It's not often that there are two big netbook announcements in one day. After all, the whole netbook/mini-notebook phenomenon is a pretty new trend and, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs says, the market is still nascent.

However, Asus today announced its new $1300AUD Eee PC 1004DN. What makes this Eee PC different from the others? Well, it's the first to market with an optical drive which, in my mind, further blurs the line between netbooks and sub-notebooks. The first netbook, in my view, was the Toshiba Libretto that was around in the late 1990s. The rest of the Eee PC 1004DN spec sheet reads similarly to most other 10" units although allow casing over the LCD and Express Card slot give it a slick look and plenty of flexibility.

The other big news came in parts. Firstly, I received a press release from Microsoft announcing that they'd been selected for the roll-out of "mini-laptops" into schools in New South Wales. This is part of initiative to get a computer into the hands of another 200,000 teachers and students. The release pre-empted one that came later from Lenovo. Lenovo completed the story, telling the world that they'll be supplying 220,000 IdeaPad S10e as part of Digital Education Revolution program.

So, not a bad day for the netbook market. A new model that's probably more a notebook than a netbook and Lenovo scores a huge sale (with Microsoft coming along for the ride).