NPD: Netbooks confuse consumers

People who buy netbooks don’t always understand how the computers differ from full-powered notebooks, and tend to be more disappointed with them, the NPD Group found.

The report says 60 percent of consumers who bought netbooks thought the mini-laptops had the same functionality as more expensive machines. As for customer satisfaction, 58 percent said they were happy with their netbooks, compared to 70 percent satisfaction for notebook buyers. The coveted 18-24 year-old demographic was particularly difficult to please, with 65 percent saying they expected better performance. I’m guessing that’s because netbooks tend to be weak on streaming video.

These aren’t staggering finds. At an Intel investor meeting last month, marketing head Sean Maloney said some retailers were seeing netbook return rates as high as 30 percent, possibly because retailers weren’t clearly explaining netbooks’ limitations. Intentionally or not, it seems customers are being mislead.

It’ll be interesting, then, to see how consumers respond to the wave of portables hitting the market that are slightly more powerful than netbooks, but for little extra expense. Acer, for instance, just launched a 15.6-inch notebook with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64 processor, an ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics card, 3GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive — for just $479.

One would think people are buying netbooks for portability, and NPD found that to be the case with 60 percent of buyers. But once they get home, 60 percent of consumers said the mini-computer never leaves the house. I wouldn’t be surprised if people latch on to the more powerful cheapies, like Acer’s new models, once they understand how much more computing power is at stake.