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War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the cheaper-just-means-more-toys-faster dept.

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."

10 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Only one loser. by twitter · · Score: -1, Troll

    M$

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    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  2. Breaking News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll



    Rush Limbaugh is a pedophile.

  3. Oblig, by wattrlz · · Score: 0, Troll

    Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.

    1. Re:Oblig, by sm62704 · · Score: 0, Troll

      I, for one, welcome... OW! OW! STOPPIT!

      (lame humorless slashdot filter encountered. don't use so many caps. it's like shouting. really, tone it odwn in here mcgrew, this is a library not a goddamned bar)

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      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
  4. intel created this market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    intel developed the atom and platform 1st(1), has basicly created this market making it possible for this market to exist not supply a demand implied

    (1) eepc was based on its reference platform

  5. Standards...what the hell! by bogaboga · · Score: -1, Troll
    In this mininotebooks market segment, standards have been ignored. That is, one cannot grab memory from the Eee, stick it into the OLPC system and still expect the system to boot! It's pathetic, just like in the Linux world.

    Sadly, just like on the Linux front, things on this front will get worse before they get better. It's my hope that there emerges a difference as compared to the Linux world where things are well into a decade [of serious Linux use] and we still have no standards on which package manager to use, and which file, with which version should be where on the system...let alone the [version] numbering.

    By the way, I expect to be labeled troll or even worse but that is the truth.

  6. $300 Vista laptop. by inTheLoo · · Score: -1, Troll

    Pleas return it to it's rightful owner as soon as you can. Vista alone can cost more than that. OEM pricing runs out of wiggle room at $200. "Loss leaders" and other monopoly rent schemes will get them another round of $1.5 billion anti-trust fines.

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    No calls now, I'm ...
  7. christian science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Christian Science?...zzzt....bing!...rrrr....does not compute!!!!

  8. Re:OLPC Redux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Money and the need to have some to keep a project like this going.

  9. Re:It makes sense by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 0, Troll

    She will make a lot of geeks happy, opening her legs for usage of their computers....