• Tweet
• Email

It’s hard to make a netbook stand out from the crowd these days. There are a huge number of mini-notebooks available with Intel Atom processors, 9 or 10 inch displays, and decently sized hard drives or solid state disks. So BenQ has taken an interesting approach toward making its Joybook Lite U101 stand out – demonstrate that you can stand on it.

The company says the BenQ Joybook Lite U101 can withstand a drop of up to 76 centimeters, or about 2.5 feet. That didn’t strike me as all that impressive. And then I remembered an article I had read a few days ago at Eee PC News showing a woman actually standing on the netbook to demonstrate how well it stands up to pressure.

Now granted, she doesn’t look like a particularly heavy woman. But if a netbook can stand up to this kind of stress, odds are it’ll be OK if your kid accidentally sits down on it.

BenQ isn’t the only mini-laptop maker promising a more durable netbook. NEC says its Versa N1100 laptop can withstand the pressure of being sat upon, and is even somewhat sweat-resistant.