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What's The Perfect Balance For a Budget Laptop?
cheapbob writes "Recently HP officially unveiled a budget ultraportable laptop aimed to compete with the likes of Asus Eee PC. According to Compal, one of Dell's assemblers, Dell is also going to enter the budget ultra-portable market soon. All of these devices lack many of the features associated with larger-sized laptops, such as optical drives and large amounts of storage space, yet demand for them is very high. Initial reviews of these devices unsurprisingly expose them to be underpowered and lacklustre. What's the appeal? What do you think is the perfect balance of features and price point for a budget laptop?"
I commute two hours each way, by train bus and subway. Those of us who spend hours in transit every day can't even understand why someone would need to ask the question about what the appeal is.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the appeal to me is that the machines can do enough- and they do it for an affordable price. That's the key. It was not long ago - and still is the case - that anything this small and underpowered cost a lot.
The HP review says it does fine doing the basics - that's all most people need. For people who are on the move a lot, lugging around a full size laptop gets really old. People want to connect to the internet anywhere, but they don't want to carry a boat anchor to do it. These umpcs may be small but they are a lot bigger than many phones that would by the way, cost more. So there is the sweet spot. Price and size.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
There's a market for light and cheap. To high income people, $400-$500 is practically disposable. You can spend that much on an iPod touch. It's not a big deal to break it or lose it because it's not expensive.
If all you want is email or web access, a cheap ultra portable like an ASUS eee is a perfect match.
Comparing these devices to full sized laptops misses the point.
Finally, if it's cheap enough to not really force a user to chose between owning a portable and owning a desktop (or better equipped portable) and instead they can have both, then you sir have a cash machine!
Macbook air low end is what? $1799?
The low end on this HP is under $500. I'd say if it takes me an extra hour to get Suse tweaked just right on this box then my time is worth over $1300 an hour.
Even with extra ram, a hard drive and suse - I'm still going to come in a thousand or more under the comparable apple.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Oh off the top of my stoner head. Was $200? Go find an $200 UMPC now. My point stands.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Thickness and weight effect the portability. I'd never take my laptop anywhere- too big, too bulky. Carrying it around for more than the trip to the conference room was a pain, unless you wanted to lug it around in a backpack- which was also a pain.
The EEE is easily carried anywhere. You can lug it around all day and never notice the weight, and it will never be awkward to carry. It doesn't have a lot of power, but I'm not looking for a desktop replacement (I'd rather just have the desktop) or something to play video games on (I have a DS). Quite frankly, I could easily get by on less than half the power the EEE actually does have. I'm looking for something with a keyboard that I can do surfing, email, and light programming and typing on while actually out and about. Laptops just fail utterly due to the annoyance of carrying them- its just not worth the effort. EEE works nicely. My only complaint is that I wish the speakers were moved and the screen enlarged into the spot they are now.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
No we're talking ultra portable and budget. The HP 2133 is lighter than the air - and so my point stands.
I wouldn't want to work with office or photoshop on an air or the 2133 - that is not the point. I want something that size to be mobile. Suse is great for browsing, email, and if I needed to I could even handle office docs sufficiently.
I don't work in the business world - I work in the tech world and there isn't really anything I can't do, that I need to do, with a linux box.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Then you're not the market for this particular device, just as simple as that. It's like saying you don't like the direction Honda is taking with the Fit when you want to buy an SUV.
In my experience, if you're posting on internet forums about how everyone should be using your favourite operating system you're a platform snob, even if you claim you're not.
Back in the days, when we were young wee bairns, those bits of paper our elders bought stuff with were worth a lot more elsewhere in the world than they are now.
Cheap, small laptops in the next year or two will be very popular though. People will be cutting back. They're not going to buy something fancy, they'll get something that will do the job. As long as it does the full internet, does their email, has information manager functionality, they'll be happy.
It's not about CPU power in this form factor, unless you do something silly like running Vista on the device. The iPhone shows that you can have a slick, smooth interface, fully featured (um, cut and paste excepted) that works well for the user, on a mere 412MHz ARM11 CPU. I suspect that some tasks (music decoding) are offloaded to the ARM9 on another chip in the system that has acceleration for that. Oh, there's also an ARM7 in that other chip. Probably ARM7s in the wireless controller too. Intel - you really think you can compete when something like an iPhone has so many ARMs to slap you about with?
Oh, I digress for a bad joke. Anyway, it's about the software and its optimisation. Linux has a grand chance here to shine on the lesser hardware.
A used ibm x30 is 200 dollars with a 60gb hd 512ram and 1.2 ghz chip. 3lbs and an 1inch thick. In another year it will be 100 dollars. Why bother with a new computer if all you want to do with it is travel, net, and type?
*cough* Please. Maybe the few simple web 2.0 apps in the world, but the majority of applications are not simply and cleanly built. Have you tried running a powerpoint-like application via Web2.0? Native apps run MUCH cleaner. I need more cpu power to run a few 2.0 apps simultaneously than most native apps, thanks to the hoops they have to run through as a client-server application. Add in a few Flash anythings and now my system is crawling.
(I imagine many of you don't. But then the first machine I programmed for money used vacuum tubes for the DIODES.)
... One breaks? Chuck it and get another.
The same sorts of questions were being asked then. What could you possibly DO with a little home computer? They were SO underpowered compared with a mainframe.
The question was related to another one that had been asked before: "How many of these first IBM machines will we be able to sell?" "Well, 10 of them would do more arithmetic than all the accountants in the world..."
Surprise: When the price gets low enough there's a LOT of stuff you can do that you couldn't afford to do before.
So it's got a lot less processor and memory than the current top-of-the-line laptop? That puts it far ahead of the laptops - and desktops - of just a few years back. And it would run RINGS around the first Unix machine I bought for my personal use, back in the '70s. A couple megabyte or RAM? 80 Megs of hard drive? Floppies for backup? I still found PLENTY of stuff to do with it. Enough to justify the several thousands of dollars it cost - back when two hundred bux were worth about what a thousand is now.
Bring the price down to a hundred or two, for a small, light box with enough memory and processor to drive a decent display, audio, enough battery to keep it alive for a few hours, USB (or other) interface for external memory sticks / drives / cameras, and internal modem and wireless. Then you've got the bulk of what I need at a throwaway price.
I'd buy one for me, one for the wife, one for each nephew (if they don't have it already), put one in the vacation house to monitor the cameras and phone home in case of trouble, one for the townhouse to phone the vacation house when we're there ditto, one in the camping trailer, one on the boat, a spare in the trunk,
As for the vendors: Fast nickels are better than slow dimes. Get the price point down far enough and you sell SO many of 'em that you more than make it up on volume.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In a word (or 2) I'd say the perfect balance is battery life. Though this completely ignores the "ultra portable" part, but if you go for battery life it also gets you a not overpowered CPU too. I find high power CPU to be a double whammy wrt battery life. A) the CPU consumes more power and B) the fan runs more often and hence consumes more power. So... if you go for battery life ALONE you'll also get a mid-range CPU with a reasonable fan activation cycle.
Yes, Vista will have a hard time on these devices. I'd say, Microsoft picked a wrong strategy for that system. As gigahertz race is over and mobility takes over, size, power and price are becoming more important than performance (except for desktops). For many people it's enough.
The most scalable system (Linux) will be mostly used on those computers.
I know Slashdot just recently went to AJAX for the comments, but check your processor usage sometime on a really heavy Web 2.0 app. I know killing the Flash ads helps, but web surfing on a PIII class CPU ain't what it used to be.