Most netbooks aren’t blessed with the same excess horsepower as current desktops and conventional laptops. In order to keep your system running to its full potential, it’s important to select applications that are easy on resources. You don’t want to needlessly overwork that Atom processor, do you?

One place you can save CPU and RAM usage is your antivirus program. I’ve found three options that are perfectly suited to netbooks, providing an excellent level of protection while keeping the impact on your system to a minimum.

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…It could be, based on reports over at the Mozilla support site. In a post on Nanotech, CNet’s Brooke Crothers talks about his own experiences with Firefox on a Macbook Air. Crothers notes that when opening multimedia-heavy pages (which typically include Flash elements) Firefox tends to cause a greater rise in temperature than Safari.

While it’s not quite as big a problem on larger notebook systems which sport beefier heatpipe coolers and fans capable of moving greater volumes of air, netbooks are more likely to feel the heat.

It’s a simple enough test to try yourself. Find a page with some Flash multimedia content – Cnet’s front page, for example – and fire it up on your netbook. Try first in Firefox and listen for your fan to kick in – then time how long it takes to cut out. Now try again with a different browser, say Internet Explorer or Chrome.

Crothers found Firefox logged up to 6 times the CPU utilization of Safari on the same page. Now, this could be OsX specific – being that Crothers’ own machine is a Macbook Air and his other mention is of a Dell Mini 9 user’s complaint about Firefox on a Hackintosh install.

On my Windows 7 system, however, the story is about the same. Firefox measures about double the CPU utilization of Google Chrome on the same page. With so many websites using so much Flash, it’s not hard to see how a prolonged browsing session on a cooling-challenged netbook could lead to an overheating problem.

What’s your experience? Is Firefox causing a bit too much fire on your netbook?

Sure, Psion may have dropped its trademark claim to the word “netbook,” but now Microsoft doesn’t want you using the word. Not because the big M is claiming some sort of stake in the trademark. But because it’s just not very descriptive. That’s something I’ve been arguing for the past year, but which Microsoft and computer makers haven’t always seen eye to eye with me on it.

Look at it this way. When you call something a netbook, you’re kind of making it sound like it’s a web browser with a keyboard and not much else. But mini-laptops are actually capable of much more. They can run a variety of operating systems ranging from Windows XP to OS X, from Ubuntu to Mandriva, and even Windows 7. And they can handle a wide variety of applications, including office software, web browsers, multimedia applications, and even audio or video editing applications (although don’t expect blazing speeds when it comes time to render video).

For much of the past year or so, the computer makers putting out netbooks were in something of a pickle, though. Because they wanted to convince customers that these little laptops offered enough features to be worth shelling out some cash for. But they didn’t want you to buy a netbook as your only PC, because they’re cheap and computer makers, software companies, and pretty much everyone involved makes less money on netbooks than larger laptops.

So what’s changed, and why does Microsoft want you to start thinking of netbooks as “low cost small notebook PCs?” It could be so that Microsoft can try to push PC makers to install Windows 7 Home Premium on most upcoming netbooks instead of the lower cost Windows 7 Starter Edition. But I think there may be another factor at play here: ARM.

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I’ve been saying for ages that I’m not a big fan of the term “netbook,” because it implies that tiny laptops like the Asus Eee PC, MSI Wind, or HP Mini are basically web browsers with keyboards. But the truth is you can use these little machines to watch movies, listen to music, browse photos, create and edit office documents, or do pretty much anything else you could do with a 2-3 year old computer.

Now The Industry Standard is reporting that companies are starting to lean toward calling these computers mini-notebooks or some variation of that name. According to The Industry Standard, the shift is meant to explain that the machines are in fact capable little computers. But I’m not 100% convinced that’s the case. Intel, Microsoft, and mini-laptop makers including Dell and Lenovo have a vested interest in convincing consumers that netbooks aren’t as capable as full computers because they really want people to buy a mini-laptop in addition to a normal full sized laptop, which is something that recent research suggests most people are doing anyway.

