You’ve heard about their growing popularity, you’ve seen them on airplanes -  in this challenging economic climate, the rise of the ‘netbook’ is one of the few recent bright spots in the computer hardware space.   We’ve written about netbooks before – optimized for portability, low price,  and long battery life, these smaller, less expensive laptop computers fill a niche between the smartphone and the full-powered notebook – and they’ve have had that market pretty much all to themselves.

Until now, that is – witness the emergence of a entirely new category of machine (with accompanying acronym): the “MID” (Mobile Internet Device).

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