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Sony Says Eee PC Signals "Race To the Bottom"
Alex Dekker writes "Sony's Mike Abary says in an interview, 'If [Asus's Eee PC] starts to do well, we are all in trouble.' Presumably by 'we' he means all the hardware manufacturers who sell over-priced, full-fat laptops. And he's not going to be too pleased when he sees the Linux-powered, sub-$200 Elonex One. Looks like what's bad for Sony may be good for the consumer." The CNet article mentions that a version of the Eee running XP is available in Japan now and will be coming to the US within weeks.
Remember when DELL said they'd create the first sub-$1000 PC and people just laughed at them? I never understand why people pay $2000 for a LAPTOP that can so easily be stolen, dropped or damaged. $200 for a email machine is more of the price range that they should be in.
"No one will really be free until nerd persecution ends."
January 24, 2008 9:49 AM PST
Eee PC with Windows launches in Japan, U.S. is next
Posted by Erica Ogg | Post a comment
Asus launched the first Windows version of its popular Eee PC in Japan on Thursday, according to a report in The Register.
Called the Eee PC 4G-X, it will come pre-loaded with Windows XP Home Edition. It has the same specs as the original 4G model with Linux introduced last fall: 4GB of storage, Intel Celeron processor, 512MB of RAM, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, and more.
Eee PC
The U.S. version of the Eee PC, pictured above, uses a Linux-based operating system. Next month we'll see the Windows XP version.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)
The Japanese launch is good news for potential U.S. buyers of the computer, a cross between an oversized Internet tablet and a notebook, because it means the U.S. version is coming very soon.
Asus originally promised we'd have the Windows version of the tiny Asus Eee PC in December. The Taiwan-based company now says we can expect it in late February or early March. Though the original date came and went, it certainly hasn't stopped customers from ordering the Linux-based version: the company reportedly moved 350,000 units in the first quarter it was available.
Sony already sells most of its stuff for more than their competitors and still stay in business, based on brand, design, and such. I don't see how that would change if machines like the Eee become more popular, except that fewer people will pay $2000+ for the TZ and a lot for their UMPCs.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
The EeePC was promised to be around $200.00 and it currently sells for $299.00 most places $399 for the decked out version. nearly TWICE the promised price. all the others come in way WAY over as well.
Why buy a Eee PC when I can get a Dell cheapie of the moment with 12X the power at the same or LESS price. Last one I got was $369.99 on one of their 1 day sales. I can do way more than the eeepc and saved money.
I'm for the race for the bottom if the race is sanely priced. right now it's not.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can buy better, but you can't pay more!
Are consumers actually getting to the point where they buy what they need rather than the high end, of what they want?
Imagine if this were to happen to the automotive industry...
The Asus is a badly done copy of my Vaio C1XD (My screen is 1024x480 pixels) - seven years old still going strong and great for getting on the internet when away from home (or out on the balcony).
realkiwi
When I look at that laptop, it looks like its going to fall over all of the time. No wonder they won't release it to the public yet.
Yes there are lot of expensive computers and it is possible to make computers that cost almost nothing. Then again computers with rock-bottom prices usually lack style, have very little R&D put into them and aren't usually the cutting edge.
You want a good looking computer that peforms well and you can delegate the fixes to the manufacturer? Be ready to pay for it. Anything else and you are doing all the work.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Computing power has been a commodity for a long time now. Companies now have to differentiate and *gasp*! Compete! On product benefits beyond "Windows kind of works on it sometimes." Every industry reaches a plateau at some point, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, for businesses or consumers. Sony still makes decent ultra-portables that actually have some power, which the EEE won't compete with. Apple makes trendy machines with a great caché. It looks bad for the companies that put out crap laptops, like Dell, HP/Compaq and Gateway, but really- will anyone be sad to see them either make better machines or die?
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
The EeePC is equipped with storage similar with what was mainstream some 10 years ago, with a processor (600MHz) from 7 years ago, and its 512MB RAM is pretty current (not more than two years ago in the mainstream). Its graphic resolution, unfortunately, is from more than 10 years ago, and is a quarter (by pixels) of what is now current.
With a bigger display (600 lines instead of 480, and more than 7") I would buy one. For comparation, most of the installation screens in Windows I've seen doesn't fit in 640 lines, the OK, Next, Back, Cancel buttons are out of the visible screen.
First of all, all these little laptops are really cute, but for anything that's not listening to mp3's, looking at pictures, and surfing the internet you are in trouble. Now I realize that this is what the vast majority of computers are used for, but people overbuy what they need because of what they MIGHT do. People buy trucks bigger than what they need so they can occasionally tow a boat - you also buy computers more powerful than what you need because you MIGHT want to want decent quality video clips. You might want to do some video and audio editing, you MIGHT want to keep more than 8-16gb's worth of data on your computer, and you MIGHT want to use the plethora of programs/ features that are found on XP that simply don't work that well or at all in Linux. I don't know about you, but surfing the internet on a 8" screen with a 800 x 480 resolution screen sounds like a nightmare, especially if you are used to even an SXGA. I personally think these are cute little gimmicks, but only time will tell for sure.
