rictions....yes, I agree. The fact MS will only allow 1GB memory (about $3.50 worth of RAM) to be used with its relatively heavy (by ARM standards) Windows 7 Starter OS is simply due to the fact they have the power of a near monopoly.
MS helped out, no doubt about it, but Intel kept the form factor absolute, and limited the RAM. Want to make a 15" (MSI did, IIRC)? Then you're gonna pay a mint, and get the high-power version of the 945. Want 4GB? Get a CULV.
The netbook, being artificially restricted, died like a bubble, when large form factor notebooks and AIO computers should have grown out of it. Instead, that wasn't allowed to happen until Zacate.
I am talking about Intel, AMD, VIA, Qualcomm, TI, Nvidia making more money. Not the device makers.
Do you see my point though? Why buy a whole new laptop if the darn thing can just be engineered to take a replacement part?
How would that work, though? Everything is soldered in, typically, except storage. The initial price would be raised significantly, along with size, for the ability to swap out parts. In the mean time, IO and storage standards will march on. I don't know what VIA is going to do, or right now, AMD, but Intel, Qualcomm, and NVidia have quite a bit to gain by having customized hardware, even if it runs the same OS and application binaries as the other guys. They can work with OEMs to make devices using their chips use them to their best, and I don't see anything wrong with that, whether it's x86 or ARM.
Occasionally people will replace the CPU, if possible, but it's not always possible to do. As it is, you'd buy a new one because the old one is broken or obsolete. Storage and other IO standards move on all the time, and the same thing happens on standardized desktops: people end up, whether a part can be replaced or not, getting a whole new PC, or very near it,
because upgrading isn't worth the cost, even when it is an option.
Technology, even when we have the standards, is moving fast enough that buying something better than you need today, and upgrading storage (HDD/SDD and RAM) is generally the best way to not need a whole new system in just a couple years. In just two years, my mobo, RAM, and CPU were
entirely obsolete, in my
standard ATX desktop.
There's definitely more flexibility in the desktop, but the overriding problem is how consumers at large think of technology,
which helps drive the development of it. They aren't going to upgrade more than storage, RAM, and external peripherals in a laptop even if competitors could have parts swapped around, because they want something new and different. Changing feature sets and sockets to make each part slightly cheaper and more effective, instead of locking those things in, FI, is not merely accepted, but often even desired
(the 1-pin-off mobile variants are just for market segmentation, though 
).
If I'm going to spend a decent chunk of change, I'm going to try to make it count; and a product with a usable lifespan of one or two years doesn't cut it. But, if being connected on the go were a part of making money for me, I can think of several good notebooks that would fit the bill, just not <=$400 ones in a sale flier ($300-400 might get a good used 3-4 year old notebook).
That market exists, both for new and used, but it doesn't make the bean counters excited like the Joneses and their friends do. They want a newer better faster $250-400 notebook, or a $800 notebook that's as good as last year's $1500 one, etc.. Netbooks are a case of barely legal collusion, but the rest of the notebook market is very much driven by what consumers want, and they are, by and large,
happy with disposable computers. Once tablets get good enough (IoW, normal people consider non-iPads), the same will likely be true there, too.
Ultimately, computers are becoming like any other commodity. Why should car makers be required to have interchangeable parts? Why should washer and dryer manufacturers be required to? Etc.. It can be a very wrong way of thinking (the disposable commodity part, at least), but the issue is social, political, and economic, not a matter of standardization. Too few people would take advantage of forward-compatibility of a chassis/board for it to be worth making future chips/boards backwards-compatible.
Of course, this hurts Giant OEMs who want to sell us a completely new laptop every time we want a new CPU. But the whole point is take their failing netbook strategy away from them and let the smaller companies have a shot.
Why not just do what AMD did? Zacate can move about any form factor. No need to try to push consumers into little grid boxes they don't want their money to fit into. If you want a faster CPU, you need to pay more upfront. If you want upgradability across generations, you would be paying even more, and losing out on new features, if not a chunk of performance. May as well just pay more now, and not use it all, yet.
Speaking of failing strategies. Samsung announced this year they would no longer be making netbooks.
The few people I've talked to who have one love them, so hopefully they're getting out of 'netbooks' as in the MS/Intel defined devices, not out of small notebooks.
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