Aside from HP, which has been offering premium quality netbooks at premium prices since last April, most companies would probably stand to profit if they could convince even more consumers that netbooks really are just portable web browsing devices. But there’s a factor The Industry Standard didn’t mention: Psion. The company still has the trademark on the term netbook. And even though Psion hasn’t sold a product under that name in years, it has made moves recently to start protecting its trademark. And while I’m sure a major computer maker could afford to fight a long protracted battle in the courts over the issue, it’s probably a lot easier just to use a different name – even if the popular press has sort of already settled on the term netbook.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last few days about the word “netbook.” I think it’s silly that Psion is starting to protect its trademark a year after people started using the word netbook widely. But at the same time, I’ve never been a huge fan of the word. Because it implies that mini-laptops are only good as dumb terminals for accesing the internet. And that’s just not true. You can use them to watch movies, edit documents, play video games, or do pretty much anything else you would expect a 2-3 year old computer with a single core CPU to do.

But you’d never know that if you watched this Flash presentation from Best Buy. The company implies that netbooks are only good as companions to your primary computer. And while I typically recommend that people purchase netbooks for their mobility and larger computers for processing power, the truth is that many people can and do use netbooks or low power nettop computers as their primary PCs.

Of course, Best Buy, like Intel (the company that started pushing the term netbook to describe computers with its low power Atom CPU) has a vested interest in convincing you to buy two computers intead of one. You know, cause they make more money that way. And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Best Buy claim that a netbook isn’t really a full fledged computer. What’s interesting is that Best Buy claims that netbooks are all Atom-powered, which isn’t true. I can only guess that the company has been influenced not just by the word netbook but by Intel.

Anyway, I’ll continue to use the word netbook interchangeably with “mini-laptop” and other terms, because it’s now the widely accepted term and because you can only type “mini-laptop” so many times. But this Best Buy presentation serves as a reminder of why the word is problematic.

via GottaBeMobile

Psion, the company that holds the trademark for the word “netbook” is attempting to better explain why it sent cease & desist letters to some bloggers and web sites recently. Apparently most of the entities on the receiving end were advertisers and computer makers using the term to describe their products, not journalists and bloggers. But at least one blog did get a letter which was apparently designed to prompt the publisher to stop running ads using the word more than to eliminate the editorial use of the word.

Mobile tech blog jkOnTheRun was the first site to break the news about the Psion cease & desist notes, and they’ve also published the recent letter explaining the company’s actions. While it’s certainly true that Psion holds the trademark for the term netbook and indeed used to manufacture and distribute a device that looks eerily similar to today’s netbooks, it still seems wierd that the company is coming out of the woodwork to protect its trademark now, about a year after Intel decided to start using the word to promote a new class of cheap ultraportable computerss, many of which run Intel processors. 

What seems stranger is that the company is going after advertisers and web publishers rather than Intel. 

But the main reason I’m less than satisfied with Psion’s letter to clarify their position is that it doesn’t reallky make things much more clear. The letter includes a screenshot of an ad using the word “netbook,” and suggests that if the blog that ran that ad removed it, the publisher would be in compliance with the cease & desist request.

The problem is that the ad came from Amazon. And while there’s a slight chance that the blogger hand-picked the items in the ad, it’s much more likely that the items and descriptions were automatically generated as part of the Amazon ad unit. The only real solution would be to remove the Amazon ad unit altogether, which would mean eliminating non-infringing product ads as well as those that violate the trademark. Psion should really be talking to Amazon and its third party sellers, not bloggers.

Netbook.com as seen in 1997

Intel has purchased the Netbook.com domain. The page currently redirects users to Intel’s page describing the Intel Atom CPU. The page features a bit of news, some reviews, and information about the Atom processor. 