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
Funny you say that in a thread about an Intel powered laptop.
By the way, OS/2 is officially dead.
Seriously, did anyone read the whole thing? About two paragraphs are devoted to the whole 'race to the bottom' thing without explaining exactly why Sony thinks this a problem. The rest of the entry just goes on and on about all the cool things Sony sells and how many colors and textures the Vaio comes in.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sony is just upset that they didn't come up with it first.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
As much of a consumer whore as I am, I almost wish Sony would go away, they do nothing good for the marketplace. They now are going to get Video share due to Blu-ray and they will stick around, but for everything else there is usually a cheaper and better alternative. The future is full of cheaper lighter devices, they might just be pissed that their rootkits wont work on them.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
OK, quick show of hands of those who feel sorry for Sony. One guy wayyy in the back. You can put your hand down, sir. Thanks.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
In case you haven't realized, the Eee PC has been "doing well", they sold 300K units in 2007 and expect to sell several million in 2008. Even HP allegedly agrees http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/26/hp-so-confident-in-the-umpc-2133-its-building-2m-units/
The only consistency in life is the lack thereof
Unfortunately, the x86 architecture and instruction set sucks.
I'm a happy owner of the following mobile devices:
- Asus Eee
- Nokia 770
- Nokia N810
I'd learnt something in these years: we don't need powerfull fat heavy devices, we need smaller and lighter devices, we don't care about power. For power we have fat big desktop computers.
I'd be really interested in an inexpensive laptop, when it truly is inexpensive! Whether you're spending $400 or $500, that extra $100 seems to get you QUITE a bit more in terms of hardware. I have trouble dropping $1000 on a laptop that is only marginally better than an $800 one; but I don't see a problem spending $500 on a laptop that is MUCH better than a $400 one. If you need a cheap laptop, just buy older technology! The devaluation on computers is worse than the devaluation on cars!
I need a cheap laptop with good wireless, good video and sound, long battery life, and lightweight.
It doesn't need a lot of RAM or hard disk.
I'll use it as a thin client to remote-control my workhorse machines.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That's the difference between the EeePC and an old laptop.
The EeePC is not supposed to be a super-powerful computer. Rather, the EeePC is supposed to be very portable, and affordable.
Yeah, I know it's cool to hate on big companies. However... /* Presumably by 'we' he means all the hardware manufacturers who sell over-priced, full-fat laptops */
;)
Over-priced? Maybe. But full-fat? Are you not aware that Sony is one of the few laptop manufacturers who continually pushes the envelope for smaller, lighter, thinner and has been doing so for as long as I've been buying laptops? The 505 series, the Picturebooks, and I'm typing this on a Sony TR1A which is also my multimedia workstation (I make music and videos). If it weren't for Sony (and Panasonic, Fujitsu, IBM/Lenovo (x-series)), we probably wouldn't even be seeing the eee. Maybe you're just referring to all the bells and whistles, but these days, what does that mean? The eee comes pretty loaded by my standards, but is woefully short on ram and storage.
I'd like to see the eee succeed, in only that I'd like to see that form factor coming from Sony, et al but with more modern components. I dream of a re-release of the Picturebook with a ULV Core 2 Duo, a 4 hour battery life, and capacity for 2 gigs of RAM, starting at $899.
At the very least, it just means that if the eee succeeds, it might drive price points lower so that the profit margins on the ultraportables might not be as good as they are now. Which, from a consumer standpoint is a good thing.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Anyone wager this is some kind MIPS implementation or based on OpenCores RISC? 300 MHz is pretty slow, so I would also guess that its done on a pretty old feature size, likely to be built in those fabs in china?
than just this one product.
1. Take a look at this estimate of who builds laptops for what brand. http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_oem.html The brands like Sony might change vendors, but the manufacturers listed haven't changed, so re-arrange the check marks if you want to pretend.
2. Many of the OEM's are marketing barebones laptops which are going to eat into Sony's laptop business in unpleasant ways. MSI and Asus are two notables. http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=23
Talk amongst yourselves....
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Perhaps these companies (whether they be electronics manufacturers (Sony) or automotive manufacturers (GM), etc.) need to pull their heads out of their asses with respect to customer research.
LG did a bit of customer research, painted their washers and dryers red, and quadrupled sales overnight. Toyota made a tiny, efficient car (echo), and sales boomed. Asus made a PC that it figured would sell really well, and they were right, as a result of understanding their customers' CTQ's.
I love my eeepc because it's exactly what I need. Portable, durable, cheap and linux-based. Sony, Dell and the rest can produce what they want, but when it doesn't sell, it's nobody's fault but their own.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
Yes, it would be nice if Asus had chosen a chipset that gave 5 to 10 hours of battery life instead of 1 to 3. The problem of non free hardware remains if you want Flash and other non free software. The custom version of Xandros used does not give Asus or customers the complete freedom but it's a step in the right direction.
Lets make them better and cheaper. The spirit of Jack Tramiel might be living on in ASUS
More support calls from people who want to play Wow on crappy computers, and will then complain about framerates.
