Western Europeans buying netbooks for Christmas provided some cheer in an otherwise gloomy fourth-quarter PC market.

Netbooks accounted for 2.5 million of the 20.1 million PCs shipped in Western Europe during the quarter, according to new figures from Gartner. Shipments rose 12.1 percent year on year, but without the netbooks they would have been in decline. Even with the netbook boost, fourth-quarter growth was lower than for the year as a whole, for which shipments were up 17.2 percent on 2007, said Gartner.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/15879...ml?tk=rss_news