[starman]

So, I read Engadget religiously and one thing I noticed is the flood of notebooks/netbook/laptops/whatever out there. Tons of them. Big ones, small ones, Atoms, Intels, etc. How in the world can anyone decide which one to pick? Has this market become saturated? I mean, if you want a Mac, you buy a Mac. If you want Windows/Linux you can get a Mac or the eleventy billion other kinds of machines out there. I swear, it's almost as if the market has become so saturated that some companies have to be losing money because people are more aware of the big guys like Dell, Asus, and Toshiba. Thoughts?

[Wiskedjak]

What's wrong with a wide range of choice? Yes, it takes some amount of consumer effort to decide which one most closely meets his/her needs, raising the chance for getting ripped off in the process, but, at least the consumer has that option to choose. I'd like to be able to choose from an ultra-cheap piece of just to an ultra-expensive top-of-the-line, and everything in between rather than allow a few companies to decide what's best for me.

More directly to your question about over saturation of the market: if it is over saturated, the market will correct itself and you'll see a lot of companies dropping out. We aren't really seeing any evidence of that at the moment, so I suspect that the portable computer market isn't over saturated right now.

[Andy8]

I would guess its not so much that there is more portables, but there is less desktops as such.

People buying a new computer or upgrading from an older desktop will probably choose a portable these days for convenience.

[d4nth3m4n]

isn't this more the market's problem? if it'll bear it, then i'd say no, there aren't too many portable computers out there.