1. it is so light that you can actually stand at the bus stop and hold it in one hand while typing e-mails or twitter messages with the other for 10 minutes straight.
2. it has enough power to allow working with photoshop, eclipse, VS2008.
3. the keyboard is “OK” for typing, not perfect but it still runs circles around smartphones.
4. it lasts a whole day, no carrying around a charger or a second power cell. you don’t even need a fucking bag, you just take it and carry it around with you on the campus or w/e. the only thing you *might* want to have is a small cordless mouse in your pocket.
5. it still is a motherfucking PC! you can install linux or even goddamn OS X, you can run any app, install any browser or plugin, you can even go and plug your 50″ TV into it and watch HD pr0n. show me a smartphone that can do all that.

Side note: I think its dumb to compare smart phones vs. netbooks vs. laptops. We should be comparing netbooks vs. laptops and leave smartphones out of it. A smart phone couldn’t possibly let me type at 60+ words per minute or quickly perform complex programming or scripting tasks.

As I said, the netbook fits my criteria for a dream laptop that I’ve had for a long time. Namely:

1) light weight
2) long battery life
3) ubiquitous internet connection – i.e. anywhere where wifi and possibly 3g are available

Light weight and battery life trump all when you’re hauling something around all day, for instance, on a road trip, at a college campus, or on a long flight.

Further, a netbook does not need to be very powerful. It merely needs to be quick at either connecting to the internet or to other servers. If what I need to do can’t be performed with a browser or lightweight text editor, I can vpn to a server or more powerful desktop and remotely perform the work.

I am running an acer aspire one 10″ netbook…

1.6ghz atom processor.
2gb ram
160gb hdd…
win7
this setup was 250 bucks …got laptop for 199 bucks on sale at target, ram upgrade for 50 at crucial.
if i need to dock it i can and it easily pushes 1920x1080p on my 24″ monitor

it provides the perfect zone for me of just enough on the go for what i need to do, would be fine for a weekend trip, throw it in a bag, its 1″ thin and a little over 2 lbs.

it would be a big deal if i lost it for sure but, not near as big of a deal if i lost a 2000 dollar laptop. and this happens pretty frequently as well as they get damaged very frequently.

for a main workstation for me ANY laptop is just too little processing power and not even close to a desktop, (i run dual processers, dual video cards, 16gb ram etc.) so I’m glad companies are going for the “just enough” mobile processing market.

smart phones of course, i can do no developing on whatsoever. i know a LOT of developers who have netbooks… or at least very small laptops (which is what it is)

However, nobody mentioned UMPCs! UMPCs are different than “netbooks”.
The UMPC market is actually quite important. Many UMPCs are actually about the size of a “smart phone”, except they don’t have the monthly fees/contracts/restrictions/etc. yet have the power of an actual desktop (OQO, Panasonic U1, etc.)
Even still, I think that the UMPC market is largely untapped (mainly because they are usually alot more expensive, )

I don’t know about you, but I hate having my devices locked down/neutered like most “smart phones” are!

Not even close. Just look @ the $50-$100 monthly charge, for two years.

Plus, the network appliance IS next. I saw a little atom based machine 2 weeks ago @ best buy ($199). I want one for my wife (unless she decides she wants the netbook).

Where are you finding a modern smartphone with even half the computing power of a netbook, or at a lower price? Or a laptop for remotely close to the price of a cheap netbook?

To be more precise, the iPhone 3GS has a 600MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM and retails for something like $600. A cheap laptop from Dell will run you $500 with a 2GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM. My Asus eee 905 cost $230 brand new, has a 1.6GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM.

Comparison fail.

Sure, the user base for smartphones may be larger, but the netbook will not be a flop.

A netbook (or what people commonly refer to as netbooks) is small and light enough to conveniently carry around (all the time) and still lets you do almost anything you’d do on a notebook.

The only reason they’re called netbooks is because of marketers. There is a virtually continuous spectrum of these machines, ranging from huge 10 lb./19″ machines to 2 lb/9″ ones. If no marketer ever invented the term netbook, would you be writing a blog post called “Computers less than 3 lbs and with screens less than 12 inches suck, computers greater than 3 lbs. with screens greater than 13 inches are great”?