Don't get me wrong, cheap computers certainly have an important place. My notebook was cheap, my desktop wasn't, but I don't seriously expect to play Crysis on my laptop.
These Eeepc's are bit like cheap indian cars that have no AC, no radio and cap out at 70Km/h. They have a place: People who can't afford better and/or aren't going to need to go on highways, and people who try just make life difficult for the rest of us.
Lets think about what you at least theoretically can do with an Eeepc: You can skype, edit documents, browse the web, and play a bit of music. Sounds good to me, it's cheap enough a student (public, high school, even some university students) can carry it around with them and not be in any major trouble if it gets lost or broken as long as they use some sort usb drive backup. Want to plug in your iPod though? Not enough storage space for it to be worthwhile. Want to play nearly any game based on a franchise, not going to happen (except maybe flash?). Need to load something from CD, not going to happen.
The drive to the bottom in cost is in many ways bad for people who develop software, games or otherwise. People can go out and spend 1500 dollars on a computer and it doesn't do even basic things like play games (Intel integraged graphics!), but other people can get a very good system for 1500 bucks, that's a problem with requirements analysis and companies selling crap which consumers clearly don't understand and it just alienates them from the whole process. If you start cutting away at storage space, memory etc... you start to seriously limit what we can allow consumers to do. How many years after DVD's were in every new machine sold did software developers have to keep selling stuff on CD (and waste that corresponding money) so they didn't get support calls from the 1% of users who think the machine they bought in 2002 should still run everything fine? What good is an 8GiB iPod when your computer only has 4 GiB of disk space? What do we do for all those people that openoffice simply doesn't cut it for (esspecially relatively sophisticated excel spreadsheets don't work well in OO)?
If anything we should be making sensible moves in the other direction: Computers that (may) cost more but aren't crap, which then can synchronize with these little sub-notebooks so that the kids can have something to take to school with relatively little risk. But actually using these as a primary machine is best limited to those who really cannot afford anything else, and even then as others have stated above, there are probably better deals.
As long as a large fraction of the consumers are willing to continue the feature race, there is good money to be had. I saw one study some time ago that concluded that for each 1$ Microsoft received, ~ $18 went into the the rest of the industry. This is of course true of all the other areas of the consumer economy, which is focused upon creating and satisfying "wants" in a never-ending cycle.
I don't want to get into a discussion of what people need vs. what they want. It does appear that the functionality to any given user increases very slowly with the total feature set of a product. Of course, different users will use different features.
If you are willing to work with text mode displays, you could and can do very well with very minimal systems. I did very well with a 12 MHz 286 running DOS 6.1 with Word Perfect 5.1 and QuattroPro 18 years ago. 25 years ago I used Emacs and Scribe / nroff for writing documents on Unix systems. My cousin just had her Win 3.1 system die (also a 286 system). She had been using Word Perfect to write scientific papers.
From a practical point of view, normal users needs for routine writing, spread sheet usage, and the like in a convenient GUI were satisfied with Office 97 on Win 98, and its equivalents. Win 98 systems were more than adequate for ripping of music and can handle moderate still image manipulation. I still have my Win 98 box (1.7 GHz P4, 80 GByte drive, although I upgraded it from 256 MBytes to 768 MBytes when I upgraded it to XP). Unfortunately, the Win 9X series were designed for a much less hostile environment than we now face. 9X systems should not be connected to the internet.
Win2K was developed for the enterprise and did well. It had more security, configurability, and manageability than the 9X series.
For consumers, XP followed the 9X series, and eventually offered far more security. The hardware that came of age in the XP environment is far more capable, and XP systems are easily capable of ripping and transcoding large video files and can easily handle speech recognition, and simultaneous demanding applications. Unfortunately, XP continued the 9X tradition of typically running the user as administrator and application writers made this assumption, making it very hard to run XP as a normal user.
From my point of view as a security geek, Vista is a security enhanced XP with enough kernel security enhancements to break a number of bad security practices of XP - with ensuing application breakage. You can run Vista a normal user and a lot of work went into hardening the system. We have seen ~ a 50% reduction in MSRC issues.
From a point of view of "needs", we get into a different discussion. What are you doing and in what environment? If you are producing text documents in a stand-alone system, you can get by with very limited HW. If you are working always connected to the web or a server, you can get by with a thin client. If you are in the mixed mode, the question comes down to what are you trying to do, and what support do you have available to do it. Most customer tasks are not that demanding and hence do not require that much HW. If I can go on-line to get functionality support that is beyond my box, I don't have to buy as much capability in my local device. We will see some interesting transitions in the next decade.
I run Windows at home because the apps I use were written for Windows (for example, OmniPage OCR) and I could get drivers for my dev
But they cost 10x as much and, despite Sony marketing assurances, alligator skin is not what people want a laptop to do. EEE delivers almost everything people care about in a laptop for an order of magnitude less than the competition. The reason it's selling for twice as much as expected is because it's a runaway hit and considered a good deal at $400. Used computers of the same weight sell for twice the price but offer only better screen size and keyboard. If they come with Windows, a used laptop does not offer much performance gain, and some significant performance losses, as well as a the usual Windows migration and software install pains. Good for Asus, EEE sells out as soon as they hit the shelves because people who don't care about GNU/Linux want it.
