From the Article:
"Pricier, more powerful notebook computers are sucking some of the steam from netbooks, the low-priced darlings that helped fuel sales for the PC industry in the past two years.
Many consumers—searching for more computing power than the compact, portable netbooks can deliver—are opting to pay more for laptops with bigger displays and circuitry suited for jobs like manipulating photos and video, which is beyond the capability of most netbooks."
My views:
I see my 12" iBook G4 1.33 ghz as my netbook, containing a DVD drive (Which many netbooks lack) OS X (the best new OS for general use) 40Gb (More than most SSDs) is a better buy than what I see as a castrated laptop, an underpowered CPU and low RAM, no optical drive. I can buy an iBook refurbished w/ Tiger or Leopard for $200 , like my own or a new netbook, I'll choose the iBook, even if its an ARM because of the proven reliability of the one I have. Thats my opinion, and i find it pretty sound