The netbook market has seen a lot of highs in the past few months. When the PC market was struggling, computer manufacturers turned to netbooks as a part of their strategy to attract customers who were looking for a web device that was portable and energy efficient. Netbook manufacturers have made a lot of money, selling lots of netbook units in the past few months. But there are signs that the market may be slowing down, especially with the egg that manufacturers have laid by adopting Windows 7 Starter on new Netbooks.

Don’t get me wrong. People will continue purchasing netbooks and laptops in 2010. But the current line up of netbooks on the market are not something to write home about as far as speed and performance is concerned. A lot of us have gotten used to getting our hands on powerful notebooks at home. While netbooks do provide you with a chance to surf the Internet and manage your email, wave, and social media accounts on the road, you can’t expect to pull off anything resource intensive on your netbook.

The upcoming holiday season will finally give us a good indication about how people perceive the current line up of netbooks on the market. People have had a chance to see netbooks for months now, and while netbooks make good gifts, it’s interesting to see whether these devices can dominate other gadgets in sales on Black Friday and beyond.

If you are hoping for the term “netbook” to go away, you are not that lucky. Netbooks are here to stay, but the next generation netbooks will be much more powerful (multi-core CPUs) and will come with better graphics and energy management capabilities. The days of netbooks as a poor man’s laptop may be finally over.