Here's something that would snap you out of your mid-week afternoon slump.

If you need a portable netbook for surfing the Internet and social networking, many would tell you that Dell Inspiron Mini 10 would give you the best battery life.

When Samsung forayed into the portable PC segment in India in December 2008 with a comprehensive lineup of netbooks and notebook PCs, there were many expectations from the Korean consumer electronics giant.

Are netbooks’ best years behind them? Can we realistically expect to have these mini-laptops around in, say, three to five to years’ time? Or, will tablet PCs–led by the thus-far indomitable iPad–and ‘ultraportable’ computing devices spell doom for netbooks in the not-too-distant future, as being predicted by many? Well, before trying to find answers to these intriguing questions, let’s consider some facts and estimates.

MSI is going to be very busy at the Consumer Electronics Show 2011 which is to be held in January 2011 at Las Vegas.

Fujitsu has rolled out a small new convertible Lifebook tablet PC. The Fujitsu Lifebook T580 tablet convertible PC is currently available in the U.S. market at $1,149 through Fujitsu’s online webstore.

Google has unveiled a beta version of its Chrome OS. It also revealed that two companies, Acer and Samsung Electronics, have been chosen to launch Chrome OS-based netbooks in the first half of 2011.

Toshiba has unveiled a 10 inch netbook named NB520 that features a dual core processor. The company claims that the netbook has better speakers than an average netbook available on the market. The NB520 is available for $599 in Singapore.

Mouse Computer has launched its latest nettop called the Lm-mini30S in Japan. The unique proposition about this nettop is that it runs on a dual-core 1.8 GHz Intel Atom D525 processor. It is a very thin netbook, measuring just 27 mm and is priced at $600, or 49,980 yen.

Acer has announced the Acer Aspire One AOD260 netbook bundled with broadband connectivity from Tata Photon Plus. The device will be available for Rs 18,000 only in Delhi and Mumbai for now, at all TTSL and Acer retail outlets.