn't great for all websites (notably ebay uk and java-heavy ones like autotrader). Plus sometimes I do need to type reasonably long documents and a decent sized keyboard and editing functions would be a big help. Something in-between the two form factors and performance levels of the iPhone and MBP would be perfect.

(Personally I'm hoping for macbook-like performance in a 10" shell - touch-screen keyboard of course, and an optional dock for synching everything with the macPro! :rolleyes:)

If Apple releases such a sub notebook I would get it right away for my wife , her ibook G3 is getting a bit old and she only use it for web browsing and e-mails , all the rest is loaded into my macbook and with 250 Gb we have enough space for all our media.

So ...Steve bring it on !! Christmas is around the corner :)

Saludos