But the negatives outweigh the positives when you consider netbooks as primary machines at enterprises, many IT vets say.

Paradoxically, this is good news for Microsoft, which runs , backed up by . Both companies to prevent them from stealing sales away from conventional laptops, a large and profitable market.

Yet the IT pros interviewed for this story expressed a desire to have netbooks be bigger and faster. This presents a conundrum for Microsoft: OEM's could beef up netbook specs -- perhaps add bigger screens, more ports and faster chips to please enterprises -- thus making netbooks a more legitimate, but still cheaper, competitor to laptops.