If you're reading this on a notebook, there's a good chance it's a netbook. That's what an Aug. 31 research note from DisplaySearch seems to suggest: In the second quarter of 2009, even as the overall notebook PC market posted strong quarter-over-quarter growth of 22 percent, the rate for netbooks (that's mininotebooks, technically, or as the report rather cutesy refers to them: "mini-note PCs") positively exploded to 40 percent over the same period.

Overall, netbooks held a 26.6 percent share of the North American market, compared with "notebook PCs" with 30.2 percent and "portable PCs" with 29.4 percent. The netbook market has also become more crowded, with big players ranging from Acer, Dell and Toshiba to Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard all muscling their way into the space. And why not? With the economic recession sending overall PC sales through the floor, ever-rising netbook sales have represented the prospect of short-term relief for manufacturers' bottom lines.

If you listen to certain pundits, however, the rise of netbooks represents the end of the world for Microsoft.

"Lordy!" they holler. "Increased sales of netbooks will force Microsoft to install a cheaper version of Windows 7 on more and more machines, driving down their margins! If this macro-trend continues, Steve Ballmer will be shaking a change cup outside a Starbucks by this time next year!"

Well, I'm not here to praise Microsoft, but I also didn't lace up my boots this morning to come and bury it in the boneyard of history, either.

Yes, netbooks have the potential to wreck Microsoft's margins. Every time a consumer chooses one of those ultraportable buggers over a tricked-out laptop, Microsoft loses roughly $50, according to data released this summer by the research firm NPD. Multiply that by the 38 million units that DisplaySearch says constituted the netbook market in the second quarter of 2009, and that's $1.9 billion—assuming all those consumers would otherwise have purchased a fully loaded machine, which I doubt.

Even if you shave a billion off that number, it's still not exactly pocket change for Microsoft, which reported a 17 percent decline in its year-over-year revenue for the fourth quarter of 2009, with earnings of $13.10 billion for the period. But it's also not about to burn Microsoft as a company to its foundations, when you add the revenue from its various divisions and the enduring success of Master Chief.

Plus, netbooks themselves can only extend their reach so far.

During a July 23 earnings call, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell suggested that Microsoft's dire situation would be reversed over the course of the next year by a massive tech refresh on the part of SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses) and the enterprise.

"Hopefully, business PC growth will be at or greater than the consumer," Liddell said at the time, "and so you'll start to see higher average selling price, units will have a higher growth rate and, hence, ASPs [average selling prices] will go up."

More to the point, businesses have relatively little use for netbooks, except as ultraportable devices for salespeople and other road warriors. They need devices that run not only e-mail and a Web browser, but also productivity suites and memory-hogging specialized applications. And on average, their PCs are 6 years old and aging more by the day—and when they finally pull the trigger on that upgrade, any organization not jumping on an exclusively thin-client bandwagon will likely want machines that can run a business-analytics program along with Word without black smoke pouring from an overextended processor.

Also consider that the PC manufacturing industry is close to shutting down the bar on the whole cheap-netbook party.

During Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting on July 31, Ballmer suggested that, starting later in 2009, manufacturers will begin rolling out ultraportable PCs with larger screens, at larger cost.

"We want people to be able to get the advantages of lightweight performance and be able to spend money with us," is how Ballmer put it.

Devices such as the upcoming Nokia Booklet 3G, with a rumored higher price point than traditional notebooks, are a sign that the trend toward higher-priced and more powerful netbooks has already begun. Manufacturers want their higher margins, too. And once the processor speed of those ultraportables increases, of course, Microsoft will leap at the opportunity to install more robust versions of Windows 7 as their operating system.