I have an Atom n450 and it's actually pretty zippy especially for every day stuff. In my opinion the biggest let down in netbooks is the terribly under performing Intel graphics chips - many of which can't handle flash hardware acceleration (which messes with sites like youtube).

Oddly you can get a dual core atom n550 acer netbook right now from the home shopping channel for $399. Nowhere else? Weird.

The netbook is dead.

It's better to buy a device running on the ARM processor (rather than the Intel Atom x86 processor).

Smartphones, pods, pads, slates, smartbooks all run on ARM processors. They usually have 3G connectivity. Geolocation / GPS services. Energy efficient (batteries last longer). Often with touch screens.

I spent $550 on an Acer Timeline model last May. Core 2 Duo 1.3 ghz, 13 LED", weighs the same as an Atom Book, goes 8 hours on a 6 cell battery. I have a Dual Core Atom 330 server and I've benched the two against eachother. It's not even fair, the Atom just pukes.

Another under performing CPU that hurts the netbook platform. Users grow tired of the slow performance that comes with this ATOM netbooks. Buyers start to look elsewhere, which could also hurt AMD and its future Bobcat APU. AMD will have to do a lot of explaining and benchmarking to bring them back to this form factor.

Could it be many people like me will not pay absurd prices for a little netbook with Windows Starter. I have bought a nice 15 inch notebook for $450.00
Any netbook is not worth more than about $325.00 because of screen size.Plus no matter what Atom cpu they put in it, it is still an atom. Low powered and I like them but they are not to be compared with the much faster cpu's. They simple need to drop prices and not put a crippled OS on them if they want to sell them.

More clueless pillocks walking into my computer store buying netbooks thinking that they are powerful because they have 'the dual-core' then they come back complaining that the netbook is slow.
*GROAN*