Some markets experienced a rocky start with Netbooks last year, according to Sean Maloney, Intel's marketing chief. This happened because the resellers failed to grasp the fundamental differences between netbooks and notebooks--and simply called it a notebook. These resellers saw high return rates, with "a couple" even reporting a disastrous 30 percent return rate.

Maloney was speaking at the company's investor meeting on Tuesday when the above facts came to light. As a result, Intel had to coach these chains to segment the new netbooks separately, even stating up front some of the things that they don't do well, reports CNET News.

To demonstrate, Intel also placed a Netbook and a "mainstream" notebook side-by-side at the meeting, running a high-definition video of NBA basketball playoffs on both of them. In comparison to the jerky playback on the Atom processor-powered Netbook, the notebook with a Core2 processor ran smoothly. In such a comparison, the difference in the capabilities of the processors was obvious--and startling.

With a new line of what Intel refers to Consumer Ultra-Low-Voltage (CULV) category of laptops expected to arrive in June, it is more important than ever for Intel and computer makers to be able to articulate the differences between the various categories. CULV notebooks are expected to be positioned in a market segment just above that of Netbooks.

To read more on the article:
- check out this article from CNET News

Related Articles:
Microsoft: Majority of consumers buying Windows-based netbooks
Smartphones more complex than netbooks
Freescale plans support for Android on netbook
Sony Vaio P raises the bar for netbooks