Apple has specific design requirements, and one of them is that their laptops are durable. $500 laptops are anything but durable in my experience. They fit a certain market niche, and they fall apart easily. Which is why Dell makes consumer lines, and business lines of laptops.

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We can argue the merits of open vs. closed architecture all day. But that's a different topic. Quite honestly, I probably will agree with you on some of the merits if a closed system (regardless of my overall preference). But lets call a spade a spade and try to be a little clearer. There's isn't a laptop manufactured today that CAN'T run OSX (slight exaggeration on my point for the sake the argument), but Apple prevents the vast majority of laptops from running it.

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That's complete BS. I just bought my in-laws a Macbook last week and the second day of use, they're having problems with the unpredictable garbled startup screen and freezing.

I agree with newgalactic; paying more for a product does not necessarily mean getting a quality/reliable product. No matter how much they try to convince you, it's still a machine with flaws.

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Believe it or not, an x86 Mac is nothing more than a PC running OSX. As for your "Closed Architecture" arguement, tell me: Why did they include Boot Camp?

As much as everybody here is trying to do you a favor and uncover the wool over your eyes, I'll give you my final word: Apple is not out there for your interest. They're out there to make money and satisfy investors.

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Seriously, Divad makes a good point. Even if I was loony over Apple, I'd find it hard to get attracted to a product with a new OS, even a re-tooled version of OSX, that isn't fully compatible with what's out there. He's -right-, a netbook is just a tiny notebook. I think that's why the Acer Aspire One is just so awesome--It's a blasted 9 inch laptop which can run Windows XP or any version of Linux I want, albeit a tad slowly. -That's- what I want, not a big iPhone.

Not that I want an iPhone. Just saying.

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So in that case, you must be an Acer fanboy and a Microsoft fanboy.

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I was more using the fanboy remark to bring out how utter inane -your- post was, with all due respect. Divad makes a good point, and you bring up the excellent point that his comment was dumb shit. Right? He makes a good point in that there are a LOT of people who don't want to buy a netbook masquerading as a phone--something closed without many applications available to it. I'll raise my hand and second that point. In fact, as much as I like the concept of the Aspire One, Linspire Linux is a real piece of work--it's neat that it works well, but it's a pain in the neck to use for anything except what comes with it. Not that you'd do much more on an Aspire One, but it'd be nice to have the option.

tl;dr: stop dismissing points as dumb shit without a decent reason.

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Uh, dude... if you thought my comment was based on the misunderstanding that the Photoshop of an iPhone onto a PC Notebook keyboard was what an Apple netbook would look like then you obviosuly didn't actually read my comment before declaring it "some of the dumbest shit I've read" which, come to think of it, is pretty rich.

I predict that an Apple branded netbook of the sort described in the above article, should it come to market, will suffer the same fate as the Palm Foleo.

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Yup, a 10" Air would make a nice netbook. Apple could even sell it for $700.00 if they wanted to and it would do well. The price is only one factor in the success of the netbook class of machines. The form factor is equally important, IMHO.

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Did you read a single word of the article you just commented on?

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