Just a few short months ago, there was no accepted term for low cost, low power subnotebooks like the Asus Eee PC and HP Mini-Note. Intel favored the term netbook, while competing chip-maker VIA was pushing “mini-notebook.” Whether it’s because there are far fewer VIA-powered machines on the market than Intel the Intel Atom is grabbing all the headlines from the VIA C7-M, or just because netbook is catchier, netbook seems to be winning. Bloggers and journalists have begun using the word as a shortand, and even Best Buy has added a new netbook category to its online store (even if Best Buy’s copy writers don’t seem to understand what a netbook is).

So the Netbook.com domain is probably a pretty valuable property to hold right now. I consulted the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine to take a look at the domain’s history. From 1996 through 2001 or so it was a “directory of people on the internet.” Type in a name, and the netbook would try to spit out an email address and/or URL. How cute.

In 2007, Netbook.com was a site dedicated to information about the Psion Netbook, a handheld computer running the Symbian Operating System that has been out of production for a few years.

There’s no telling what the future holds for Netbook.com. But somehow somehow I doubt you’ll find a lot of information about the VIA Nano CPU or machines utilizing that chip anytime soon.

Asus has been making the rounds showing off its upcoming N10 notebook. And the company has a message: it’s not a netbook. Sure, it has a 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor just like the Asus Eee PC 1000/1000H. And sure, it’s got a starting price of around $599, which makes it cheaper than several netbook models from HP. But it’s not a netbook, because Asus says it isn’t. OK? 

I mean, I guess I should cut the company some slack, because it did practically create this product category. But if you really want to differentiate your product class, you’re going to have to do more than slap a shinier case, a more powerful graphics card, and a larger hard drive in there. The $599 version of the Asus N10 (which will apparently be called the N10E) really looks an awful lot like an Eee PC 1000H on the spec sheets. You have to pony up an extra $100 or $200 for the N10J to get the good stuff like an HDMI port, a RAM upgrade, and a fingerprint reader.

I can think of two reasons why Asus might not want to call this a netbook. First, because the company plans to release additional models in the N10 series that will be larger and heavier. And second because up until last year, Asus was best known as a motherboard maker. The Eee PC has helped Asus show the world that it can make laptops. Cheap, low profit-margin laptops. I wouldn’t be surprised if Asus, which has been making full sized laptops for a while, decided to introduce a new model that blurs the line specifically to get a lot of attention for a new netbook-sized device while taking the opportunity to point out that Asus does make traditional laptops which sell for a few bucks more and have a higher profit margin.

Still, Engadget, Geek.com and Laptop Magazine all came away from their presentations with Asus impressed. So whether you call it a netbook, a notebook, or a submarine sandwich, the Asus N10 looks like a machine worth checking out. It should be available later this month or early in October.

Taiwan’s Market Intelligence Center projects that more than 8 million low cost ultraportable laptops will ship this year — that’s a pretty impressive number for a market segment that didn’t even exist this time last year. The report suggests that number could more than double next year, with 18 million units shipping.

The year over year growth makes sense because this is a new market and we’re seeing new companies enter practically every day. But at some point, I have to wonder if the market will be saturated. While the idea of a cheap laptop is appealing, not everybody needs a laptop with a 10 inch display or smaller and a slow CPU. So while we can certainly expect to see a lot of growth in this area over the next few years, at some point most of the people who want a cheap ultraportable laptop are already going to have one, right?

Of course, then there are the early adopters who will buy a netbook, keep it for 3-6 months and then sell it on eBay to pick up the next big thing. Not that I’ve ever done this, of course.

Johannes from Netbux.de wrote in to let me know that he’s uncovered a few more details about the upcoming Fujitsu Siemens Netbook.

As we already knew, the computer will pack an 8.9 inch display and run 300 to 400 Euros, or about $475 to $633 US. But it also looks like the computer will sport an Intel Atom CPU, a 1.3MP camera, an Express Card slot for a 3G modem, and will run Windows XP.

Oh yeah, and Johannes also posted some video. All we can really tell from the movie is that the laptop handles video pretty well. But what else do you really need a computer to do?