Intel sees a big future for a smaller chip. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Atom is the brand name Intel has given to a family of smaller, lower power processors. And they are showing up in a variety of new small notebook computers....and other types of computing devices. Intel senior consumer marketing manager Uday Keshavdas...

"The cool thing about Atom was it's a brand new micro architecture, brand new design from the ground up. And it was designed specifically for two things. One is to give you the best Internet access whether it's in a small device like this, or it's in a netbook like this, it's all about Internet. And then the second thing is it consumes a lot lower power. So you get longer battery life and you get all the benefits of being able to go into a smaller form factor."

They are being used by a number of manufacturers....and we'll take a look at some of the so called netbooks in the weeks to come. But consumers who are tempted by the small size and relatively low prices of the machines....should keep in mind...they aren't necessarily for everyone...

"If they're going to sit down and do a lot of office work that's going to be processor intensive like Photoshop or edit videos and edit photos, this is not the best device for that."

That said...for many commuters or students...the growing netbook category ...is worth looking into...for simple word processing, Web browsing and email. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin