High-Tech Companies Take Up Netbooks

Low-Price Laptops Weather Downturn; New Products to Address Flaws, Provide More Features By DON CLARK and JUSTIN SCHECK A new breed of low-priced laptops called netbooks have been thriving during the downturn -- so well, in fact, that many high-tech companies are scrambling to adapt. The responses by these high-tech companies will be a hot topic at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. They include not only new netbooks -- which typically cost $300 to $500, and often use Intel Corp.'s Atom chip -- but products that address shortcomings of the new category and other portable PCs. Netbooks, for example, tend not to be very good at displaying graphics and playing videos. So Hewlett-Packard Co., for example, Tuesday plans to announce a $699 laptop that beefs up those capabilities with chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. H-P's... [read full story]                    

powered by