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Its amazing what a little bit of cuteness can do, and
netbooks are the perfect example. Based on their performance, their rise seems unlikely. Most
netbooks ship with Atom processors with performance that is a decade behind what is found in even a reasonably priced desktop. Their keyboards and screens are tiny as well, making it more difficult to multi-task. But let's face it - they're small, they're cheap, they're cute, and they have battery life that seems infinite compared to notebooks with a similar price. Consumers have fallen in love.
Today, manufacturers have settled on the ten inch format as the standard for netbooks, and there is little reason to believe this format will subside in the future. With a ten inch screen there is enough room for the netbook to be usable, but the computer remains small enough to be firmly classed as a netbook. Recent attempts at twelve inch netbooks have shown that those devices are probably better classed as budget ultraportables.
While the size of the screen on netbooks will remain stale, it should be expected to see these products become gradually slimmer. The ASUS 1008HA is probably the vanguard of a trend. The main barrier here is battery technology, as there is no way to get around the fact that a 6-cell battery is going to be bulky and heavy, but there is hope in Intel's launch of the new batch of Atom processors alongside the Lincroft system-on-a-chip architecture later this year. Intel will be taking some of the functions provided by the current i945G chipset which is shipped with Atom systems and integrating them into the Atom processor itself. The result should be a system that requires less power, and if the power requirement is reduced sufficiently then smaller batteries will be required to achieve the same battery life.
