The rise of the notbook, the fall of the netbook
- Filed under: Laptops
- Date: Jan 31,2011
Notbook (n.) — An affordable ultraportable laptop, typically with a 11.6-inch or 12-inch display that is not a netbook. It packs more power than a netbook (i.e. can handle 1080p video and Flash at fullscreen) and provides a more comfortable computing experience than the typical, 10-inch underpowered, shrunken Atom-based laptop.
Most do not have optical drives, but do last for over five hours on a charge. Unlike pricey ultraportable laptops, notbooks are more affordable and start at around $400.
About six months ago, the 11.6-inch Dell Inspiron M101z arrived on my doorstep for review. The AMD Neo-powered system looked like a slightly enlarged netbook, but in a briefing with Dell, the product manager reinforced quite a few times that the system was absolutely “not a netbook.”
I can’t remember his exact wording, but he made it crystal clear — the $449 Inspiron M101z was so much more powerful than an Intel Atom netbook that it could be one’s primary machine. Obviously, I started calling these sorts of laptops “notbooks,” and over the next few months, more and more of them started popping up. Read the rest of this entry »
