I’ve never been one to say that a netbook needs to have an Intel Atom processor or that every laptop with an Atom CPU is automatically a netbook. But if you define a netbook as small, light, and cheap, it becomes clear that one of the easiest ways to build a system meeting those goals is to go with Intel’s low power Atom chipset. It’s cheap and it doesn’t need a lot of cooling, so it can fit into tight spaces.

And that’s one of the reasons I’m a bit baffled by the 14 inch Atom-powered notebook the folks at Shanzhaiben discovered at a Chinese trade show this week. Because really… what’s the point of putting an Atom chip in a full sized laptop?

On the bright side, the laptop is cheap, coming in at the equivalent of about $410 US. And nobody will complain that the keyboard is too small. To be honest, this notebook looks like a perfectly nice machine. I just would have expected something a little more powerful than an Atom processor in a machine this size.

via GadgetMix