Falling Netbook prices are caught my eye  Saturday. Dell is the latest to drop prices, cutting the high end Mini 9 by $50 to $299 and on low end Mini 12 by $55 to $449. The Mini 12 is the only netbook I’ve found with a 12.1 inch screen. Most have 10.1 or 10.2   inch screen as the first generation models with 8.9-inch screens get phased out.

All netbooks have been falling in price for about a month as new more powerful models hit the market. I love the small form factor, but there are tradeoffs. The Internet with my HP Mini is slow and the battery quits after two hours. But the screen and keyboard are very good.

As netbooks move up the power curve with bigger screens, better batteries, beefier hard disks and more memory, they run into full size notebooks which can be had for  as low as $450. But there isn’t a notebook I’d buy for under $750. Super low price notebooks tend to be big, bulky, under-powered and too heavy for me.

Are the falling prices a consequence of slow sales or are vendors making rooms for newer more powerful models? And at what point do they cease being netbooks?

Netbook sales can’t be good for sales of lowend notebooks. I’d like your opinion of the netbook craze if it is really is that.