Asus ups luxury netbooks up to 12 inches, makes them not netbooks anymore

Asus' S121 follows on the heels of its luxury netbook, the S101, with the only major difference being a horizontal expansion to 12 inches.. at which point, the designation of "netbook" no longer applies. For some reason, this really irks Rob and me: it heralds a future in which all laptops are considered netbooks by cynical marketers, right up until the point that the term loses all its cachet and is abandoned wholesale and industry-wide. That's the way of things, of course, and fighting against the tide of PR drones misusing the term they coined is folly... but we gnash our teeth and give one another oiled angry hugs in the BBG chat channel none the less.

Asus S121 [Eee PC News]

[#1 posted by historyman68 , December 30, 2008 9:20 AM]

Oldest pattern in the book. Marketing ruins everything. But on the plus side, sometimes it's hilarious?

[#2 posted by Anonymous , December 30, 2008 11:04 AM]

Let them use the word netbook, that means

[#3 posted by Ludicuss , December 30, 2008 3:19 PM]

Remember using the term "luggable" myself. Friends find it giggle-worth when I use "portable" to describe any computer you can put in a briefcase or back pack.

The marketing use of "laptop" and "netbook" are arbitrary phases and I find it rather sad (in a 'who-stole-my-pigeon-hole' way) that BoingBoing people even care about the terminology :(

[#4 posted by Psymiley , January 2, 2009 6:08 AM]

@3

I remember 'luggable' being a term for a portable phone. (The really old ones, with the handset on a curly wire on a base unit with a 3 foot aerial - proper army style).