High Speed Internet Access (HSIA): Mobile Internet

A new crop of netbooks is on the horizon with the first models due to be shown at Computex in Taipei this week.

Except that they may not be called netbooks. A group of manufacturers are working to replace the netbook terminology with the new description “smartbooks”. The reason for this is that netbooks so far have been built using Intel’s Atom chip. This new breed of small computers is built around the ARM chip which the manufacturers say will distinguish them from netbooks in the following ways.

• Battery times will be longer
• The devices will be lighter and slimmer
• The pricing will be cheaper than netbooks possibly around a third of the cheaper priced netbooks
• The smartbooks will have less computing power
• Windows will not be available as an operating system so the smartbooks will be Android or Linux based.
• The smartbooks will have much better connectivity in that 3G mobile broadband will be standard and will be “always on”.

The whole experience will be more like a smartphone than a netbook hence the push towards the new name smartbook. They have been described as a smartphone with a larger form.

So, although the “netbook” name has become the most used after competing with mini notebook, tiny laptop, ultra-portable laptop etc, it now seems likely that another breed of portable devices will necessitate clarification on just how it differs from the existing forms.

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