People are easily dazzled and convinced to buy things they don't need.
Palm trees and 8
The entire article is nothing more then the an out of context quote. Cnet heard something they think might sound nicely controversial, plunks it in in an article that seemingly has no goal and watches the ad revenue stream in when as predicted slashdot picks it up, makes an entire story out of one quote and runs rampant with it.
Personally I think this is all overblown, offcourse Sony who operates at the high end for laptops will call a move for the cheapest laptop a race to the bottom and warn that if this catches on "better watch out", but you note that completly absent from this article is any condemnation of this, neither do they warn consumers about the Eee. He might as well be meaning that those companies who think they can only sell super expensive ones better watch out.
Oh wait, I am doing it wrong ain't I. Sony is the evil!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Mike Abary's statments remind me of the incredibly stubborn comments from Sony PR regarding the PS3. Nice to see such comments are made from other parts of Sony, not just the PS3 division. Sony's just jealous of the EEE's success, and the potential cut in their profits. "low price" to sony means $1200 for a UMPC or something.
Hopefully there will be competition and it will decrease the prices to an even lower level. At least I can hope
There have been lots of laptops between $450-650 there lately.
The people who spend $2000 do so purely because they want to. I do too, because it's a usually a better machine and one that I use all the time and with the numerous storage options these days, most notably the external drives, - a Desktop replacement.
The same way a chef may buy a set of knives that cost several hundred dollars instead of a set that cost $50 - because it's worth it to them. The better knives may cut marginally better at first but the real secret is that they hold their edge a lot longer.
But yes, $2000 for an email appliance is overkill.
Crocodile-skin print on the case, nothing. When Sony makes a machine with a case of recycled aluminum cans, and a keyboard using material from old piano keys and bakelite telephones, then I'll be impressed.
Hmm. It seems to me that rootkitting your customer's computers is more like the REAL race to the bottom.
I have a Sony VAIO, broken and discarded by the executive who had to have it. I put Linux on it and used it for a while, but it makes such terrible RFI when plugged in that I can't use it much. I got another one, even smaller, with Win2K, declared unsupportable because Sony wouldn't certify SP2 for it. I tried to put Linux on it, but with no BIOS boot from USB, no floppy, and no CD ROM, it was hard.
So I had to take out the disk. Fortunately, I found a page that tells me exactly how. Unfortunately, the section is entitled LeMarchand's Puzzle Box. Fortunately, I was able to get the disk out and put Linux on it.
Unfortunately, I was never able to get it put back together.
Skip them all, I say.
The Eee probably spells doom for the overpriced UMPC market, and could quite possibly take a chunk out of ultraportables. But I daresay most people still want the larger screens, higher storage capacity, and normal-sized keyboards of mainstream laptops.
I bought one a month or two ago to take with me to classes. I was replacing a heavy-ass Toshiba Satellite, with a 15" screen. That thing was nice, 2-3 years ago, but the damn thing was too heavy to carry around everywhere.
Enter the eeePC, which comes fairly cheap (mine was 399.99) with Linux pre-installed. It's Xanadros, and I'll admit, I'm a moron, so I didn't want to deal with it. Installing XP was anything but easy... lacking a DVD-rom drive, I had to port it to a memory stick, run a bunch of suspicious looking programs to make the stick bootable, and then run it from there. XP died after installing 4-5 times, 6th time's the charm...
Anyways, with XP on it, it runs like a champ. All the drivers work out of the box. I think the eeePC is mostly made of commodity hardware too, making it a delicious geek toy. People have put touchscreens on it, soldered more stuff in the mobo, etc.
Mine's pretty basic, I slapped in an extra 2gb of SD memory and 2 gb of ram, and then overclocked the processor to 900 mhz. Runs wonderfully. The little bastard can even run Second Life.
I lurve my eeePC. I use it as a replacement for my pen-and-paper notepad.
hookers and grits.
In my opinion, Sony is the race to the bottom PERSONIFIED... After my experience with SWG, and the fraud, lies, and deceit there, I've avoided buying anything Sony.
Too bad blueray won, I don't see myself wanting a new high def DVD player any time soon since it will require me to pay tribute to Sony.
If cheap computers helps put customer unfriendly, bloated price dinosaurs like Sony out of business, how can this be a bad thing?
Corporatism != Free Market
"...Looks like what's bad for Sony may be good for the consumer..."
Really? Where have you people been when Sony pushed HD-DVD down? Everybody on the forums cried out: "Die, HD-DVD, die! Viva Blu-Ray!"
No, consumer is a bitch. He will eat whatever is more popular and whatever has a hype around. There are so few educated consumers in comparison to general public.
So, IMHO, regardless of the features, if Asus keeps promoting Eee PC and succeeds in establishing a stable cult around it, then it will survive. Otherwise, Sony, Dell and the other mammoths will bring it down, since they have more money and power to push their products. End of story.
