Acer Review, Asus Review – Netbook 10

I find two things rather amusing -

1. Psion trying to sue netbook makers because they have a trademark on the term ‘netbook’.
2. People who keep trying to use new terms like ‘mini note’, ‘mini’, and ‘mini note book’.

The ‘Netbook’ trademark isn’t going to work

We are at the point where the terms ‘netbook’ and ‘netbooks’ are much too common – they’ve entered our nomenclature and there’s nothing Psion can do about it. Wikipedia has a good description of Genericized Trademarks – Psion has done nothing to stop the spread of the ‘netbook’ term until recently, and it’s now impossible for them to get it back.

A few examples of trademarks which have either lost their legal protection, or are commonly used generically by consumers are:

Band-Aid – Johnson & Johnson’s brand of adhesive medical bandages
Coke – Although trademarked by The Coca-Cola Company, it is synonymous with soda in the Southern United States[1] and with cola in the UK[citation needed]
Escalator – originally a trademark of Otis Elevator Company[2]
Hoover – a vacuum cleaner; still in common usage in the UK[3]
Kerosene[4] – originally registered as a trademark by Abraham Gesner in 1854[5]
Photoshop – a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, but is used as a verb to refer to digitally editing an image.
Prozac – fluoxetine, an anti-depressant
Scotch tape – plastic adhesive tape (North America); in the UK, the same product is commonly referred to as Sellotape, also a trademark

The term Netbook is going to standardize across manufacturers

For better or worse, the term ‘netbook’ has really taken hold, and longish, more complicated terms like ‘mini note books’ and ‘mini notes’ just aren’t going to work any more. Acer and Asus both have tried to use their own terms i.e. ‘Aspire One’ and ‘Eee PC’ and that has made it even more common sense for people to use ‘netbook’.

At some point, manufacturers are going to realize that after desktops and notebooks, there is a third category of personal computers and everyone is referring to them as ‘netbooks’. I just hope its sooner rather than later. Here’s a comparison of what different netbook manufacturers call their netbook offerings -

1. Acer – Aspire One.
2. Asus – EeePC.
3. Dell – Mini.
4. HP – Mini Note.
5. MSI – Wind (WiFi Network Device)
6. Sony – Vaio P Notebook.
7. Samsung – Netbook. Aah finally – a company that gets it. Use the language of the customer.

Here’s a review of the Psion netbook from March 2000 – A product that was truely before its time.

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