AMD Chief Executive Dirk Meyer set the record straight last week though with this very decisive comment: “We’re ignoring the Netbook phenomenon–just thinking about PC form factors above that form factor.”

Director of Notebook Product Marketing at AMD, Bahr Mahony, offered more clarification, saying, “We’re going to offer the Congo and Yukon platforms as an alternative (to processors and chipsets for netbooks). There are a fair number of people that are not satisfied with the experience they’re getting on these mininotebook platforms.”

Curiously enough, AMD, the alledged impact players in the netbook market a week ago, now seems to be on something of a crusade against the concept in an effort to assist its alternative plans, with Mahony also saying there is great dissatisfaction among netbook users, using high return rates in Europe as justification for the claim.

AMD’s plan is simple, to create something bigger than netbooks, but still small and able to load more firepower into it. In fact, the article reports that Pat Moorhead, Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD, talked about AMD’s upcoming Conesus CPU, which will use ATI’s RS780M graphics and offer better graphics and experience overall than the typical netbook can.

This again relates to the ongoing, persistent confusion over what exactly a netbook is, with definitions including models with screens as big as 14-inches lately. What AMD plans to release is probably what many are already coining “netbooks”, but which AMD and many others consider to be a thin notebook. The CNet article makes a good point that the netbook is by large is defined by its Atom processor, and that AMD (which is making a clear attempt to distance itself from the whole concept of a netbook) with its new platforms Yukon and Congo will be in the “thin notebook” category.

2009 will see the coming of the Conesus, a 65-nm chip with two cores and 1MB cache, that AMD is manufacturing for ultra-portables and mini-notebooks. In 2010, the Conesus will see its successor arrive: the Geneva. The key difference will be a cache upgrade from 1MB to 2MB.

AMD is of course hoping that the Conesus and later the Geneva will be a legitimate challenger to Intel’s all-conquering Atom processor. Bring it on!

The Bobcat is speculated to feature 64-bit 1GHz core and consume eight watts of power. This would actually be more than Atom’s usage, but the Bobcat is expected to also have an on-chip memory controller that would reduce power consumption elsewhere in the machine.

Another rumour is that AMD could also announce plans for its UVC (Ultra-Value Client), a series of dual-core chips that run around 1.6GHz, although the higher power requirements could mean they run on nettops and not portable devices.

Tomorrow is the day when we’ll know for sure what AMD has up its sleeve, and we’ll have an update here as soon as concrete information is available.

Battery life, ever an important feature among netbook users, is one of the main things that AMD plan to address, along with video performance. AMD’s Vice-President of Advanced Marketing, Pat Moorehead, is telling us to expect an impressive 8-9 hours in battery life on a netbook.

As for video performance, AMD is expected to use its ownership of ATI to full effect and “will likely seek to have the chip included in its transition from the current 65nm production process to the smaller and more power-efficient 45nm stage”, according to the APC story.

Moorehead was also critical of the gradual price increases in the netbook market, which now sees some of the larger models surpassing $1000 in price. AMD president and CEO, Dick Meyer, said on this, “We do have strategies together with our OEMs for pushing our solutions both down into smaller form factors and lower notebook price points.”