I don't have an Eee myself, but I do hope that they take off and become a leader for a new "race to the bottom". I've been going the last ~5 years on a Compaq Presario 2100 that was bottom-of-the-line when I first bought it (roughly $1000). I use it mainly for taking notes in class, e-mail, surfing the web, etc.- basically stuff the Eee was meant for.
When I graduate this summer, I do plan on getting an Eee to take with me to work (if allowed). Something that I can easily use for porting things back and forth, bring with me to a restaurant to do some surfing/e-mail over lunch, etc. The low price means I don't worry as much if it gets stolen, the small dimensions make it very easy to fit in a briefcase with room to spare, and if someone puts a hinge on it to flip the screen around you can make a nice, small eBook reader.
It's better than a Crackberry because I don't have to think of having it on my person at all times and have better resolution; at the same time, it's better than a laptop because it's ultra portable and cheap.
Not $2000 Swiss Army Knives.
A good chef's knife is worth it. At some point, though, those Swiss Army Knives become too big and unwieldy to be of any use.
Right, I've owned my share of desktop replacements, and I had very good reasons for buying them. But seriously, for the price of that $3000 laptop, you could have one hell of a mothership desktop, a NAS and a Eee, n810 or whatever you need for mobile/kitchen computing.
Expensive laptops will always have their niche; it's just getting smaller. The paradigm used to be: "cost, size or performance: pick one". Now it's pick two.
If [Asus's Eee PC] starts to do well [...]
What do you mean, "if"?
-- Cerebus
For the sake of argument, I'm writing this on my laptop with the display set to 800x600 (I can't do 800x480, but the width is my main concern anyway). I have to admit that Slashdot, for example, seems to resize quite well. I'll hit a few more bookmarks and try it out...
*checking*
Okay, most of my links work very well. BBC News has horizontal scroll bars, but all the I'm missing is an ad; The site seems to be formatted for an 800 pixel width. A forum I regularly read fails to resize well. That's about it. I guess "Web 2.0" has resulted in sites that are a little more dynamic and make better use of the available real estate. To be honest, I haven't surfed under 1024x768 in ages.
I suppose the only other major resolution-hog in my day to day use is spreadsheets, but I can't see myself doing spreadsheet work on the Eee anyway. It wouldn't be the point of the machine, if I were to get one.
Still, for now I'll stick with the 12.1" notebook. To carry an Eee I'd still need some sort of bag, and the MEC Bag I currently use is very compact (the 12.1" fits snugly in it). Out of interest, how do you carry your Eee around?
Flamebait? You know that was pointless, and you are going to get slapped down in meta mod, right? My only question is, are you a Sony shill, or a spun hater?
Sony is just clueless enough to *think* this threatens their business model. In reality, I hardly see how it affects anything BUT a few of their smallest VAIO sub-notebooks (which were really tiny like the Asus offering, but generally sold for nearly $3000).
.XLS or .DOC files once in a while, works on her family treee in "Family Tree Maker" software now and then, and occasionally wants to scan things in or print greeting cards. She still plugs along on a PIII class tower I built for her about 6 years ago -- and it's PAINFULLY slow. The anti-virus software (AVG) alone takes nearly 60 seconds to update itself, which it seems to do pretty much daily. Boot times are terrible (especially with all the software bloat for her Lexmark all-in-one printer/scanner/copier), and the machine is just unpleasant to use, all around.
... not a "professional" use of the computer at all. Yet it's very CPU intensive to transcode video. Sure wouldn't want to do it on a PIII.
But no, the majority would NOT be "fine buying a Pentium 3 caliber chip with a DVD burner and big hard drive". I'm reminded of this by my mom, who barely does anything on her computer besides booting it up to get her email in Outlook Express under XP Pro, prints out some attachments people send her as
Yeah, it gets the job done - but not the way the software developers intended.
People are starting to become interested in more and more "digital media". They want to "rip" their movies from DVD and store digital copies on their computer, and maybe even stream them to another device (set-top box, maybe?). This is very much in the "consumer" realm
Assuming everyday retail pricing and not some line up outside the store at 2am for 8 hrs super sale nonsense (although it's hard to understand what Walmart means when they say "Out of Stock" AND "Coming Soon" for the same item at the same time.)
In either case, a hundred dollars less than that or $300 is significant. After all most people use their machine for email, school/work papers, browsing and syncing their iPod. And if you need more than 60GB storage I guess you can some of those savings and get a NAS on your home network but 60GB is quite a bit a room for almost everyone. $300 is less than the iPod you sync it with. $300 is less than some geeks spend on a phone.
I would run out and get my wife a $300 laptop today if I could.
- Thin and light. Nothing radical, something a little better than a regular MacBook
- long battery life (5+ hours that lasts for more than 2 years)
- 1600x1200 (or more) LCD; something big enough to make software development nice, not that 1024/1152/1280 crap that is so common. My 5 year old Dell laptop runs at 1600x1200, why is this not common?
- Wireless
- Doesn't need fancy video
- No fancy CPU
- Cheap
I want to use it as a dumb wireless X terminal. It needs only enough processing power to run the display.That's what I did (and will continue to do)! Wait till your local computer/electronics stores have rebated computers and grab the cheapest one. I have a two year old compaq laptop that was right around 500 and it's still more powerful the Eee. I do have to admit I am drawn to the Eee but practicality wins. I'd like one but I don't need one, especially for the price.
<disclosure>I am a soon-to-be college graduate so my willingness to spend money is probably less than most.</disclosure>
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Sony is just afraid that someone is catching up to their brand in the race to the bottom.
lol: You see no door there!
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/tata-nano-the-worlds-cheapest-car/
What's wrong with a race to the bottom? Like any other competitive market, it will force companies to innovate to try to provide faster performance at lower prices, driving innovation in the lower end of the market. I, for one, am quite excited.
Bullshit. Youtube and Itunes movies are slideshows on that hardware. And grandma needs her skateboarding dogs.
that the one laptop[ one child thing was mit smoke hype bs
why didn;t you listen
My experience with Sony laptops has never been good. We bought some of the early Vaios, and the damn machine had so many custom gizmos and drivers, they practically had their own version of Windows. The BIOS was equally funky. As we applied MS updates, the machines became less and less stable as the new/improved MS files conflicted with the proprietary Sony crap. We quickly acquired a preference for other brands.
But the COO really loved Sony Vaios. As a perk, we always gave him a Sony but we bought IBM for everyone else. And of course, we upgraded his machine every year, usually in response to some problem that resisted our troubleshooting efforts to the point where it wasn't worth pursuing.
I would take an EEE over a Vaio any day.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8245470
Sony and other big name companies don't want people to find out that they really never needed that $3000 laptop with the 18432940THz Quad Quantum processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of drive space just to read email, surf the web, and do a bit of word processing.
These cheap laptops sound underpowered to some, but I'm willing to bet that the majority of computer user out there will be quite happy with one.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I don't want to sound lame, but that's how a girl caught my attention :-)
Are you kidding me? A Pentium 3 class computer went from 450 Mhz - 1.4 Ghz and this laptop lands ~ in the middle of that. It's a 900 Mhz, processor, with 512 megs of ram on a custom streamlined OS running firefox. Sure you won't do any video transcoding with it, but it's enough to handle something as mundane as iTunes, or YouTube.
If there's anything I've learned from living in Japan, it's that if a Japanese company says that something's not good, most of the time it's because it won't allow said Japanese company to screw the consumer.
I'm going to be cheering for ASUS on this one, for sure.
Are consumers actually getting to the point where they buy what they need rather than the high end, of what they want?
/end_gibberish
Not if the computer industry can do anything about it!
"trdrstv, meet Windows Vista. Vista, meet..." TRDRSTV IS TRYING TO SHAKE YOUR HAND. CANCEL OR ALLOW?
"Allow."
"THE FEATURE "HANDSHAKE" IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO VISTA PREMIUM USERS. PLEASE INSTALL A TERABYTE OF RAM BEFORE UPGRADING."
Are you seriously comparing Intel Celeron based $200 laptop against Core 2 Duo based $800-1000 Sony laptop? I think with the same specs Sony (and any other brand) laptop would cost $200 or less. i think people are eager to compare apples to oranges, if the latter runs linux. Sony Vaio also runs Linux, although much faster than Eee.
I don't know about you, but I can't sit through any of the LOTR movies without taking a break in the middle - bathroom, food, etc. I for one would welcome a nice intermission in the middle :)
Oh, good, another cycle begins.
I remember being fascinated by stories of how IBM's top management was afraid of microprocessors, because they sensed from the very beginning how they were a disruptive threat to mainframes. For a while they tried to keep them under control by limiting them to specialized appliances such as word processors and the DataMaster. As I recall, the original IBM PC team was ordered to use the 8088 because they wanted to reserve the 8086 for their high-margin $10,000-and-up devices.
This is all very reminiscent of the disk drive manufacturer story in Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma." It's time for a $100 laptop, but they won't come from the companies making $1000 laptops. They'll come from elsewhere, e.g. the XO, and the mainstream will scorn them as underpowered toys, and they'll find a market among people who want underpowered toys, and as time goes on they'll get more and more powerful and start eating the $1000 laptop-makers' lunch.
Then someone will introduce a $10 laptop and the cycle will repeat...
I'm not joking about a $10 laptop. Calculators went from $4000 desktops to $300 palmtops to $5 calculators in blister packs at grocery stores (and free advertising giveaways). And it was a different set of manufacturers at each level. Electromechanical rotary calculators: Marchant and Monroe, IIRC. Electronic desktops: Monroe trying and dropping out, Wang and HP leading. Palmtops: Wang drops out without even trying, HP makes an elegant transition, TI jumps in. Cheap four-function palmtops: HP and TI are out, I'm not even sure who makes them now.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I had the unique experience to go to Japan two years ago as part of an NSF funded research project. When I got there, I was shocked to find that my 15.4" laptop was the biggest in the room. Out of 30 or so people, about a third had Apples, and the other two-thirds had Windows machines, but they were small.
It wasn't unusual to see the participants carrying their laptops through the halls with the display open, holding it one-handed by a corner, and continuing to type as they went.
While American laptops tend to be "full fat" beasts (see the 17" one at ZaReason.com, or the 21" mammoth at Dell), the Japanese have embraced smaller, more portable laptops (like the Kojinsha).
Of course, the Japanese machines weren't as underpowered as the Eee PC is, but I think the Eee PC is a very good first step in getting Americans to let go of their bigger-is-better attitude when it comes to laptops.
One last comment - my 15.4" laptop is too big to open when I fly coach. The front to back distance is such that it ends up jabbing me in the stomach. My next machine will definitely be 13" or less, no matter what.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"We are making butt loads of money on PCs right now, and I'd hate to see that come to an end."
There is no "they" there. There are many divisions to Sony, and many products. Granted, some suck, and badly. And yes, they have predatory pricing (see below). Sometimes, however, they deliver.
Consider the PD-150. This video camera is legendary, for good reason (and its even better follow-up, the PD-170). They produce great SD video, they're small, sturdy, somewhat expandable, and reliable as hell. Very tough. Controls are in a good location, other design features are balanced, etc. This is the camera that guerilla documentarians had to have, for many years. They're still in heavy use, years after being discontinued.
The other side of that is predatory. I once lost the remote control to a video deck, that had controls on it not available on the deck face controls, basic stuff like displaying timecode. Now other than a few specialized buttons, there is nothing special about this remote, it's a little black bar with infrared. Sony Canada wanted $500 freakin' dollars for a replacement... for a $15 dollar part, at best. Classic nasty company policy. Of course I bought a fully functional third party item for 1/6th the price. Video pros have a serious love-hate thing going with Sony.
Damn those pesky terrorists
"I know it threatens their business model, but the majority of home users would be fine running a Pentium 3 caliber chip with a DVD burner and a big Hard drive"
Install Vista on that pentium 3 and you will have a very different story. Except for Dell and Lenovo its nearly impossible to get a new machine without Vista. This makes a strong demand for lots of ram, good processors, and a fast hard drive.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm not sure why people think this won't work for video. Those are essentially the exact specs of Myth TV box and it works just fine. I have 2 tv tuner cards and a tvout video card (128 MB video RAM I believe). The processor is a P3 900 and it has 512 of PC133 (I think) RAM. It does just fine recording stuff to DVD, encoding the video (by the processor- not the tv tuners) and isn't ridiculously slow.
These machines will be more than enough for most people and just fine for a whole lot more, if they can get any real momentum in the market.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Try plugging in a gigabyte of RAM. It's a cheap and easy upgrade, and in my experience, most of the slowdown on PCs is because of constant swapping.
"Why buy a Eee PC when I can get a Dell cheapie of the moment with 12X the power at the same or LESS price."
What, aside from the fact that the Dell PC is tediously "normal" as compared to an Eee PC?
How about that the Dell PC is HUGE as compared to an Eee PC?
Or how about that the Dell PC is considerably HEAVIER as compared to an Eee PC?
Q: What part of portable computing do you get with a cheapie Dell laptop?
A: None of it!
Apparently, you don't quite grasp the concept of "portable computing" do you?
Oh, and with the cheap ass Dell, one doesn't have pretty girls coming up to you to chat you up about your "cute" computer.
That... alone... makes it all worth it!
My wife isn't too happy about that last part though.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
If they pre-load eeePCs with The Borg OS, what are they waiting for to do the same with GNU/Linux on "bigger" computers, namely significant availabilty of GNU/Linux pre-loaded computers...
I'm pretty disgusted by the ridiculous interpretation you guys have of Sony's remarks. Their point is that it's hard to innovate when your main goal is just making the cheapest machine, not the best. It's like if Ferrari suddenly focused on making $10k hatchbacks because that's what people can afford - their supercars, what they are known for and what people care about, would suffer immensely.
Holy SHIT are you guys quick to jump to conclusions and condemn someone when you don't understand them.
The race is not to the bottom it's a race to the top of the bottom. While the Eee PC may be cheap it's certainly not poorly made. I tried a demo model at the store and it felt quite robust. In fact there was an article a video a few days back with some guy dropping his Eee PC from chairs and tables. Eee PC set the standard and now the race is on to see who can create the best product in a narrow and low price range, not the lowest priced product.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Here's the big cluestick for Sony: What's good for the consumer is almost always bad for the producer. This is not, contrary to neo-socialists, because there is an inherent antagonism between producers and consumers. It's because the producer only exists to serve the consumer. Of course, that means that the "good" and "bad" in the quote above is relative. Don't take economic aphorisms literally. What's good for the consumer isn't detrimental to the producer, rather it means that consumers benefit more than do the producers. Sony doesn't produce laptops just because it's bored, it produces laptops because it is expecting monetary benefits from the consumers that are demanding them.
Economic progress benefits consumers by making producers constantly play catchup with their competitors. This is why so many companies go crying to government for special privileges and industry regulations (to keep out the upstart startups). But even if they manage to get a monopoly, or create a cartel, they still have to worry about consumers switching to alternatives.
