Many, or should I say 'most', don't actually need a quad-core, or even, a dual-core setup for their daily needs - which scarcely falls beyond a few hours of net browsing, using email, instant messaging, word processor and spreadsheet programs and listening to music. And when portability is taken into account with these basic needs, a usual 14" or 15" laptop is too bulky a convenience to be carrying around all day. Most of the UMPCs in past have either been too pricey, or too focused on one segment of customers or two to be taken seriously for mass marketing.
Products like Eee PC and Aspire One, however, have changed it forever. Now you can have almost all the benefits of a conventional laptop crammed inside a tiny netbook that's not heavy on your pocket at all. Not everyone buys a laptop for playing Crysis or heavy multimedia work. That, in fact, defies the very purpose of portable computing - being hard on battery life. Netbooks offer you the best of both worlds, thus catering to the mobile computer market almost perfectly.
I don't see how a 9" Eee PC or Aspire One with BT, WLAN, Windows XP, dolby sound, SSD/HDD or both options and 5-7 hrs of battery life for ~20k don't fulfill the need for a "full-fledged" laptop any worse than a ~1.20k laptop with more or less the same features and a much worse battery life.
hyeah: