Thinking of buying a netbook, might be best to wait a bit

It looks like tablets are pressuring netbook manufacturers. In what appears to proof that tablets are eating into the netbook market share, since the official launch of the Apple iPad here last December 17, 2010, we have seen netbooks, both Intel and AMD models, drop their prices by 5-10%. Samsung and Lenovo have also been releasing budget version of their existing netbooks with even lower prices. Samsung just released into the Philippine market their Samsung N150-JPOCPH and Lenovo has a similar offering, the Lenovo Ideapad S10-3B. 

The Samsung N150-JPOCPH seems to be most interesting of these new lower prices offerings. It's specifications are nothings special with a matte 10.1-inch (1024 x 600) display, a Atom N455 (1.66GHz) processor,  1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and the usual connectivity options, including WiFi, and a 6-cell battery. What makes it interesting is not the specifications, but the price. It is priced at just Php15,900.

We expect to see other manufacturers drop their single core Atom offerings to this price level soon, with dual core Atom N550 models being offered at Php2,000 more. So if you are looking for a good deal right now, we would go with the Samsung. If for some reason it does not strike your fancy, we would wait a little bit. The AMD Fusion is hitting the shelves shortly and that will really bring down the prices of the Intel Atom netbooks currently in the market.