During an appearance at a Silicon Valley social event Tuesday night, Michael Dell some rather negative comments about netbooks, which is a bit surprising considering Dell makes quite a few netbooks, and rather good ones at that.

"If you take a user who's used to a 14- or 15-inch notebook and you say 'Here's a 10-inch netbook,' they're gonna say 'Hey, this is so fantastic. It's so cute. It's so light. I love it,'" said Dell. "But about 36 hours later, they're saying 'The screen's gonna have to go. Give me my 15-inch screen back.'We see a fair amount of customers not really being that satisfied with the smaller screen and the lower performance - unless it's like a secondary machine or it's a very first machine and the expectations are low," he said. "As a replacement machine for an experienced user, it's not what we'd recommend. It's not a good experience, and we don't see users very happy with those."

Unfortunately, Dell is right. According to a recent study, the majority of netbook buyers are disappointed with their new toys, as their small screens and underpowered processors just don't cut it. Intel has also realized that aggressive netbook marketing could backfire, warning netbook makers to advertise their products a bit more carefully.

Most consumers have no idea what an Atom CPU really is, and they fail to realize that many apps they are accustomed to just won't run properly on Atoms or 1024x600 screens for that matter.

More here.