James, you say it all comes down to price, and the lower the better. I disagree. As I said in a previous post on here a while back, I think there’s a huge, gaping hole in the market for netbook-sized laptops that are between £400 and £1200. There just isn’t anything in that price bracket right now.

If someone would add some premium features to their netbook, like a Core 2 Duo ULV, and 2 GB RAM, and build it with quality materials, I think they could easily justify a £600-£800 price tag, and they wouldn’t have any competition in that market.

It’s just waiting to be done.

>>>So if most of these babies are pretty much the same how can the OEMs set their jewel apart from the crowd?

Duh. Make sure it can run OS X trouble-free!
http://tinyurl.com/57j9ka

“They are basically the same machine with slight variations and different branding”

I think you’ll find there are some differences with most of the PCs.

some MSI have been re-badged by OEMs, but this is not to say it’s the same as an Asus.

(basic example: displays are different sizes and resolutions, some are touchscreen some are not, not all run the same ATOM, not all even use ATOM)

I think your statement is a little broad.

Built in 3G is the key. That’s all I miss in all the netbook offers.

Cheers, Lutz

If you want a Netbook right now you don’t have much choice anyway. All this nice netbooks, be it Lenovo or Dell are not out yet, Asus always announces what will come next, and MSI is backlogged even in their own store. So, something to set you appart: Make it available.

Looks like the only big companies that haven’t released a netbook are Toshiba and Sony, though they really started the netbook form factor with their Libretto and Picturebook series in 1996 and 1998 respectively.

I hope they can bring those back, Toshiba did bring back the Libretto shortly in 2005.

i am from the old school, where subnotes started high & went to ridiculous. so while everyone else is sitting around bitching about these “high” prices ($600 EEE) i am lovin it.

Trod you are correct but once they start adding new components and features the prices are going to go up and up. It won’t take much to price a device right out of the target market in this genre so there’s not a lot of room to maneuver for these OEMs.

its really no different than the standard 15″ market either, they are all essentially the same machines with various casings & slight component variants. they only difference is the 15″ market has alot more component choices than the netbook does.

I’m looking for a netbook in the $400 range with a touch screen (together with the keyboard). I don’t need handwriting recognition, but would like to be able to select links on a web page and scroll about by direct access and gestures rather than using a standard touchpad.

I think the new dell with an after market touch module may be the answer.