for me at the moment its mostly surfing, IM, mail and some media consumption.

for this, the desktop i have is noisy, even after i have done what i can in terms of clock-down and low-noise fans.

it also locks me to a desk, where i cant really be real-life social.

a laptop, even in the cheap 14-15″ range, would be to bulky and noisy.

and those 12″ ones are often to expensive.

but the netbook is like a terminal to the internet. and for me, that would be perfect.

and with a size thats in the range of a A4 spiral notepad, its a winner for me.

i think intel and others have overestimated what computers are used for outside of the office. or maybe they use them so much in the office that they have become work blinded by it?

for me at the moment its mostly surfing, IM, mail and some media consumption.

for this, the desktop i have is noisy, even after i have done what i can in terms of clock-down and low-noise fans.

it also locks me to a desk, where i cant really be real-life social.

a laptop, even in the cheap 14-15″ range, would be to bulky and noisy.

and those 12″ ones are often to expensive.

but the netbook is like a terminal to the internet. and for me, that would be perfect.

and with a size thats in the range of a A4 spiral notepad, its a winner for me.

i think intel and others have overestimated what computers are used for outside of the office. or maybe they use them so much in the office that they have become work blinded by it?

PROBABLY. I'm using it as my “primary computer” for a year now.

Some laptop manufacturers apparently also don't like that – I suspect it's the main reason why Lenovo didn't include Trackpoint in its S10 – it would be then practically as usable as X-series Thinkpads.

So it was Asus that really gave us the real practical OLPC. And the Atom, Intel's contribution, was hastily tailored to fit the Asus concept (although it was on the pipeline at the time). So credit should really go to Asus, not Intel. And, apparently, Intel is only now starting to “get it”!