Last month I posted a “word of caution” about Netbooks, but now Intel is taking it too far.
Recently Intel said that it “is re-evaluating the Netbook market as possibly not The Next Big Thing“, and that the Netbook is only good for one hour of computing (”If you’ve ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size–it’s fine for an hour. It’s not something you’re going to use day in and day out.“). These quotes are from an article in Nanotech - The Circuits Blog “Intel rethinks Netbooks: ‘Fine for an hour’ but…“.
Well, I’ve often used my Asus Eee PC 4G Netbook for several hours at a time, and it only has a seven inch screen which doesn’t really bother me.

Is this statement by Intel because they really believe this or because there is more profit to be made from their Core 2 Duo processors? It is rather strange considering that Intel makes the Atom processor, which is the main processor used in Netbooks.

At the moment Netbooks are really popular. There was a whole page dedicated to Netbooks in the last Best Buy catalog! An article in Barron’s Investors’ Soapbox AM called “The Netbook Effect” says “Netbooks Are A Hot Topic within the PC market given the recent momentum the new category has been experiencing.“. They go on to say that they find it “difficult to accurately assess the long-term potential of netbooks“, which I guess is the real question.

As a side note, on Techstyle - one of the other blogs here at Pricegrabber - Loretta has written a whole series on Netbooks, starting with “The Mini Laptop Rage” and then comparison shopping a whole range of Netbooks.