Recently announced: Best Buy will be carrying MSI’s offering in the itty-bitty "netbook" style laptop, called the "Wind". It will come with Windows XP Home Edition, an Intel 1.6 Atom processor, 120GB HDD, 3-cell battery and comes in black or white.

I’ve been following the netbook-style laptops for a while now and the industry has proven that there’s definitely a market for it. The reasons? Price and portability. These things are on the lower end of the price spectrum and obviously provide the best portability in a pint-sized computer.

Most people who haven’t used a small-screen unit like this would probably say "A 10-inch screen? How can anyone read anything on a screen that small?" The answer is that the native resolution accommodates for the smaller size. You’ll either get 800×400 or 1024×600 native resolution. If those numbers look "odd" to you, bear in mind netbooks are widescreen format. These smaller native numbers make for readability on a netbook screen fairly easy.

If you’re in the market for one of these, I’d recommend going at least 1024 wide on the native because most modern web sites require that when viewing them. Your only option with 800 is to deal with a horizontal scroll bar or use CTRL-Minus to size down the site in your web browser of choice. All major web browsers have this ability.

Most major manufacturers have netbook offerings. Dell has their recently announced Inspiron Mini 9, we all know about the Asus Eee PC, HP has their Mini-Note, there’s the MSI Wind listed above and more are coming. In 2009 you’re sure to see more companies getting into the biz of "smaller is better".

Things the netbook-style laptop has proven

1. More than a few people really don’t care about the optical drive.

Netbooks don’t have optical drives and this is part of the reason they are physically smaller. However it seems that people who buy these units really don’t miss them. True, you can’t burn discs or watch DVD movies on one of these things - but how often are you going to do that compared to everything else you do on a computer? Probably not that often.

The lack of an optical drive is something customers of these units are very aware of, readily accept and have - surprisingly - easily dealt with it.

To note: You could easily attach an external optical drive connected via USB to it if you wanted to if you needed to install apps that were disc-only.

2. It has escaped toy-like status.

When netbooks first appeared most people didn’t deem it to be a "real" computer and shrugged it off as more of a novelty than anything else.

That attitude has changed.

People have found that netbooks - many of which are in the sub-$500 price point - do pretty much everything one would want to do with a portable computer. And that small size is oh-so nice.

3. It "saved" Windows XP.

Vista can’t run on netbooks strictly for the reason that units that small do not have the horsepower to run it optimally.

There is no netbook that I’m aware of that even offers Vista, so for people that want Windows they are given XP Home Edition instead.

Nobody has really complained about this.

And for those that think I’m Vista-bashing, I’m not. The blunt honest truth is that Vista is too "heavy" for netbooks, plain and simple. That’s why it’s not offered on them to begin with.

4. You can easily escape the "Windows tax" by using Ubuntu instead.

On most netbook offerings, ordering one bundled with Ubuntu will shave $50.00 of the total price. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for example is $349 with Ubuntu and $399 with XP Home.

This is an excellent example of how using Linux can truly cut costs in a great way.

5. Most people don’t need a super-powerful box anymore.

Netbooks are not for gamers, videographers, graphic artists or anyone that needs computer boxes with gobs of storage, memory and speed. This accounts for the vast majority of computer users out there.

Said honestly, the netbook fits in very nicely in today’s computing world. We’ve finally got laptops that truly embrace their portable nature more than any other - and they’re cheap.

This is definitely a form of computing that’s here to stay.

A recent report by the New York Times states that PC makers are shaking in their boots because other manufacturers (like Asus) have proven that yes, you can deliver a usable low-cost low-power notebook to the market that people will actually buy (like the EeePC).

Right now is not a good time for PC makers because it seems that no matter how much they drop their prices, people don’t seem to be buying these days.

I can totally understand why. When you see an EeePC for $300 and fast realize it can do just about everything you need, why would anyone want a $500+ desktop?

The answer to this is for the industry to offer a low-cost "net-top" PC. It would cost roughly the same as the notebook version (around $300). This computer would have no optical drive, a solid state disk and a few USB ports to plug in whatever you need to.

Some would say "Isn’t that what a Mac mini is?" Not exactly; it doesn’t use SSD and has an optical drive. And it’s $600. We’re talking about next-gen low-power/low-cost units here.

We could finally see the advent of the "silent brick" PC, which is what the net-top would be. A small out-of-the-way box about the size of a novel and at a price point that would have most people say "Yeah, I could use one of those."

Watch for it.