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Why Netbooks Will Soon Cost $99
CWmike sends along a ComputerWorld piece which predicts that
"netbooks like the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Mini 9 and the HP 2133 Mini-Note will soon cost as little as $99. The catch? You'll need to commit to a two-year mobile broadband contract. The low cost will come courtesy of a subsidy identical to the one you already get with your cell phone. It's likely that HP is working with AT&T (they're reported to be talking), which announced a major strategic shift a couple of weeks ago that should result in AT&T stores selling nonphone gadgets that can take advantage of mobile broadband, including netbooks. What's more interesting is that low income and cheapskate buyers are starting to use iPhones as replacements or substitutes for netbook, notebook and even desktop PCs. The author's take: A very large number of people are increasingly looking to buy a single device — or, at least, subscribe to a single wireless account — for all their computing and communications needs, and at the lowest possible price."
I'd hardly call using an iPhone as a replacement or substitute for a net/note/lap/dog-book or desktop being a "cheapskate buyer".
It would be better just to buy it outright. With free wireless broadband being so easy to get, and the cost of these netbooks dropping, you are probably just better off buying it outright, and not being tied into a provider.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
In the UK (which is generally, but not always prefixed with the words "rip off") netbooks/cheap laptops have been available for free as part of contract mobile deals for quite a few months now via major retailers such as the Carphone Warehouse..
In the UK, PC World, Carphone Warehouse etc. have all competing on mobile broadband deals for months, throwing in a netbook or laptop at the same time. Just like with mobile phones you're paying a high price for finance on a £150-400 device, plus a 12-24 months broadband / 3G contract.
Separately the phone networks are also competing much harder in the last year for broadband-only deals, and SIM-only deals for calls - those seem like better value if you know what you want.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
give me a big, stable network and a reasonably high bandwidth cap (at least 20GB/month) and you've got a deal!
... at least in France:
:) !
http://www.sfr.fr/mobile/internet-ultra-portable.jspe?sfrintid=HP_NA_MEA_2
You can have an EEEPC for 99 euros + a USB key which allows to connect to the Internet using a 3G+ connection, which for a 2 years subscription costs you 30 euros/per month. Do the maths
Of course I think that he also predicted that we would eventually also be marrying them at some point. Now I think we're just living together.
Now instead of speaking to "real users" when we build something for netbooks, we need to convince a couple of "telecom marketoids"...
Watch this space for "ringtones windows skins from outerspace for netbooks" at a low 9.99.
And then when you'll go to you favority watering hole you'll find out who the nerds are because their computers do not go "" when they get a new mail.
Step One: Integrate Card in a Specialized "Mobile Laptop"
Step Two: Offer Laptop for Free w/ Two Year Service Plan
Step Three: People might begin to choose a wireless broadband service over their home network.
Extra Step: Keep charging for "extra cards" if they want their home-based setups to use the service.
BInding a single device to a 2-year contract is nuts. Especially a device as limited as a cell phone or netbook.
The iphone, for example, is very cool, but I'm just not interested at $70/month. Yet I pay more than that for my tv/phone/internet connection at home. I'm OK with that because at home I have flexibility -- I can attach as many phones and computers as I want.
I'm sticking with my pay-as-you-go, featureless cell phone until there's an expensive contract that gives me a lot more flexibility.
I am always fascinated by the twists and turns of the "convergence" of all electronic devices into "the one device that rules them all". For awhile it was looking like the video game console might be the winner. And TIVO was hot for awhile, as were set-top boxes. The PC made a run, but collapsed under their own complexity - the difficulty of trying to be all things. Those all of course both suffered from a lack of portability (notebooks were an attempt to address this) ... enter the PSP. Then smartphones popped on the scene and are probably the current best bet. But now netbooks appear, and there are some compelling reasons why they could displace cell phones as the one device everyone owns and carries. I suppose their two big problems are battery life and size. The smartphones' problems are screen size and interface (keyboard) size. Perhaps when (if) voice recognition finally works and the display-in-glasses becomes viable cell phones could overcome their limitations?
... but it lacks a decent input device, battery life and cell phone functionality.
