That was a very interesting article. There will always be those who need a lot of power, and those demands will be fulfilled by people writing increasingly resource heavy software and that will drive the high end market.
For many people though, careful analysis of what applications they use and if those applications are more complicated than they actually require (his photoshop for basic photo enhancement/level adjustment is very apt) would probably cause a reconsideration of the specs necessary. For the tiny bit of image editing that I do occasionally I keep a copy of GIMP on my linux machines, but in reality it is far more complicated than I need. I've only messed with layers on a couple of occasions.
Initially I thought that the netbook manufacturers were getting stupid when they started making 12" versions with 1280x800 resolutions. Actually though, bigger screen and bigger keyboard are useful for many people, and those machines can provide the functions that the vast majority of people would buy a 12" laptop for. Similar specs in a neat little box attached to a 17-22" monitor and my dad and many others like him would be very happy.
