The term netbook has always been a bit nebulous, but one of the most concrete ways of determining if something is a netbook has been the size. The Atom processor used to power virtually all netbooks has always been found in smaller laptops.
That’s not a coincidence, or because of any so-called market reality. The reason Atom has been restricted to these smaller products is quite simple – that’s what Intel wanted. Atom was an unexpected success for Intel, but it was also in some ways a curse. The margins on Atom products are not as large as the margins on more powerful and expensive products. While Intel recognized that there was a market for small, inexpensive laptops, it didn’t want to let Atom loose among mainstream notebooks. Cheap $300-$600 15.6″ laptops have long been Intel’s dump for older parts, and Intel didn’t want to damage its profit in the sector by letting Atom go toe-to-toe with Celerons and older Core 2 products.
As a result, large-screen netbooks never came to be, and small size became part of the definition. Yet the story did not have to be told this way, and it may now be changing. Why? Because AMD has finally released a competent Atom competitor.
I’m talking about the new Fusion processors, such as the E-240 and E-350, which are now being placed into new and upcoming laptops. These processor use AMD’s Bobcat architecture, which is not a CPU but rather an APU. Like Intel’s Sandy Bridge, the Bobcat architecture integrates a GPU into the processor itself, making it possible to improve graphics performance while dramatically reducing overall power consumption.
Yet the performance story isn’t what is exciting about Bobcat; overall, the E-240 and E-350 have performance just slightly better than what you’d expect from a similar Atom processor teamed with Nvidia’s now defunct ION discrete graphics. No, that’s rather mundane news. What’s exciting is the fact that AMD does not have Intel’s qualms about putting these processors into larger laptops. This means a new category of large-screen netbooks could rise.
This is a new choice that has never existed before. While budget laptops between 14″ and 17″ have been sold for years, they’ve always been desktop replacement. A $350 laptop from Wal-Mart might load your email and let you browse the web, but it’ll kick the bucket not long after you unplug it from your wall socket. That’s an annoying issue that Atom was never allowed to address. These new AMD processors, however, will let 15.6″ laptops offer a battery life of between 4 and 6 hours even with relatively small batteries.
Netbooks aren’t perfect, either; while tech-heads love them, general consumer satisfaction has always been low. Consumers flocked to netbooks for their low prices and the promise of portability, but found that the portability wasn’t used as frequently as they thought and came at the price of display size and keyboard size. A large-screen netbook would eliminate this issue; it provides portability but also provides a large keyboard (with numpad) and a large display. There will even be room for an optical drive, which does matter to many people, despite what tech-heads may say.
I recently reviewed on such laptop for PC Perspective (review to be forthcoming) and I was happy to see this new choice available to buyers. Large-screen netbooks could provide a combination of portability, usability and price that simply wasn’t available before. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they’ll catch on – AMD has to keep the supply of parts up, and notebook makers themselves may be concerned that large-screen netbooks will take yet another bite into the profits of their more expensive options. Still, it’s a trend to watch, and one that could potentially do far more to alter the netbook market than tablets.
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