Personally, I believe that 11.6″ chassis’s will be the new netbooks, because they are the smallest they can possibly be whilst providing both the following:
> a screen big enough to meet the minimum requirements of 768 vertical pixels, necessary for any modern games or applications.
> enough bulk to house a serious out-of-order CPU and a DX10+ GPU, again necessary for any modern games or applications.

And still be both cheaper and smaller than more traditional thin-n-light productivity laptops which start around £500 and 13″ screen size.

This market will only seriously take off however when AMD’s Fusion arrives.

I don’t know how the computers industry works, but it sure seems like AMD hit a magic button because the AMD K125 CPU w/ ATI Radeon HD 4225 is showing up as a combo from nearly everyone. If someone where in the market for one of these it would just come down to who’s case design you like better.
Also, with a rush of these NEW computers coming, it seems like price drops will occur as retailers trying to clear inventory of older machines. Moreover, a sale now would slot in with a back-to-school needs if you’ve wait until the last minute.

Eh, I try not to get too hung up on labels. I never liked the term netbook either, because it implied that even 7 inch models were only good for web surfing. I used to run image and audio editing software on my Eee PC 701 without any problems.

The Atom CPU also isn’t really that much faster than the Celeron chips found in the earliest netbooks. It’s just more energy efficient.

I’ve been using the word netbook anyway, because that’s pretty much what the industry has been using. But I think it’s clear that these lager, more expensive machines aren’t in the same category. Honestly, I have no problem just calling them laptops — I just make it clear to PC makers that I have no interest in reviewing 17 inch monsters that cost $1000 and weigh 6 pounds, so they only tend to ping me with news about 12 inch and smaller budget machines.

It’s one of those odd things. The K325 uses the same amount of power but is instead a dual 1.3ghz chip and performs far, far better. Yet for whatever reason it seems to be overlooked.

Gutted that Toshiba aren’t bringing these out in the UK, the Neo/4225 combo really appeals and this looks by far the best combination of quality and price.

Alas, we seem to be stuck with the overpriced Dell

that looks like a good laptop, i think i might look into that. im in need of a new laptop for when i start traveling the world. i need to keep up with my music career ^_^