War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting look at the war brewing on the inexpensive laptop front. With everything from the Eee PC to the OLPC, the trend in slimming and trimming seems to be continuing. "The market segment is so new it doesn't have a name yet or even an agreed-upon set of specifications. Intel, the chipmaker, calls the category "netbooks," recognizing that much of what people do on their laptops involves going on the Net. The new machines are also being called ultra-low-cost PCs, mininotebooks, or even mobile Internet gadgets. In appearance, they have the familiar clamshell design, but they're smaller, with seven- to 10-inch screens. They offer full keyboards (albeit with smaller keys) and weigh less than three pounds. Perhaps most important, the majority cost less than $500 - some as little as $299. Intel says it expects more than 50 million of these netbooks to be sold by 2011. It's introduced a tiny, low-power processor to run them called Atom, which puts 47 million transistors on a chip about the size of a penny."

Comments

Re:I guess the answer has to be no...

[amolapacificapaloma]

no

Re:It makes sense

[DogDude]

Personally, lugging a big heavy laptop is a no-go for a lot of us.

If you're talking about modern laptops, I'd like to suggest that you talk to a doctor. No grown adult should consider a 5 lb, 10"x16" chunk of plastic either "big" or "heavy", and it shouldn't require "lugging".

Netbook?

[Yvan256]

Seriously, if all you need to do with a laptop is surf websites, then an iPod touch is better since it fits in your pocket when you're not using it. It also has email, Google Maps and YouTube. No it doesn't have a real mechanical keyboard, it doesn't have IM (yet), the screen isn't as big and the browser doesn't support Flash.

A small laptop may be more powerful and allow you to install other applications without limitations, however if you don't always carry it with you it doesn't really matter.

If it can't fit in my pocket, I'm not carrying it around "just in case".

Re:Licensing fees fail as price drops to $200.

[icebike]

> He never said one was installed on the other.

Or which fence he bought it from.

Re:Palm or PocketPC

[siwelwerd]

I have an Eee PC for work. It has GCC, Python, Emacs, and the PostgreSQL client programs installed. You say "notepad with spellcheck". I say "tiny development system that lets me telecommute from my backyard on sunny days".

But is there room for a text editor on there? ;)