For 2008, Netbooks were big news technology-wise. This was the first year they really came onto the market. What else can 2009 be but the year they came into their own.

Gigabyte are already  leaders in the motherboard market, along with ASUS and MSI, they’ve been quietly getting on with making Netbooks for the past year. But there has been something that we’ve not quite managed that Lenovo or Sony have been able to.

It wasn’t always like that though. This time last year they released their Gigabyte Cafe. Interesting name for a Netbooks that managed to make  waves in the handheld PC market when it was first released with a compact design made for portability. The revolutionary touch screen display could be rotated 180 degrees to transform the device into a tablet PC, offering a completely different user experience. Gigabyte’s Netbooks, as a rule, have higher specifications than those of their competitors hence prices are usually $150 more than other leading brands.  At $800 Gigabyte’s Cafe Netbook didn’t come cheap.

The  will feature new Good OS Cloud operating systems. The browser looks like Google Chrome but can be installed with Windows or any other operating system.

The two other Gigabyte 10″ models will be fighting in the same market as the bigger name Netbooks out there. All three will have a more reasonable starting price of US $400 and according to Digitimes one model is set to retail at below US $300 to compete within the competitive emerging Netbook market.

What makes netbooks so attractive, namely their price is one of their biggest weaknesses. Netbooks are much cheaper than traditional PCs but this involves sacrificing performance. As Michael Arrington in TechCrunch points out tetbooks have less RAM, less powerful CPUs and less memory -  typically 1GB. Using Windows XP on a netbook can be a slow and frustrating experience especially if multople applications are in use.

Jolicloud, a brand new Linux-based operating system designed especially for netbooks. Jolicloud has icon based navigation with large colourful icons, making reminiscent of an iPhone. It is indeed joli, meaning attractive in French It has been developed to make low end netbooks perform better and run faster.

Jolicloud is utilising an aggressive strategy. It will be available for download, once it has been installed it will completely replace the original operating system. Good OS and Cloud OS, other operating systems designed especially for netbooks are designed to work alongside the netbook’s original operating system.

Jolicloud has a much higher profile than the other two operating system as Netvibes founder Tariq Kim is behind the project. Crunchbase outlines his impressive career, highlights include:

‘He also became the first french (man) to receive the TR35 (Top 35 Young Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review) for a contribution related to the Internet.

‘In 2008, Tariq Krim was nominated a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.’

The beta version will be available for download in the coming months according to the Jolicloud.com. It is already working and has been demoed on an Asus Eee netbook. 

The rumours have been bouncing around for a while. Larger screen? How big? Oh the netbook possibilities! What wondrous things will it bring.

Finally, we’ve got some hard evidence that the new 10 inch Acer Aspire is being put up for general release and with this new model, more is definitely more.

The newer, slightly, larger 10.1 inch screen, replaces the 8.9 inch Acer Aspire netbook screens of old. A great improvement, it would seem. The slight size increase makes it easier to use and navigate, it can still fit in your bag and it  makes the 8.9 look puny in comparison. An extra 1.2 inches makes all the difference.

The new model also packs in a 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom CPU along with 1GB of RAM, optical 3G SDHC card slot and 3 USB ports. The new bigger screen still packs in the same pixel power, 1024  x 600 display, as existing Acer Aspire netbooks. Nothing too ground breaking there.

This one is more of an evolution of older models rather than a brand spanking new edition to the line. The overall design of the new model isn’t much of a departure for Acer either. The keyboard has a slight brushed metal finish and the touch pad has more of a seamless quality than before.

Finally there are some photos of the 10 inch Acer Aspire One netbook. Although this  had all the benchmarks of an unsubstantiated rumour the pictures prove that the 10 inch exist and is near to completion.

The features include a 1.6GHz N270 or N280 Atom CPU. RAM is expected to be set at 1GB. The 160GB hard drive should be preloaded with Windows XP. In terms of connectivity the Acer One will come with with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections

Elonex, the netbook manufacturer will be selling £99 netbooks in branches of M&S and Next from February. The plan is target the female market by promoting these handbag sized computers that come in a range of colours in shops primarily frequented by women. It seems a bit patronising to target women by pushing the fact that they fit in a handbag but at least they didn’t make them all pink with pictures of kittens on them.

Even though these netbooks are relatively cheap they include all the basic functions you would expect from a computer with email, internet, word processing and photo storage. They are perfect for people who want to have access to a computer but don’t need advanced features that come with higher spec, more expensive models. Netbooks have become incredibly popular in the last year, with brands like Asus above garnering huge sale figures.

The screen is 7 inches. BAD JOKE ALERT! But most women wont realize what 7 inches looks like considering all men tell them 6 inches looks like this (insert image of man measuring out 4 inches between finger and thumb). Ho hum (Joke works better as a visual one, sorry).

The netbooks are already available over the internet but if you can’t be bothered with internet shopping just find your nearest Next or M&S if they’re still around. It might have been better if they struck a deal with Tesco instead.