Six years ago, when Psion announced their netBook, it was an irreplaceable breakthrough for mobile enterprise market. Excuse the geeks for they must have hallucinated of the next big thing, probably a cloned descendant of Mactini. So what could be the future of post-netbook world? The notebooks had paved the way for netbooks and now they would be conceding the legacy to their generic offspring nomenclatured as smartbook. Well, genesis of the term seems to be an extraction from the amalgamation of smartphone and netbook. This obviously is a breaking news for those conformist with the broadest opinion accusing netbook to be an unfeasible piece of vendor-speak.

There was a conscious exposition of the new thing last November in a speech by a marketing executive from hard-drive maker Western Digital. What could be deciphered from the speech was that the smartbook would be a computing device similar in size or slightly smaller version of netbook equipped with smartphone like features.

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There was much ado about Microsoft lifting Windows 7 Starter Edition's restriction to three application. In a recent feeback to its partners and customers, Microsoft confirmed that it will. Brandon LeBlanc, a Windows communications manager at Microsoft detailing on the changes said, Microsoft would enable Windows 7 Starter customers the ability to run as many applications simultaneously as they would like, instead of being constricted to the 3 applications limit that the previous Starter editions included.

Still what remains is the Starter Edition will not be a full fledged OS, it'll renounce some of the features that makes it so unlikely. More precisely, the Windows 7 Starter edition will be a subset of the higher editions of Windows 7 like Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and above. It seems Microsoft is all set to exploit the netbook market.  The changes introduced in Windows 7 is clearly to make it more appealing for the customers who would like to use the small notebook PC for the very basic tasks such as browsing the web, checking email and personal productivity. Let's face the reality would the change in features make Windows 7 starter edition the ultimate netbook OS.

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The race for producing low cost processors for netbooks has just set off. Today Freescale announced the launch of its new processor that could  prove too hot for chip maker Intel at its attenuated prices. The netbook equipped with i.MX515 processor and a Wi-Fi wireless networking made by Pegatron would be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas between Jan 8 to 11.

Currently Intel's processor Atom exercises monopoly over the netbook space.  Netbooks have become popular after Intel introduced Atom. It is available with notebooks priced at US$299. Freescale's new entry to be placed in $199 netbooks would surely marginalize the costs and set up a competitive market for notebook processors.
The i.MX515 processor developed by Freescale would run on netbooks, low cost laptops. It is designed to carry out the basic computing functions such as running productivity applications and accessing the Internet easier.

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India’s Reliance Communication has come up with free netbook with Wi-Fi plan for a monthly subscription basis. In order to get a free netbook, consumers will need to sign a two-year deal for Reliance NetConnect.

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