Marks and Spencer Launch Their Own Netbook

Marks & Spencer has just jumped on the netbook bandwagon by launching the MSNB-2009 netbook. Well, it seems that these days all the retailers are calling up Taiwanese or Chinese manufacturers and giving them bulk orders for netbooks. What these retailers basically do is that they get the netbook at a cheap price as they order in bulk quantity, then these retailers put in all their branding and marketing efforts to promote the netbook and in return charge a premium price for the netbook.

The MSNB-2009 has pretty much the standard features as one would normally find in netbooks of today i.e.:

* 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor
* 10-inch 1024×600 pixel display
* 160GB hard disk drive
* 1GB RAM
* 802.11b/g WiFi, Ethernet
* Windows XP operating system
* Memory Card reader
* 1.3MP webcam
* HD Audio with volume rocker
* 1.3Kg weight

So, as you all can see this netbook has pretty much the basic spec sheet as one would normally find in the low cost netbooks. The MSNB-2009 will be available for £279 (around €310) and will offer the user a battery life of around 6 hours. Well, Samsung NC10 and N120 beat the MSNB in this regard as they offer a battery life of around 8-10 hours.

So, how is Marks & Spencer marketing this netbook. Well, to begin with this netbook will supposedly offer “Style and Sophitication”, “Portability and Precision” and all the ” Glitter and Twitter”. It is quite interesting to see how different retailers market the same generic products and manage to sell them. One thing I must mention about these netbooks is that Elonex (manufacturer of the MSNB) has managed to place a really large keyboard and a really large trackpad on this device, which will be liked by most of the people. This netbook comes in three high gloss striking colors- pink, black, and blue. Finally, I will leave the choice to the user to decide whether he/she wants to go for this netbook.