The ‘netbook’ gets ever bigger – now above 12-inches

Since the netbook was conceived around two years ago, the size of these devices has got larger and larger. Some of the very latest netbook models to be released from the big guys include 11.6-inch and 12.1-inches. I’m sure this trend won’t go away, despite Microsoft and Intel’s best efforts to crack down on netbooks larger than 10-inches.

However, in China, white-box vendors are now looking to produce ‘netbooks’ that are even larger than 12-inches. To get around the restrictions that Intel places on netbook display sizes, it plans to use processors from AMD and VIA instead. The advantage is that VIA’s platform costs nearly half as much as the Intel Atom.

Now what defines this as a netbook? Not much in all honesty, but there is rising demand for these larger netbooks and therefore these products are being marketed as such rather than the laptops that they really are. Let’s just hope this doesn’t catch on.

Via Digitimes.