there’s already a thinkpad netbook for twice the price. x61.

same width as the aspire one, better keyboard, 8 hour battery, etc.

there are x41 tablets on ebay for the price of a regular eee

In a few years, all laptops may be as thin as the Apple Air, but gamers, graphic designers and the elderly will still rely on big screens.

This just seems like a preview of one aspect of the mainstream notebook market. It’s a “look what we can do” kind of thing. Eventually, these netbooks will be phased out by more powerful netbooks, and normal sized laptops will combine larger screens and powerful video cards with the efficient processor design and solid state hard drives of tomorrow’s netbooks.

Some of us enthusiasts may not mind that the machines are still relatively low powered (again, in comparison to a normal laptop), but I’m not so sure the average consumer is ready to accept the limitations that come with the devices. Never mind that most of them to date, in the US at least, have poor battery life, and that’s another major negative against them, especially for business users.

I imagine as time rolls on these issues will be addressed, but in the meantime, if it means that Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. have to cull their lines a little bit and stop making 48 variations of the same thing, is that really so bad? And if it also gets said remaining 15 variants into our hands for less money, it’s hard to consider that a loss.

Then again this may be still a few more years away.