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.

Comments

When do we get these affordable laptops?

[Lumpy]

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.

People aren't interested in over buying anymore ?

[trdrstv]

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.

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...

Re:About dang time...

[montyzooooma]

After all, it's an appliance.

Charles Stross touched on this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/11/commoditizing_our_future.html

I think he's worried about nothing

[wamerocity]

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.

Re:I think he's worried about nothing

[DMoylan]

> First of all, all these little laptops are really cute

bullshit! it is really practical. as somebody who travels for about 4 hours every day on public transport i used to carry a 15" vaio laptop. even when i got that i was looking for a smaller laptop. over the 2 years i carried that laptop even though it was carefully packed and surrounded by padding the case was cracked and the harddrive killed by accidents while travelling by bus. even on the mac forums you will find people who want the old 12 inch macbook rather than the current 13 inch version. smaller is better if using public transport/bike/foot.

> 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,

i have never needed to edit audio or video. not even at home on my desktop. just something i have never needed to do.

> you MIGHT want to keep more than 8-16gb's worth of data on your computer, and

i can plug in my 150gb ipod as an external hd no probs. 32gb sdhc cards are available so it's only a matter of time i reckon before 64gb cards will be available. that's up there with the mac air.

> 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 could install xp on to the eee pc but as it already has firefox, thunderbird and open office 90% of what i need on the road are already there in an os that boots from cold in 25 seconds. a customer who saw my eee pc on wednesday who does powerpoint presentations on the road constantly saw that it displayed his powerpoint files and was half the size and 1/3 the weight and as he uses over head projection he can use the vga port no problems. he was in awe with the size of the power brick which was 1/4 than the usual laptop behemoth.

> 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.

well i also surf on the 3" screen on my nokia e61i with no problems so i reckon by now that i'm used to using small screens (i've been using portable devices since the psion series 3a in 94).

for me the major decider in getting the eee pc was that i could view the 1000s of pdfs i need on a portable device with out having to scroll left and right to see a single line. that it does beautifully.

i would have gotten a olpc for the battery life and reader mode but they are not available in ireland.

i'm just glad that somebody is catering for this market.

Re:Burn Wintel, burn!

[Calinous]

Funny you say that in a thread about an Intel powered laptop.
      By the way, OS/2 is officially dead.

Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony?

[electrosoccertux]

That's Sony for you: All marketing, no brains. I wouldn't say they have no brains. They consistently make high quality tech products. Blu-ray (despite being DRM crippled) will probably be the next CD. I sure hope it is. They chose to throw their engineering might behind Plasma TVs because, while they cost more, they produce a better picture (too bad the market preferred cheaper LCDs). They produced the first handheld 1080p camcorder, and it's actually high quality. Now anybody can make their own home-pro-snowboarding video. Their Vaio laptops are known, industry wide, for having, hands-down, the best displays-- AKA "X-Bright". They managed to create a great, cheap to produce for, entertainment system (PS1) and managed to duplicate that success with the PS2-- this thing has so many games I'm probably going to go buy one, even though PS3 has been out for [a while]. Now that Blu-Ray has won, I bet a lot of people will be picking up PS3s instead of other players when they get around to purchasing one.

All I'm saying is I see Sony as a superb tech producer with simply misguided management.

Re:About dang time...

[Amouth]

i have had the pleasure of using an EEE PC - they are nice.. but leave alot out.. give me one with a nice 1024x768 (atleast) screen make the SSD removeable and replace able with a 1.8in hdd (hell sell them with not SSD's too) and add internal blue tooth.. then we can start.. sure it wouldn't be 300$ at that point.. but it wouldn't be that much more - hell i would love to buy just the shell.. given it has a decent screen and a standard 1.8in drive connection.

personaly i got a dell d420 with extended battery.. i couldn't be happier.. sure it is only a Core Duo ULV at 1.06ghz.. but it is dual core. and lasts 6+ hours on battery with wifi and bt on and the screen at a nice level.. it is only alittle heavyier than the EEE PC with a lot more power and storage and over all isvery nice.. personaly i use it as a desktop replace ment.. and when i got it the base price was >2k (agree not exactly worth it) but after mixing cupons i got it for 1200$ - very well worth it..

I agree that i am sick of laptops that can't be used in the lap.. the EEE PC is cute.. and i might get one for my kid in a few years (once i have the kid that is) but untill they get alittle better specs on it.. it isn't going to kill off any good true lap usable laptops

Re:Was that a blog, or an ad for Sony?

[stm2]

"devoted to the whole 'race to the bottom' thing without explaining exactly why Sony thinks this a problem".

In early 80 terms: Sony is the TI99/4A and Asus eeePC is Commodore 64. Commodore engaged a price war with TI took TI out of the market. All micro-computers lowered the price at that time.

I would be worry if I were Sony.

Re:Hmm, maybe you're right

[Neil Jansen]

Out of interest, how do you carry your Eee around? There are a few laptop bags made for the Eee, but they look more like a lady's purse than an electronics organizer :) I don't have a bag, I just pick it up and carry it around. It goes to and from work every day, plus to any bookstores, restaurants, or other places that offer free wifi.

For the sites that do give you trouble at 800x(600|480), there's several things you can do.
1) Run Firefox in full-screen mode
2) Write a greasemonkey script for the particular site
3) Use Compiz's Shelf plugin and resize Firefox to 1024x768 (I need to figure out how to automate this with a script), then scale it down to 800x480. Composite window managers rock.
4) If you need to get some real work done, you can always connect a desktop LCD to it temporarily and do your work at 1280x1024.