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AMD has pretty much stayed out of the netbook game. While Intel, VIA, ARM, and a handful of other chip-makers are duking it out for dominance (with Intel currently holding the lead by a wide margin), AMD has hung out in the margins waiting for consumers to get tired of thin, light, and not-too-powerful machines. The closet AMD has come to releasing a netbook processor so far is the AMD Neo, which powers the 12 inch HP Pavilion dv2 notebook, which has a starting price of $749.

Now it looks like AMD is preparing to take on Intel’s Atom processor with a smaller, cheaper, and lower powered chip of its own. AMD expects to deliver samples to partners in 2010, which means we could see computers using the new chips in late 2010 or early 2011, which sounds a bit late to start cashing in on the netbook revolution.
But here’s the catch. AMD CEO Dirk Meyer says these processors aren’t for netbooks. They’re for notebooks. By the time these low power chips are out, he says the lines between netbooks and notebooks will have pretty much disappeared.

What do you think? Will the word “netbook” disappear within 2 years, allowing us just to think of these little guys as 10 inch laptops? Or will the word simply take on new meaning by then?