Intel CEO Paul Otellini, in a conference call with financial analysts yesterday, said that's really not happening after all:

To date we have not seen any evidence of cannibalization and believe me, we're looking. This is something we watch very carefully. We look at where these are sold, the reasons they are sold and the price points they are sold at and one of the best pieces of evidence we have in that is the strength in the core mobile business independent of Atom is still very, very good and in these times, I think that's a reassuring fact.

Intel has a significant reason to pay very close attention to this, namely earnings. The numbers posted yesterday by the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker show that so far, so good.

What we've seen in a variety of netbooks so far is that they have very nice battery life, nice design and OK performance if you don't need to multi-task. They make fine Internet-access devices and are good for quickly typing notes or short papers even without a full-blown keyboard.

Netbooks have been priced, by and large, the same as low-end notebooks that can do a little more. But netbooks are easier to take around with you and, importantly for some people, are a platform that continues to use Microsoft's Windows XP.