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Asus N10 Review — the First Netbook For Gaming
Kim Hawley writes "Mobile Computer has a review of another new netbook from Asus. The N10 comes from Asus’ notebook division rather than its Eee PC division, and has an impressive specification. Most notable are the ExpressCard/34 slot and switchable nVidia GeForce 9300M graphics, and the video shows the N10 playing Call of Duty 4 very smoothly. Pre-orders in the US are around $600 – about the same as the Eee PC 1000. The N10 is closer to a traditional laptop than a true netbook, though – is feature-creep killing this new market already?"
It's almost like firms hate catering to the ultra low end, with its vanishingly small margins, or something...
Feature creep can hardly be said to be "killing" the netbook market, as long as cheap low end netbooks continue to be sold; but one does get the impression that Asus et al. would love for you to consider something a little more expensive. The market that toys like this will probably kill is the ultra-high-end mini notebook segment.
The high end mini notebook market has been around for years, Sony probably being the most notable. Classic netbooks are a threat, in that they skim off the people who want portability but don't need high end features but might have purchased a mini notebook because they were the only thing going; but they are too wimpy to kill the segment. However, as seems to happen a lot in technology, cheap crap is better at moving upmarket while staying cheap than premium gear is at moving downmarket while staying good. With the vast bulk of 300-400 dollar netbooks floating around, modest upgrades in spec and build quality, like the device reviewed in TFA, are still cheap and small; but are almost as good is the high end mini notebooks of old.
I'm not predicting the total doom of that segment, some people are still willing to pay a premium for the best; but I suspect that this system, and others like it, really annoy the traditional makers of high end mini notebooks.
This is something that has been extensively and well discussed in this book. Traditional companies always have a lot of difficulty trying to compete with new products that come from "below", i.e. have less features but are cheaper than the current products.
Mini-computers killed almost all of the old mainframe manufacturers, just like personal computers put the mini-computer sellers out of business. Now it's the time for the PC manufacturers to feel the heat, I expect a big restructuring of the whole industry in the next few years.
Seems like a pain to have to reboot to play games... but I guess I already do that between Debian/Windows. :-/
That's not how I'd use it. Most of the time, I have my notebook plugged into an outlet, so I'd just use the power-hungry card. I'd reboot any time I plan on using the machine away from an outlet for an extended period of time.
Let's say you have an incredibly dumb hypothesis, but you don't want to claim it. Add a question mark, and you can still say the same thing and you can pretend you're still a news organization rather than the National Enquirer.
"Obama is a Muslim" turns into "Is Obama a Muslim?"
"Palin Faked Preganancy" turns into "Did Palin Fake Her Pregnancy?"
As with all asinine journalistic methods, this was mainstreamed by Fox News, and covered hilariously by the Daily Show. It's supposed to hook people with outrageous and patently false statements to boost ratings. Instead of information you get speculation, which is worthless.
The last safe haven is NPR. Why? Public funding allows journalists to be journalists and not just the lapdogs of marketing departments. This is also why the BBC remains one of the most trusted news organizations in the world.