As a self-professed gadget guy I can say that I carry 3 devices with me always: cell phone, pocket PC and thumbdrive. Sometimes I also carry a Nano if I will be listening to music for a prolonged period (battery issues with the Pocket PC and the cell phone). Here in the states, the smartphones with touchscreens and web browsers and available 3rd party applications require you to sign up for a data contract, the cost of which I cannot justify. The pocket PC has a decent camera, a good music player, a host of games and applications, WiFi, a good size screen
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I'm all about having a real web browser, email, maps, and such on the road with you. It's what made me get an iPhone after so many years of watching Windows Mobile devices do everything so crappy.
The only thing missing with the iPhone is a nice external keyboard to use when occasions arise on-the-go, where I might be at a table and have the ease of use of a keyboard for rapid typing.
Perhaps Netbooks will fill in this niche. Hell, throw in a few remote access clients and it could be a sysadmin's dream.
From a support perspective, I'd rather have a cell plan for data for a device of this type than just a cell phone that gets the somethings-on-fire call to you while you're in a restaurant or camping where there is a signal.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
How is this news? You get a... (checking local carriers) HP 550 or Toshiba S300 at *no* extra cost when you sign up for a normal 24 month mobile broadband subscription here (Sweden), and this has been common for years.
:-))
Or is this some US-specific backwardness, like paying for recieving calls? (no offense intended, but the US market really does seem to be 10 years behind the rest of the developed world, at least judging from slashdot-articles
If I could buy an iPhone and get a data plan and only a data plan with Rogers (I'm Canadian), I would. Their phone plans SUCK so I refuse to get an iPhone and am sticking with Koodo instead but, if Rogers ever pulls their heads out of their @ss or starts offering data-only plans for iPhone owners, I'll snatch one up in a second. Of course, one would surely ask why I'd want an i_Phone_ if I don't want to use the phone part but, first, the ability to have the internet in your pocket is VERY appealing and the my iPod Touch has made me realize that Apple "got it right" with their internet access. Second, even without a phone plan, one can still use the iPhone as a phone with voip programs (over wi-fi, of course). But, it's all a non-issue because I can't imagine Rogers _ever_ offering a data-only plan...
In the UK you can get a free full-sized laptop with a 12 or 18 month contract for broadband Internet.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I don't understand why I can't simply "dock" my 300MHz 64Mb RAM, 2Gb storage mobile phone into a cradle and use a normal keyboard, mouse and screen to edit documents, write emails, browse web etc.
Psion had fully featured word processors, spreadsheets and cardfile databases running on 16bit hardware a decade ago, the problem isn't the OS or hardware... All the current crop of smartphones are up to the job.
Deleted
I work in computers at Best Buy(I know, i know we suck) and we have been pushing the mobile broadband with the eeePCs for a while. They have been a big hit with those who want full computing capabilities(ex. truck drivers) as oppose to something just like an iPhone. This will be a great partnership if it works out. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner.
If mobile broadband were fast enough to watch TV online, if the bandwidth caps were high enough to connect to my firm's remote server 8 hours a day and watch 5 hours of TV shows online a week and it was less than the $30 a month I pay for internet now I would sign up in a heartbeat.
Several networks are already offering this kind of deal here in Taiwan. Some of them even giving them away for free if you take the unlimited 3G network plan combined with a 2 year contract. The unlimited 3G plan costs about 22USD at the current exchange rate which is pretty decent since you get a netbook worth close to 400 bucks retail price (they give away Asus EEE PC 901 and 1000H and such and not the cheap surf model)
Personally I think that it is a good deal.
1) MS-Windows only
2) Overpriced monthly service
3) Hardware hard-wired for only a single carrier
How wonderful, I can hardly wait.
Why don't we do this with cars next- "Get this wonderful car for only $8,000; just sign this $800 per month, 3 year contract for Exxon gas- and oh, by the way, it will only run on Exxon gas, and you are only allowed 20 gallons per month".
This seems a lot like the 1990s to me. Remember People PC. They in general did the same thing but with PC's and Dialup Internet. If you are going to sell people a laptop you realize that you will need to support the laptop not just your Internet connection. The reason why this works with cell phones is the fact that for the most part most of them are fairly locked down. While a PC is wide open and uncontrollable. Unless you get a $99 laptop and you cannot add or remove program except threw a safe channel any attempt to upgrade or change any of the setting voids all warentees and any upgrade to the network may "Brick" your laptop. Right now ISP have the liberty of saying it is a Dell/Microsoft problem. But if they sell them the preinstalled PC even at a discount, people will go to YOU for support. I remember at my Old Job a person calling for Free Tech Support for their computer just because they happened to get our promotional Mouse Pads (they didn't even buy anything from us nor did we make his computer, install or do anything with it)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... will indeed be able to get things done with a well-chosen netbook. The more intelligent among them (be their income low or relatively high) will prefer to buy their netbooks the traditional way, not as a part of a two-year service contract.
