Intel officially called the smaller subnotebooks netbooks. Matthew Dillon posted an excellent overview of the different models he would classify as netbooks.
Personally, all the different nomenclature is way too confusing. For example, Microsoft announced ULPC and Intel announced netbook. Some reviewers are just as confused. Consider the following terms used to describe the MSI Wind: mini-notebook. minilaptop, and one reviewer put UMPC in the headline. As consumers, do we just choose a term we prefer? In which case, I prefer Mobile PC. Put all of the products into the Mobile PC category and life is simple.
I like simple. OK. No one is going to listen to me because years ago I stated UMPC was the opportunity for large commpanies such as Microsoft, Intel, and VIA to allow consumers choices about their OS (e.g. Linux, XP, Vista, Mac OS, etc). The UMPCs started to take a bad turn and clearly Intel and MS were not getting along. My take was that Intel simply delayed processor shipments and saw the UMPC as a way to clear older inventories. They burned the consumer by shipping slow processors for the UMPCs. In fact, they down right killed the UMPC by putting up a weak site under the most powerful domain name, UMPC.com. Oh well. I should quit the bitching but I merged the UMPCBuzz to this site because I didn't see the industry keeping the UMPC name around much longer.
Let's re-consider the craze of the netbooks, or whatever you want to call them. I'm not convincved that having a small PC is what I want when no inking is involved. This is just the wrong direction. Manufacturers need to come out with something that increases consumer productivity and not just squeeze down a notebook. Just think of the weight that would be saved if the keyboards were ripped off and a touchscreen was put into the system. Sigh.
I asked yesterday on twitter, am I the only one in a tech funk? I dislike the direction the ULPC or netbooks is taking. Head to the future and not back to the crap. This is why the iPhone took off - it was different. It was unique. It was cool. Where is the cool in a netbook? Yuck.
