Scott8090 said:
I would say 15-16 inch for portibilty as well as any any below gaming requirements. While 15 to 17 for gaming would be fine.
IMO netbooks ruined the market. 1 gig memory with weak processors while running windows is asking for trouble. Haven't had any personal hands on experiance with netbooks but windows 7 running on those specs is a underpowered PC. Beyond that, introducing net books only allowed the market to be even more confusing and costly for the end user.
11,12,13,14 inch laptops became far more common while costing the end user vastly larger sums of cash. Its not uncommon to see laptops of all sizes with vastly different price tags. Price tags that generally don't add up to the specs of the Laptop.
Ruined it? They made it so much more interesting. Since netbooks (which because of their weak performance were not that interesting, true) entered the market several things happened: Cheap ultraportables followed soon after (with decent performance) AND batterylife improved dramaticly.
Besides that, why would these lead to higher prices for the end user? You can pick up an E-350 11.6" laptop, which is more then enough for any normal use, starting at €380 over here. How is that expensive?
And finally: Of course there are different price tags for differnt sizes. It wouldn't make sense if it was the same. Except for the screen, going smaller is more expensive. You can not put a high-end graphics card in a small laptop.
My brother, parents and I are ALL very happy with our 11.6" laptops with SU4100 or E-350, which are more then enough for every normal load. Besides using a normal pc of course. I wouldn't want to work on such a small screen for a whole day.