On the other hand, whoever expects to satisfy their computing needs with an iPhone or a similar device will end up dissatisfied, and doubly so when on a service contract that has to be paid for monthly from a low income.
I cannot understand why anyone would want to pay the mobile companies twice.
I currently can use my mobile when appropriate but when I need something more I use bletooth to connect my eee to my phone to use it's connection. Yes this does mean paying more on my phone contract but not as much as 2 contracts would be from what I have seen on these plans already. (I'm in the UK they have been selling like this for quite while now)
Only thing that probably sucks is when it comes time to renew my contract and get a nice shiny new phone there will be no bolt on options and I will be forced to have two contracts to make the mobile companies more money.
This is not a good thing, the only people who would needa mobile broadband only option are people without a mobile. For the rest it should just be bluetooth or whatever to the mobile phone. Yes I realise the operators in the US try to discourage you from this or ban it on most plans, but that is just bollocks, if i can use the interent on my phone whats the difference if I can connect another device? NOTHING, that's what, it just does not help them rip you off.
+----------------- | What is the question!
I think it should be "why we will get netbooks after paying 100Euro immediatly". Please avoid the word "cost". It implies somehow that you do not pay something later. At the current subsidiation rates for mobile devices by cross financing, for many devices the original "price" is not more than a token of goodwill.
If could make a single law regarding that it would be that the contract financing the mobile device should be something which is made separately from the contract for the mobile sata transfer. Somehting like: when you make the mobile phone contract, a clause is included which states that a certain fraction of the montly rate goes to an bank, which borrows you money for the purpose of buying a mobile device, which you may buy where you want and how you want. In that way everybody would *realize* that "getting a mobile phone for free" may exceed his financial capabilities.
Celphone: $60/mo -- but you can only use its data functionality with crippled browser.
Data plan that allows you to attach a computer: $60/mo more on top of that.
Worse yet, Verizon until recently didn't keep theit users from using their "1x" data service, only asking for $60/mo to get access to faster EV-DO network. Now "1x" is blocked unless, of course, the user bypasses their retarded configuration that allows them to distinguish calls from the phone itself from calls made through the phone using USB or Bluetooth connection.
If someone expects me, or any significant fraction of users, to pay $120/mo for ANY kind of celphone service, he is deluding himself.
(This response was written on XO laptop, and sent through T-Mobile wifi connection.)
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
There is a big difference between the subscription plan you buy with your mobile phone and subscription plans like this: with the mobile phone, the thing the customer is actually interested in isn't the physical phone, but the ability to make phone calls on the network, so paying the subscription fee makes sense for the consumer; the cost of the phone, which is usually indexed to the customer's desire for features/prestige/etc. is incidental to the actual thing being sold: access to the wireless network. With all these plans to sell full-fledged computers by tacking their price onto some other service, the problem is that the other service is usually incidental to customer's actual interest: the computer. If the customer doesn't really want the thing you are trying to sell, then you will have a tough time keeping them in the subscription plan.
This was tried by a number of companies in the late nineties, and all failed miserably. Apparently there are a bunch of young MBAs out there who didn't learn the lesson of the iOpener.
just a ghost in the machine.
"Free" netbooks (with mobile broadband contracts) have been around for months herearound (Austria to be specific, in Germany I've seen notebooks with lowered prices if combined with mobile contracts).
This might be news in the US, but probably only there.
yacc
So persocoms aren't far off? Sweet!
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
You can already buy them for 1€ in France: http://www.rueducommerce.fr/home/index.cfm/les1euros/page_home_1euro.html?utm_source=banniere&utm_medium=bloc&utm_campaign=les1euros-2008-10-29-blocHG
With the new "GOBI" global high-speed wireless chipset from Qualcomm, you can use any HSPA or EV-Do carrier world-wide. HP has already announced they will start using it. I can't imagine that Asus and others will not soon follow. If the netbooks are offered free with contract as seems probable, you will be able to change carriers as soon as the contract is up, or buy your way out if you don't like the carrier you signed up for initially. You will still have a usable device that you can take to a different carrier. Netbooks or smart phones with GOBI and 802.11n could be a market changer with as much impact as the first handheld cell phones.