The economy does not operate in stasis. The more you shake it up moribund producers, the better off we all are.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
A duo core, 40GB solid state, USB, Bluetooth, and Wifi and can run linux, I'm all for it.
1024x768 is going to be a little more difficult to fit on something this size (and keep it readable and inexpensive). However, there's enough real estate to the sides of the screen to allow for 1024x600. For most people, that'll fit the bill (the main problem with 800x600 is that websites have been assuming that everybody has XGA page width and horizontal scrolling is a bear).
The CTO of one of the companies I used to work for had a sign on his wall:
OTOH, I look at Vaio models with deep desire, but can't justify spending that money on what would be a luxury. But there's room for both in the market, I hope.
My 19yo daughter is planning to do some travelling this year to foreign lands and ws thinking she should buy a laptop. I showed her the Eee PC and asked if that was the sort of thing she had in mind. Oh YEAH! Small, cheap, Wi-Fi, functioning webcam, USB ports, Skype preloaded, web browser, e-mail, Open Office......everything. Key advantages were small and cheap. The strong Internet and video / phone features just made it perfect. She's about as mainstream as they come. SONY should be worried....and consider offering a premium version of a small, light laptop like the Eee. Not sure how you could run Windows on it, though. That would tend to push the spec out....and increase costs. Plus XP is on the way out according to Microsoft....and Vista simply can't DO what Linux can do on these wee PCs.
Only boring people are ever bored.
I have a Pentium III computer here. It runs Windows 2000, and typically has Azereus open, Winamp open, Opera open, and it runs AVG. I have it hooked up to a 1600x1200 screen. While there is no mistaking it for my Sempron 3000 or Core 2 Duo laptop, it's certainly usable. It's a 1Ghz machine with 512MB of ram. It could use a little more ram, but sadly the bios limits the machine to 512MB which could be the eventual end of this machine (I even have the 512MB sticks to put in it, but it won't boot with 1024MB).
This may be only the beginning of the race to the bottom. Just as Google has experimented with offering free wireless broadband service, I wouldn't be surprised to see offers of free sub-notebok/ net-centric class devices in the near future, sort of like the cellphone market. If you're interested, I've started a new website that focuses on the sub-notebook/ UMPC market, including the Asus Eee PC. It's also going to discuss the software side, i.e. the increasingly cloud or distributed computing based on these sub-notebook net-centric devices. Full disclosure: I have ads on there and if you click through to buy on Amazon I get a commission (but it doesn't cost you anymore). The url is backpackcomputing.googlepages.com/home
I bought a 4 year old Dell D 400 notebook last year for 220 dollars. It has a Pentium M 1.7 ghz, a gig of ram and 40 gigs of HD, it does everything I need to do on the road including web development, photoshop, etc. At home I have a 4 year old mac dual G5 which is fine even for intensive work like editing video using Final Cut pro, and creating animation using After Effects CS3. If the average consumer figures out that 4 year old computers will do 99.99% of what people need to do at home the computer industry is in real trouble.*
*Professional media people and hard core developers may need more powerful computers but that's not what I am talking about here.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
The dell weighs less than 4 pounds and I assume would cream E PC when it comes to any media intensive apps.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Don't forget those overpriced Apple machines. I'm sure Eee will be toppling them any second now. Aaaany second.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Well, it sounds like your PIII is quite a bit nicer than the one my mom is stuck using. Hers is a 550Mhz CPU for one thing, and also, it only has 256MB of RAM in it. I'm almost positive the motherboard she has only has 3 DIMM slots which take a maximum of 128MB sticks in each slot ... so 384MB is the most it can use properly. Another 128MB stick might help, but as it can't even go as far as 512MB, I'm not thinking it's worth bothering with it.
Well I'm posting this from my N810 using the little slide out keyboard; I've had it for just 1.5 weeks and I'm seriously impressed with its versatility.
:)
Primarily it was to be an ereader, with evince and fbreader, but then I discovered the gps to be quite decent, plus all the extra benfits of the OS maemo platform.
The screen has a res of 800 x 480, giving us a DPI of 220 or 225. This is way higher than normal LCDs, making it perfect for erading and more.
It really is a fantastic device. With SDict I've got wikipedia on my minisd card, maemo mapper gives me satellite imagery of my current location, adblock plus removes the crap that really slow most sites down (the device is not a quad core pumped up unit like my desktop), I can keep in touch with my family and friends on google talk/im wherever I am in the house, plus plus plus.
I will look to add e.g. an N82 for full 3G internet later. That gives me a compactish phone that can take great photos, plus lending bluetooth internet to my tablet for whenever a wifi is not around. Perfect!
These little gadgets are no replacements for full blown laptops when it comes to getting real work done, so I see them more as complementary than anything; at that I must say there's something really warm and fuzzy about having a linux powered wifi device in my pocket that is so versatile!
ISO certified == THX certified
sucking your thumb?
Ditch the Tux stuffed-animal or be prepared to spend the rest of your life alone and looking weird.
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