Jason Clarke

Mobile tech guru Michael Gartenberg has a column up at Engadget proclaiming Nebooks, R.I.P. Given the current incredible popularity of the category as evidenced by the huge amount of interest in sites like Liliputing and JKOnTheRun, it’s hard to imagine that Gartenberg is right. But he is.

Netbooks are primarily popular because they are inexpensive, relatively full-featured laptops. The fact that they are very small and therefore quite portable is also a big selling feature, but it is also the compromise that will eventually kill the category. Current netbooks offer cramped screens and keyboards, small drives, and underpowered processors; unfortunately, this means that some consumers are buying what they think are cheap laptops, but finding that they don’t work very well for media management or editing. As noted in the Engadget column, netbooks are already getting bigger to the point that both Microsoft and Intel are attempting to somehow artificially constrain the definition of what a “netbook” is to arbitrary an arbitrary size.

So why are netbook offerings getting bigger? Two reasons. First, because they can – you can now build a laptop in the $300-$500 price window that seems to define a netbook with a 12-inch screen and accompanying full-size keyboard, if not larger. The second – and more important – reason is that when given the choice, most people would rather work on a larger keyboard with a larger screen – they want laptops. This is evidenced by the fact that the number of netbooks currently selling with Windows on them has dwarfed those that are selling with Linux distributions on them despite the cost differential.

All of this points to the fact that computers have become commodities, and the prices on them are going to continue to fall. When you can get the equivalent of today’s 13-inch MacBook Pro for $500, will that still be considered a netbook? Is the definition of netbook “a computer that forces you to compromise”?

I think the point here is that the term “netbook” is likely going to die soon, since the definition was never really all that clear in the first place. Another possible alternative is that the “netbook” will continue to be used but simply signify “small laptop”, which certainly won’t have the same cachet as it holds today. Let’s hope the netbooks of the future are able to handle the ever-increasing demands of the software that we want to run on them.