Intel is not giving up the netbook market without a fight. The next step is to offer silent fanless netbook designs that should feature a clean, aesthetically pleasing design. Some of them might even be ruggedized and dust free, as they won’t need cooling vents. These are the changes Intel sees in the future.

Intel is very serious about these fanless netbooks and it is committed to provide technical support to vendors who would dare to make one. The general idea is to make Cedar Trail netbooks a bit more appealing with thin, sleek and most importantly fanless designs. This is the plan market for netbooks up to 10 inches.

However, the top performing platform aims for rather decent 11.6- to 12.1-inch machines with an 8W dual core kit. We can only assume that the processor of choice is N2800 with 1.86GHz clock and 6.5W TDP and it leaves us puzzled why Intel plans a 8W TDP kit for the machine. Maybe it includes a chipset in the equation. This one might not end up passively cooled after all but its 10 inch brother with N2600 processor with 3.5W TDP processor might end up without a fan after all. 

We are not sure if netbooks are a really hot sell today, especially as market is really all about tablets these days and for some 300 dollars or euro you can get a decent 10-inch tablet that will likely hold its battery longer than an average netbook. Still, Intel could explore some niche markets with new netbook designs. For example, ruggedized netbooks sound like a pretty good choice for school kids.