Intel No Longer In Love With Netbooks?

According to word coming a recent a conference Intel attended (IT Supply Chain — sounds boring, doesn’t it?), it would appear that the silicon giant had a few interesting, and surprising, things to say about netbooks, namely that they seem unconvinced that this is going to be a large market. This seems to be the exact opposite of what we, as consumers, have been seeing for the past year, but maybe Intel’s sages have wisdom we do not.What I find particularly interesting about this is that AMD was not keen on entering the netbook market, and have recently announced that they’re working on netbooks CPUs. I admit, I ignored this news, for the most part, because their CPUs didn’t sound very worthwhile (the power use is too high), but I may have to rethink that if Intel is looking at the netbook market as little more than a fun side endeavor.

Not to get too off-track here, but this part is obvious: competition is good for the consumer. I think we can all agree on that, but AMD has been stuck with an old, inferior architecture for years now, and I’m unconvinced that their current plan for netbooks is the right one. I’d love to be proven wrong, because I remember when the Athlon 64 came out and wowed everyone. I still have an Athlon 64 2100+ desktop that I threw together years ago, so I’m more than willing to support them if it comes to it.

However, it appears that both of the big two CPU manufacturers have issues with netbooks. AMD has long said that they find the netbook platform to be too limiting, while Intel now seems to admit something of the same thing, pointing to how such small devices are good for a limited time, but for anything other than light use netbooks are, well, unusable.

I’m not sure how I feel with that considering I spent months using an Acer Aspire One netbook to write my last manuscript. Was it the ideal platform to use? No, not by a long shot. Was it terrible? Again, no, not by a long shot.

However, it should be telling that I bought a MacBook Air because I wanted a real keyboard while maintaining that light and (somewhat) small feel of a netbook. However, the screen size certainly wasn’t an issue for me when all I was doing was using a word processor.

I think AMD and Intel may be over thinking the market, just a little bit. Low power is fine, as is small size, but there are other considerations, and it seems like the manufacturers are finally figuring out that usable hardware, namely the keyboard and trackpad (or other mouse input device), can go a long way to making their netbook successful against the overwhelming horde of others netbooks.

CNET has more thoughts on Intel and AMD in the netbook market thanks to this conference.