“Finally you have poor Microsoft’s rejection of both categories in favor of the term, “low-cost small notebook PC.” No surprise since the netbook/smartbook market is terrible for their business. The last time they used the term “netbooks” was in an earnings announcement where they stated, “client revenue declined 8% as a result of PC market weakness and a continued shift to lower priced netbooks.”

“Nick Mediati at PCWorld said it best, “by Microsoft’s logic, “smart phones” should be renamed “pocket-sized handheld computing devices” since smart phones today do so much more than make phone calls and handle your appointment calendars. And “game consoles”? More like “home theater multimedia playback and gameplay consoles.” To arbitrarily change a product category’s catchy, memorable name to something ridiculous and jargony seems to make no sense at all.””

http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/jzemlin/2009/06/05/call-it-netbook-smartbook-or-%E2%80%9Clow-cost-small-notebook-pc-it-is-great-for-linux/

Microsoft Chutzpah on Full Display in Attempt to Rename Netbook

“Ah, Microsoft, that crazy company from Redmond, WA is at again. This time they want to rename the Netbook unilaterally to the…drum roll please…”low cost small notebook PC.”

“As first reported in the Digitimes last week, Microsoft decided on their own that the name was not appropriate and they were renaming it. I’m fairly sure they didn’t consult with the rest of the industry about this change, but hey they’re Microsoft right? They can do whatever they please. Of course, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to go along.”

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4426.html

What’s even more depressing is that the OEM manufacturers will capitulate to Microsoft in order to retain the rights to sell Windows on their machines. This means that not only can I not buy a machine with Linux on it, but that I am forced to buy a more expensive and lower spec computer! Nice to see that customer choice is alive and well!

What interests me about ARM is the better power consumption and battery life. This would make a good advantage point for an ARM-based device — especially for the people using it for college/university: “no need to connect it to the mains during the day”.

I laughed when they suggested using WinCE on an ARM netbook. Right! Let’s use a limited and broken OS. I’d also like to see how many applications are supported for it and what their functionality is (read limited, cut down rubbish). And because WinCE is designed for smartphones and PDAs I’d like to see how it works with the better displays and graphics capabilities that a netbook offers (i.e. it won’t use them!).

Now here’s hoping that ARM-based netbooks appear in the UK with Linux installed on them.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/06/08/0755256/7-inch-Android-Netbook-From-GNB

However, there are a lot of other distros that work just fine on ARM.

http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/
http://www.ubuntu.com/news/arm-linux
http://www.openbsd.org/armish.html
http://www.netbsd.org/ports/arm/

Others are heading that way:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM

I look forward to eventually having netbooks that can be used for days on a single charge.