And frankly, MS and Intel basically made it this way.

Both freaked when the netbook first hit. Intel because they could make for a passable citrix client and so undermine their lucrative ultraportable segment. MS because it was Linux on a off the shelf product.

So what we got was some very stringent spec requirements from the two to make a underperforming mini-laptop running Windows XP (remember that MS was trying to sell Vista at the time).

What looked like a interesting experimental market (one early model had a thumb sized touchpad sitting near the screen hinge rather than a touchpad below the keyboard) ended up another pile of rebranded clones.