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Netbooks may be selling like hotcakes during the recession. But that doesn’t mean the companies making these low power, low price, low profit margin machines are immune to economic woes. Rumor has it that Asus is considering combining its Eee PC department with the company’s regular notebook division in order to cut down on management costs.

You could certainly make a case that the lines between netbooks and full sized laptops are blurring anyway. Asus has produced some models, like the Eee PC S101, that retail for as much as $699. And the Asus S121 is basically a 12 inch version of the S101 — but without the Eee PC name. While I still like to think of netbooks as machines with 10 inch or smaller screens and $500 or lower price tags, that’s probably an arbitrary distinction to most computer shoppers, and it looks like soon it may not be a distinction at all for Asus.

On the other hand, just because the netbook and notebook departments are merging, that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be any difference at all in the computers offered by Asus in the future. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.