Get away from the accepted terminology create a 'new' class of device charge the same/more for your OS.

That when asked "what would you call one of those new little Laptops?"

the reply? no not netbook, nor mini laptop but a handtop, makes sense to me you put your LapTop on your lap and your HandTop on your hand.

however if we follow this logic surely it's a BeachTowelTop?

Smallflaccid have a history of going for useless bloat (it almost seems like they can't help themselves), so I suppose the pithy term 'SCC' was eventually too much(?) for them.

Consign the two names to the 'stuck loop'.

Once you have spent all that effort establishing a strong industry leading brand, with renowned must have technology like "squirt", you should leverage the brand.

Zunebook. Says it all.

Seriously now folks...

Perhaps it would make more sense to do brand leverage with this new bing thing. Bingbook.

Or LiveBook or something.

Marketing 101.

"Smaller, cheaper, have longer battery life and instant-on capabilities"?

Sounds like my old Series 5. Perhaps Psion should get into this Smartbook racket -- call them Netbooks to differentiates themselves from all of the above.

Oh, hold on -- I think I'm going into an infinite loop...

Thanks, Beast-Child of Bill, but my new Asus Eee Linux Netbook* will remain a Netbook*, and will only be running Linux. The funny thing is, my little Linux Eee boots quickly, connects wireless quicker, and is ready to surf sooner than my much faster Thinkpad R40 running a very trim version of Windows XP SP3 (with 2x processing speed, 3x RAM, etc).

*Call it a female Aardvark for all I care:

- Fast, light, small = Linux Netbook.

- Slow, bloated, over-hyped = Rush Limbaugh, or Windows ME, Vista on a PC.

(now you just have to call all those unsold copies of Vista 'sales lost to piracy', and pass the cost onto your customers...)

That they have a problem with 'net', since His Holiness BIll, the oracle of all things tech, did say the net would never catch on. Or maybe he was just prophesying the future of .net. Whatever.

It sounds like your GF was offering you a quickie.

Paris, because she works best in an infinite loop.

Or Netbook + Linux = fast, geekbox, unattractive to most buyers, because they know windows.

Or Netbook + windows = what people know, only smaller and slower.

At least you can still get XP on them..... For now.....

particularly "low cost". A "proper" laptop isn't that much more expensive than netbooks - especially if you get a winnetbook.

.... it took 6 comments for somew Linboi to get his word in. Seriously though MS do know how to make up names that don't really roll off the tongue - currently looking at Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 - what was wrong with WePOS?

'low cost small notebook PCs' = LCSNPs = "lick snips". Which as far as I can tell means absolutely nothing, but doesn't it just sound filthy anyway?

"It's speculated that Microsoft's real intentions are simply to separate more able-featured machines from lesser kit ..."

Good luck with that frontal assault on Moore's Law. *Already* the main costs of a portable computer are the battery and the screen. Microsoft could try and pitch a less-able-featured version of Windows which didn't need one or other of those, but I don't think it will sell.

The pace of development is such that any label based on feature set will be obsolete within a year. Perhaps MS have a sneaking appreciation of this when they include "low cost" in their moniker. That's the real issue here. These machines are the cheapest you can buy for a given screen size (an ergonomic consideration, not a technological one).

Sure, they're used for more than the intertubes, but computers referred to as notebooks have been used for more than just noting things down for a long time, and my PDA doesn't only assist me with my personal data. Come to think of it, my mobile phone is more than just a telephone I can move around.

My favourite term was always laptots actually but I'll tolerate netbook, it's kinda cute.

Surely the specification tells you what it is. As for what I call them -- my Eeeep's and Eeeep and an Aspireone is an Aspireone, etc..

The Netbook in this latest incarnation has been killed off by Microsoft and Asus anyhow -- I just wish I'd have waited so I could not buy an Asus, since it's too late to return it now (AFAIK UK consumer law doesn't allow warranty returns because the company has since turned out to be a subsidiary of Microsoft).

MicrocerebralSoftdicks Corporation

My Dell Mini 9 scc runs Linux and is staying that way. Whatever version of Windows and licensing terms they conjure up for this "new" breed of computer is irrelevant to me :-)

A node by any other name will sell as cheap

Why aren't they just "small laptops" for fuck's sake?

Didn't I read that Psion were getting all shirty about the industry using their Netbook trademark? Surely MS are just avoiding future legal action when some troll buys the remains of Psion's carcass.

IMHO the 5mx was a fantastic bit of kit in its day. It was the Windows support that let it down ... now, where have I heard that before .....

I can only imagine you mean POS in it's classical meaning (no not Point Of Sale), It's good to see some honesty in their product names...

Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 (Piece Of Shit being an additional lisense I would imagine)...

Android here we come, baby.

"That latter long-winded term was coined by none other than Microsoft. The company apparently feels compelled to further refine the "netbook" category because newer machines are doing more than just internet browsing."

Who caused that then? You.

Putting bloody windows on these tthings when it was not needed/wanted.

Money grabb A$$hats

The ex Kremlinologists must surely be detecting the flying chairs in the Redmond marketing department over this one by now. To get one of these devices useful at a sensible cost it has to have a low wattage chip because battery tech isn't improving as fast as silicon tech. So there is a market for 7-10 inch screen portable computing devices which can perform useful computing functions costing no more than a couple of hundred quid. It's just that XP SP3 is patchbloating too fast and coming out of effective security support too soon to run at any useful speed on these things. It's not as if the Windows 7 doublespeak edition, son of Vista by any other name, is ever likely to run much faster than a dead dog on this class of hardware either.

Consequently a third of this market has already gone to Linux. What to do when Eastern Europe starts breaking away from Kremlin control ? Anti trust rulings and fines have made it too expensive to send in the tank divisions. Politicians can still have their arms twisted but markets are more expensive entities to control. The still loyal XP proletarians are having their patience sorely tried while using too much battery waiting for bootup. So those managed by he who throws chairs are coming up with ever more inventive marketing speak to attempt to reclassify this market, to favour devices at double the above cost with fast enough CPU speed and enough RAM and hard disk to run Son of Vista, in order to exclude all else from their new hardware category.

Windows has already lost in the embedded and Internet server spaces. Now it's losing on small cheap computers. Most of those in the world who have never yet used a computer will be able to afford to use one within the next 15 years or so, but not with a CPU hot enough or a power supply adequate to run Vista spawn. This doesn't mean there won't be the odd Cuba and North Korea in the DRM-driven markets dictated by proprietary content providers. But these are games console and set top box territories - not general purpose computing devices.

"My favourite term was always laptots actually "

Oh dear God, please tell me this was a typo ....

...that we collectively rename Windows "Bloated, buggy, insecure, overpriced piece of shite". Hey - it's accurate, it's descriptive, it's unmistakable - what more could anyone want?

People use them exactly the same way as laptops. There is no extra "netness" in the way netbooks are used. They have smaller screens and slower CPUs - that is what determines changes in usage, not increased usage of "the net" or decreased usage of local disk.

If it has an atom cpu its a crudbook.

The only "netbook" is a thin client.

Don't Psion or Palm own the name 'netbook' I seem to recall them taking someone to court recently over use of their trademark. If this is the case, it would seem fairly sensible not to use that name.