Just after Intel managed to free the term netbook from Psion for general use, Microsoft appears to be set on calling it something else – the low cost small notebook PC.
Steven Guggenheimer, a general manager at Microsoft, said in Taipei yesterday that the netbooks today are capable of doing much more than browsing the ‘net, so therefore the term should be abandoned.
Besides just throwing a monkey wrench into the segment, Microsoft’s desire to call netbooks “low cost notebook PCs” could stem from the company’s restrictions that it imposed on which machines could run certain versions of Windows.
Guggenheimer is to provide details on the apparent name shift later on, which we’ll bring to you as soon as we know more.
