There I was last week, sitting at Intel Developers’ Forum in San Francisco, looking at a wealth of sexy new devices, wishing that I could lay my hands on a few of them.

There’s a fantastic, semi-luggable four-core laptop from Lenovo aimed at markets such as oil and gas exploration and automotive design that would quite happily crunch through anything you could throw at it - including your muscles. There’s a device called the TouchTable – a horizontally-placed LCD screen that can be used for dynamic graphical data representation and manipulation. There’s a new way of integrating the TV and the internet that looks quite promising – provided that Intel and Yahoo can become a little less US-centric.

But the main thing has been the complete explosion in different device types and formats. Having tried to take over the market by providing chips for personal digital assistants (PDAs), and then having provided the main guts for the ill-fated ultra-mobile personal computer (UMPC), Intel has decided to go for it again with two new form factors – the NetBook and the mobile internet device, or MID.

The problem here is that there is massive overlap. A NetBook is essentially a cheaper laptop – so an Asus Eee PC fits in to the definition. A MID is a device that provides access to the internet while on the move, but should have low battery drain to differentiate it.

The new bit from Intel is its new chip – the Atom. Low-power requirements, low thermal profile and a new set of support chipsets to provide all-day use on a single battery charge.  So far, so good.

But, the flies in the ointment seem to be the vendors – looking at several hardware vendor sites, the terms are being used interchangeably and with gay abandon. Already, some vendors have had a couple of stabs at positioning, using NetBook and laptop naming for similar machines, using Atom in some parts of a series and Core Duo in others.

At the MID level, you go from devices that look and perform no different to a smartphone - except they don’t have a phone function - through to devices such as Clarion’s MiND – a GPS navigator on steroids that brings in internet access for various things – many of which would be rapidly outlawed for use within a car.

The basic problems are still there – the majority of MIDs on display are not pocket-able – they require carrying as a device in itself. The NetBooks may be lower cost and may provide enhanced performance over entry-level laptops at the moment, but the differentiation is not clear cut enough. The use case scenarios put forwards by Intel and its partners are woolly and will only serve to confuse the putative buyer. But the killer is that these devices do not replace anything that’s there already – they are additional, although heavily overlapping, in approach, and who wants to carry yet another device?

It’s unfortunate – as a device geek, I loved to see the sleek design of many of these, but the more rational part of me just can’t see how they will address anything more than a small niche in the market – alongside UMPCs, Tablet PCs and hardened portables.

However, a video of a blue-sky device, looking like a rather nice evolution of an iPhone, really showed where things can go for an all-in-one device. Multi-person audio- and videoconferencing, geo-locational tagging, all alongside functionality to rival any phone or small form factor device out there at the moment. If only Intel would concentrate on this rather than resurrecting the form factor wars.