With regard to the title of this blog, I say: Isn’t that missing the point?

Have you ever heard of Ezra Warner? In 1858 he patented the first can opener.  Its large curved blade was driven into a can’s rim, and then forcibly worked around its edge.  These can openers were hard to use, dangerous and actually never left the grocery store (grocers opened the cans for customers). The modern can opener, with a serrated cutting wheel that rolls around the rim, was patented in 1925 ― more than 70 years later!

I brought this up today at a CES panel discussion to make a point about netbooks.  Much has been made about just what a “netbook” is or is not, and people get very caught up in the discussion. But I happen to think it’s not a very useful discussion and in fact misses the point.

It’s a bit like arguing that the Edlund Air Powered Crown Punch Can Opener 610M (available on Amazon.com for over $4000) isn’t a can opener because it doesn’t have a large curved blade. Whether or not you decide to spend $4000 on a can opener, you can’t disagree that the Edlund has come a long way since Ezra Warner’s first design. So has the “netbook” form factor.

So: what was the “first” netbook then? This is a hotly contested debate, but I am sort of with Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols who in a blog on computerworld.com gives the honor to “the so-called $100 laptop: the OLPC (One Laptop per Child).” These first very light and cheap machines, as Nicholas Negroponte proposed, were small and network attached laptops that were intended to allow people who otherwise couldn’t dream of it access to information.

Like the first can openers, they paved the way for a whole new world.

Whether you believe the “first” netbook was the OLPC or perhaps the 1996 Toshiba Libretto 70CT, both were not very powerful and provided a generally poor user experience― like those early can openers.  (Of course, in the case of the OLPC “poor” is a relative term: any user experience may be better than none.)

These first netbooks had small low-resolutions screens, were low-powered machines with poor graphics, poor keyboards, they lacked storage, and suffered from boring industrial design. Given that most PCs today have connectivity from LANs to WANs to Wi-Fi to 3G, early netbooks made three key compromises:

1. They compromised compute power for battery life;
2. They compromised usability for portability; and
3. They compromised video quality for price.

But, I hear the hoards shouting: the battery life was really great! Well, ok, but who really cares about battery life on a machine they really don’t want to use?  So, in response: it’s really the portability! Well, again, according to NPD Group, while 60 percent of netbook owners report that while portability was a main reason to purchase one, they never even took their netbooks out of the house.  Ah, if it’s not battery life or portability: it must be price!

OK, you have me there.

Maybe the “net” in netbook is not for “network” but instead is for the typically low price, the apparent “net” value.  But as PCWorld points out, “all netbooks are little more than glorified calculators without some sort of wireless network service.”  So don’t forget to factor a contract with a network provider into the total cost of ownership; if you want functionality you’ll be paying for it every month.

Starting with the HP dv2 and now the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e – I think we at AMD have been able to provide a more substantial yet still highly portable and affordable device by with working with our technology partners. The relatively inexpensive, thin and light and portable form factor is of course here to stay but ― like the first can openers ― they will continue to evolve dramatically.

In the end, the debate whether netbooks are “here to stay or a passing fancy” may be fun but it’s a largely pointless one.

Now where is my ThinkPad X100e?  AMD IT promised me one in black.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.