Sony reluctantly pledges to enter netbook market, pouts

With Toshiba and Samsung entering the netbook fray soon, there aren't many laptop manufacturers left on the benches. Sony and Apple are the biggest holdouts, and while the House of Jobs probably thinks you should stop being cheap and just pony up for a MacBook Air already, Sony at least seems to be on the verge of adding something affordable to its line of performance ultraportables. At a recent press event, Mike Abary, Sony's Senior VP of Information Technology Products, was asked about netbooks and said: "Sony has to participate because consumers are our core competency. We have to participate." That's quite a change from his stance earlier this year, in which he called netbooks "a race to the bottom," a reluctance now being spun as "letting the pioneers in the market make the mistakes." Regardless, a mini-Vaio should make every budget-conscious Sony fan happy -- all three of you.