For the type of user that he describes, that is very much the case.

We had a manager here, he got a Dell Netbook for €1 with a 3G dongle for one of our employees. He brought it with him on the first trip to head office, on the next trip, he was back to travelling with his 17" Toshiba laptop...

He's spot on. I could never tolerate the screen size of a netbook.

Only suitable for pub quizzes and handbags. They may appeal to kids but overall I doubt much long term testing was done.

I'm not even a fan of the screen on my sisters Compaq laptop. It's a 15" display, but it's widescreen, which just ends up making me want more vertical space. All the windows and documents seem to about 3 feet wide but 2 inches tall.

I have an NC10 netbook and I for one will say it's awesome. It's enough for webbrowsing in bed without having a heavy and hot laptop on your, er, lap. I also find it immensely useful for reprogramming my car - the main reason for its purchase.

As a 'main' computer, it is crap. But as a lightweight portable device, it's beyond par.

I think I'll get one for uni. All I need is a text editor for note-taking, and a few simple tools to run.

I mostly use mine in work (like right now) - I wouldn't be arsed with a full-sized laptop either sitting about or me carrying it... And I wouldn't be able to post all those stories in the News section if that happened

I have a year old HP mini-note Netbook and a low-end but newer Toshiba 15" laptop.

They both have 1280x768 screens, but the larger one looks like Lego. What's the point of such a huge screen at such low resolution!?
They both have 160GB hard drives.
They both now have 2GB ram, although they were both delivered with just 1GB.
They both have WiFi.
They both have fairly rubbish battery life of about 2.5 hours.

The Tosh obviously has a DVD re-writer, while the netbook has no optical drive.
The Tosh has a little more grunt, but in every day use it doesn't actually feel any faster. It's a single core celery...

The Tosh is sadly lacking BlueTooth, which absolutely stunned me when I went to sync my phone with it!
The Tosh doesn't have an SD card reader, which again I found rather shocking.

The netbook has a better glide-pad and keyboard than the Tosh.

The Tosh was nearly twice the price, but I leave it in the office because it's just too big, too heavy and too crap compared to my lovely shiny Netbook. The HP is far more suited to life on the move, while I mostly just use the Tosh as a second monitor for the desktop!

What I actually want is something the like the HP but better. Annoyingly, the HP was the only sub-12" notebook I could find with a decent screen for less than £300. And it was much less - only £185, compared to £360 for the Tosh and £shedloads for a Sony or Apple. Luckily, the longest train journey I do is only an hour but I'm still considering the extended battery pack.

Ironically, I notice that Dell now offer a "Glossy 10.1 inch HD display (1366x768) WLED" which I would definitely buy. However, it doesn't seem to be available on the UK website