$200 laptops break a business model

David Title, a 35-year-old new-media manager at a film production company in New York, has dropped his cable subscription and moved to watching most of his television online . While shopping for a new laptop for his girlfriend recently, he picked a bare-bones, $200 Asus EeePC laptop. Silicon Valley has been gripped by a growing sense that the economic retreat might do more than depress earnings, but the fear now is that consumers like Title, and businesses operating with the same cost-cutting mind-set, will erode the high-margin businesses of the information technology industry—slowing some technologies and companies but giving new momentum to others.