• USA Today, Forbes, Tuesday, January 20, 2009 11 AM

Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft are trying to figure out whether pint-sized netbooks -- which caught fire last year -- are just a flash-in-the-pan, Byron Acohido reports.

"HP is experimenting with consumer models and promoting netbooks for limited business-use scenarios. Dell isn't saying much about what it has in mind. And Microsoft is hedging its bets, readying all versions of Windows to run on netbooks," he writes.

Apple's cheapest notebook, meanwhile, sells for $999, reports Forbes' Brian Caulfield, and the only piece of hardware it introduced at MacWorld earlier this month was a $2,799 laptop.

A low-cost product of some kind, perhaps a new edition of the Mac Mini or a low-cost "netbook" could be coming, however, and we may get a hint of it Wednesday when the company discusses its quarterly results. According to one report, an Apple netbook would pair an Intel Atom processor with Nvidia's 9400 graphics processor, which would pack a powerful graphical punch.

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