Q: How do you make the world stop buying so many netbooks?
A: Stop calling them netbooks.
That’s the bizarre advice from Microsoft, suggested by one corporate overlord at this week’s Computex trade show in Taipei.
His beef? The term “netbook” implies a notebook that is useful only for surfing the net, but since today’s mini-notebooks do so much more than just that, the term should be retired.
His suggestion for replacing the term? The exquisitely Microsoftian “low cost small notebook PC.”
Semantics in this space are getting increasingly complicated, though whether you call them netbooks, mini-notebooks, smartbooks, or, ahem, low cost small notebook PC, most of these machines do pretty much the same stuff. (The only real difference in this group is the smartbook, a term which is now being used to describe a notebook-type machine that runs a smart phone operating system like Android or, someday, the iPhone OS.)
But Microsoft is doing everything in its power to move the market away from $400 netbooks and toward $1000-plus traditional laptops. Windows 7 Starter Edition, the egregiously stripped-down version of the company’s upcoming OS, will be so severely hamstrung that Microsoft has offered the stated goal of encouraging users to upgrade to a more premium version of Windows 7.
The etymological approach is another step in that direction, I suppose, a subtle jab that your computer isn’t powerful enough. The term “netbook” sounds kinda cool. “Low cost small notebook PC” sounds like something designed for a child.
As with many of Microsoft’s great ideas, my hunch is that manufacturers will nod enthusiastically at the suggestion… and summarily ignore it.
Viva la netbook!
