The netbook is stuck in limbo between the ultra-convenience and voice capabilities of the smart phone and the power and full-screen and keyboard size of a laptop.

"Netbooks will continue to be small, low-cost entry products and people won't see them as some new product category but as small notebooks," says Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for market research firm NPD Group.

It was NPD's research that Microsoft cited last week when it said it owned 96% of the U.S. netbook market in February.

Baker says the combination of the forthcoming Windows 7 and the perception that netbooks are smaller versions of PCs will wipe out the notion that the netbook is something different from a PC.

"In the long term, the netbook will be the entry-level of the PC market," Baker says. "As long as they are marketed and sold to people as PCs it is going to be hard to change that mindset. And for a lot of consumers the PC platform is Windows. Despite its flaws, it is something they have been using."