I'm sorry, maybe a mixture of demand and my ignorance has confused me but wern't these netbooks (i'm looking at you 701) should have cost $99? Now we've got netbooks creeping past £400($600-700USD). I love these devices but my XPS 2.5Ghz Penryn, 4gig ram (yadyada)cost barely a few hundred dollars more. The size difference isn't that amazing on the new 10" models. Speaking of which, why the seriously crap resolutions? 1024*600, 800*480. My Sony U3 [that was subsiquently stolen :@], which is knocking on 5-6 years old had an 4:3 XGA resolution. Christ, my 15" laptop has a 1920x1200 screen so the technology is avalible and cheap enough to have high density screens - why not include a nice 1280*1024?
This has been the happening for a year now or something, longer time anyways.
Nothing upfront, laptop + wireless broadband (GPRS i think) 15-29euros a month, 2 year contract.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Seems like not so much a bargain. But that's just me.
This is old news everywhere. Schemes like this were tried in the United States several times in the late nineties/early 00's. They were all failures.
No, this obviously isn't the same at all. The schemes you described were to give people free or very cheap PCs in exchange for agreeing to be bombarded by advertising, using a variant of the "get the eyeballs first and then profit will somehow follow" dotcom-era mantra.
The one here is where you get a "free" PC if you agree to commit to a (paid) two year mobile broadband contract; very similar to existing deals with mobile phones and contracts. The phone isn't really free, it's effectively covered by the cost of the contract which you've agreed to pay and the company knows in advance. Nothing new and not the same thing.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Today's Woot has a new Acer net book for $289 with no subsidy. The downside - smallish three cell battery.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Its called Deflation, and its here.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
$100 Linux based MIPS laptops are much better but don't have the CPU power of the others. That is the $100 laptop I might buy.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I have Alltel. I didn't realize this (and they won't tell you this unless you ask), but you can tether some cell phones to laptops with USB cords (ebay) and use their software (makes you enter your number) to connect to Alltel's EVDO or 1xRTT (map)... Best of all, you can get an unlimited contract for $30 a month (way cheaper than buying one of those standalone things). Also (and I don't know how well this will work for others), I connected anyway and it takes time out of your anytime minutes (or night/wknd if it's those times).
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
That seems like a job for nVidia's Tegra, if they'll just allow Linux developpement already.
I'd love to see it sold as a cell phone. I'd buy it up on the spot. If it was like the demo kit, but with a slide-out keyboard (or a slide-down keypad like the LG Shine). Bluetooth and Wifi, and maybe DisplayPort out (I would prefer DVI-I or analog, without silly restrictions, but whatever) so you could hook it up to your monitor/TV and have a bluetooth keyboard/mouse so that you could use it as a full computer when necessary (maybe just for diagnostics). (oh, and SDHC is a must nvidia!)
It would also make a good ebook reader, and of course PMP. I wonder if those demo kits were equipped with touchscreens, though?
Linux version $99, Windows version $99 plus 2 year contract.
I'm ok if they add the 2 year lease on the Window version.
Windows users like leasing software, paying every year, hoping that this version fixes some of the annoyances of the last one.
Why exactly does binary only software cost money, when software that comes with source code is free?
http://shop.t-mobile.at/2151810010/1_1_3_5/10011/index.html&intTab=1
..as an alternative to those folks like me who can't get anything but dialup, and are looking forward to more competition in the wireless broadband market so it becomes more available and more affordable. Not everyone can get wired broadband in the US yet, nor is that likely to ever change, just some areas because of local geographics and population density are SOL when it comes to that, and currently, whatever the telco wireless guys have is "it" for an option, outside of satellite, which is expensive and quite limited as well.
So, the total cost over two years is 888.75 euros (1,132.80 USD). Then of course, you continue paying 34.95/mo until you decide to go with another contract. Or, outright, the 901 less contract could be had for about 364.98 euros, a little more than a straight conversion from USD at 344.38 euros (438.95 USD). I hope they aren't hard to find in the coming months. I have no need for some ridiculous contract.
I personally don't spend most of my time roaming the entire earth, so the relevant figure is what proportion of my local urban area is covered by wifi. Now even that could use a lot of work, but I'd estimate offhand that I'm able to get into a free network in about 40% of locations I've tried it at.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Adding an unlimited-internet data plan for a Treo costs $15/mo with Sprint.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
In South Africa, you can already buy an Eee PC + 3G modem and get both for free if you take out a 3G data bundle contract.
