According to a recent consumer survey by ChangeWave Research, tablet sales -- well, the Apple (News - Alert) iPad specifically -- are hurting netbook sales, while laptop sales are humming along. I'm not sure if I can totally buy into the data being bandied about.

Back in January 2009, ChangeWave pegged consumer netbook demand around 14 percent. By June 2009, it had peaked at 24 percent and then started declining downward, reaching a low of about 13 percent in August 2010 before climbing a point to 14 percent in October 2010. ChangeWave says that declining interested in netbooks is a combination of the end of the recession and the steamroller of the Apple iPad and other tablet computers, but tablets are much different animals than notebooks and netbooks.

Tablets are pricy animals. The entry-level, no-frills Apple iPad costs $499 -- for that amount, you can get two netbooks or a decently equipped notebook with a little more cash. I can buy into the argument that more disposable cash translates to people buying an iPad, but the tablet is ending up as a convenient complement to the notebook crowd, rather than a replacement. Reading e-mail and surfing the Web -- the two should be combine into one phrase, because a good chunk of inbound e-mail these days is nothing more than links to Web pages anyway -- can be done anywhere with a tablet without bringing the weight of the notebook/netbook to lug along, along with some video and leisurely book-reading while stuck on a plane or train.

But the notebook isn't staying at home; it is still brought along for business trips, but now it stays back in the hotel room where before it might have been toted along during the course of the day and remains in a bag either under the seat (0r better yet, for legroom purposes) in the overhead bin unless there's work to be done that requires a lot of keyboard work.

Net-net, the well-dressed executive is carrying around an iPad that goes right next to his notebook, which rolls into the next split -- netbook vs. notebook. When netbooks first came out, retailers initially positioned them as low-cost notebooks, just with smaller screens and lighter weight. At the time, a netbook was a couple hundred dollars less than a more capable notebook with a larger screen and a CD/DVD player, but you were able to do all the same things you can now do with a tablet – e-mail, surfing the Web, light work if you didn't need to do rapid touch-typing.

As notebook sales started to dip, so did notebook prices. Decisions on netbook to notebook become tougher, with some entry-level notebooks listing at the same price as a stock netbook. Price-conscious buyers would elect to take the notebook option for a larger screen, faster processor, and better quality finish -- in a contest of plastic vs. metal case, metal wins.

Netbooks only win in two categories these days -- pricing and battery life. It's still the cheapest way to get a functional computing device with a keyboard and the eight hours and more of run-time is only ballparked by the keyboard-less iPad at this point in time.

But even the netbook niche' is about to be challenged. Rumors about that Google (News - Alert) Chrome OS smartbooks are going to hit the streets later this month -- just in time for the Christmas season -- incorporating an energy-efficient ARM (News - Alert) processor that should deliver a combination of run-time and a keyboard for heavy-typing cloud-based users that could displace some netbook sales.