Businesses Aren't Noshing On Netbooks, Says Intel Exec

a March study on enterprise PC refresh rates Client

"Netbooks and nettops are not moving into commercial environments. They're designed to bring new people onto the Internet, not for commercial settings," said Rob Crooke, who runs the Intel organization responsible for business-oriented desktop and notebook platforms like vPro.

That's an interesting admission from Intel, seeing as how the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's cheap, low-voltage Atom processor has been instrumental in the meteoric rise of netbooks and their desktop-lite cousins, which Intel dubs "nettops."

Channelweb.com did a pretty in-depth look at the netbook phenomenon back in February -- one of the main questions we sought to answer was, can these ultra-small, ultra-cheap PCs make the leap from the consumer and education markets to volume deployments in commercial settings?

The answers we got from solution providers were intriguing, but often dependent on other factors that are gaining steam along with the rising popularity of smaller PC systems.

For example, one source said a bigger move towards cloud computing could bring more netbooks into companies' client environments. Another thought companies experiencing recessionary pain might transition towards more distributed workforces, at which point netbooks or nettops might make sense as client options.

The consensus back in February seemed to be that whatever role netbooks and nettops might come to play in the business world, it wasn't a very big role at the moment. A couple of months later, it looks like not much has changed.