2009 is year of touchscreen netbooks

It’s my first post for 2009 and I pretty excited of what to watch out for this year in technology. With all the developments in the netbook scene I expect that this year will start seeing touchscreen based netbooks. The way Venturebeat easily took Android open mobile platform and put it into an Asus 1000H, I’m betting that we won’t be seeing Android in just mobile phones.

The Android open mobile platform uses Linux for it’s operating system. This can be a great opportunity to really spread the use of Linux in not just netbooks but also a wide range of devices — even desktops. With the backing of a big corporation like Google, Linux can make big inroads to the computers we use everyday. Android is already starting to ramp up into mobile phones. We should be seeing a lot of Android mobile phones this year.

With Asus’ plan to put out it’s first touchscreen netbook, albeit a Windows-based one, it will be very easy to come up a netbook based on Android or even another Linux distro like Ubuntu. We already saw the conversion of an Asus 900 netbook to touchscreen last year which was really really cool.

Even HP is bent on coming up with touchscreen enabled netbook computers. Wouldn’t it be great if suddenly Dell comes up with a touchscreen version of it’s upcoming Dell E Slim.

What would be so much interesting is to see a netbook size (maybe a 10-incher) that has touchscreen and rotatable screen to act as a tablet of sorts. With maybe a 800 x 1280 screen and a battery that can last up to at least 5 hours with the cpu running at full throttle. At this size and battery life it’s going to be a great device to carry around at schools, work, meetings, home and probably even in the bathroom . What even greater if the thing can be offered at a $300 price point!