Panasonic says Intel Atom not up to snuff for its PCs

Japanese giant Panasonic has said no to netbooks: it's not going to make a Small, Cheap Computer. It's reasoning is that SCCs are consumer products and it's in the business of selling to, well, business.

Clearly it doesn't - for the moment - believe executives and mobile workers want ultra-compact laptops.

Given the battery life of your average SCC - poor, basically - Panasonic's evaluation is probably correct for now.

Never say never, we'd suggest - look at what Asus hopes to achive with the N10 notebook-not-netbook: build an Atom-based laptop that big business will buy into.

Pah! says Panasonic. Right now, Toshi Harada of Panasonic's Kobe factory told local reporters this week, "performance is too low to work with office documents or other applications".

Tell that to all the folk who use SCCs for just that - a lot of journos at shows, for instance. What we think the Panasonic comment really means is that performance is too low to work with Windows Vista. But who wants to work with Vista, anyway?

Netbooks and Mini-laptops Buyer's Guide