We tried that dance with the netbooks of yore, and people rapidly found that their "good enough" performance was not, in fact, good enough for a lot of interact

We tried that dance with the netbooks of yore, and people rapidly found that their "good enough" performance was not, in fact, good enough for a lot of interactive use, particularly given that you can't burst power forever on laptop batteries. I'd love to see a rehash of that idea with the performance actually being "good enough", but I think that's probably why vendors have been burned and don't want to explore that form factor space again soon.