You are so right.
Where I live 50,000 a year plus benefits is not low income it's middle class.
I barely use my current cellphone and I would be getting a cut in Internet speed and bandwidth cap if I switched to a wireless account.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
I guess I don't see a huge benefit to having internet connectivity at every possible moment. I do see a benefit to being able to get online when I'm out easily, but this is solved by living in a city with free-wifi coffeeshops on every other street corner. I guess I don't see the huge advantage to being able to stand on the sidewalk on the internet a block away from the coffee shop instead of just going and sitting down.
As for on the move, depends on how you're moving. =] One of the buses I take most frequently has free wifi on the bus now. Main culprits still missing are commuter rail it seems.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There is a problem here, in that the mobile phone network operators have a very different philosophy than computer manufacturers.
Network operators are used to sell a service, and they see the device just as a necesary evil in order to sell the service. The effect of this is that most devices they sell tend to be locked-down, not transparent to the user, and stripped off of unwanted functionality (my PDA clamshell came with lots of software, for web browsing, for email, for many things, even many things I didn't really need, except the one thing I really needed most which I had to install myself and was one of the reasons for wanting a PDA in the first place: a python interpreter that I could use to hack around while waiting in the queue in the bank).
Yet computers in the epic 1980s era always included at least a programming language as a standard offering. Literally, even users who didn't know how to program had a programming language sitting in their ROM, floppies, or hard disk, because computer manufacturers (in that era, at least) were used to sell a kind of machine which is not very useful without a programming language built-in: the general programmable computer. Many machines from that era even booted up directly into a programming environment which was inseparable from the operating system.
After the heroic epoch of 1980s, PC clones dominated the market and Microsoft (but Apple also has to bear responsibility here) popularised a different philosophy: that the user is not supposed to know how to program and that they should be made to learn how to program in order to use a computer. Computer manufacturers started packaging computers with the idea that what they sell is not a computer per se but rather just a platform to run applications.
But even in the applications era it was easy to get into programming because, after all, the programming language could be installed as an application and used like any ordinary program. Therefore, the amateur tinkering (hacking, and I mean nothing bad by this word, it is the crackers who do bad things) spirit did not die, because those who felt the urge were able to find and set up a programming environment quickly.
At some point a great threat to the applications era appeared while the media and entertainment industry started moving into computing with technologies like the DVD: it was the combination of digital restrictions management (DRM) and treacherous computing (some people say "trusted", but one has to wonder how you can trust a computer that refuses to obey you). The philosophy of selling computers was threatened to turn from "selling application platforms" (after it was already shifted from the 1980s "selling general programmable computers") to the evil "selling platforms for specific/allowed applications only". This threat is still alive, but unfortunately now a second threat is appearing.
The second threat to the "selling platforms for applications" is, again, twofold: part of the threat comes from the rise of cloud computing, and another part from the entry of mobile telephony network operators into computing with such arrangements as bundling a netbook with a service plan. These developments threaten to change the philosophy of selling computers to "selling platforms for services". Computers will not be seen as application platforms anymore, not even as platforms for "trusted" applications. If this threat materialises, computers will be seen simply as devices needed to access a service, whether this service is mobile telephony, weather reports, stock market news, cloud-based word processing, video delivery, or email. Users in the future will forget the notion of application, just as most of them have forgot the notion of general programmable computer now. They will only know computers as windows (pun intented) that give them access to a service.
There is really no reason to believe that netbooks sold bundled with service plans by mobile phone network companies will resemble the netbooks we now know. Now they
Not impressed, I already had a 'free' 400 Euro HP-laptop with a two year plan, why would I want a netbook ?
New things are always on the horizon
In the Netherlands, some mobile phone network operators have been offering free PCs and laptops with their subscriptions for years.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Not $99, but $0. In Europe that is. Mobile phone companies sell (or rather give away for free) netbooks and regular notebooks equipped with HSDPA (either internal, or on a dongle). The catch -- 2 year data plan.
For example with Vodafone you can get Dell Mini 9.
Yes you can. here: http://www.celiocorp.com/
Royal Bank of Canada is giving away the Eee PC if you open an account and remain for two years. Of course, the service fees over that time will cover the wholesale cost of the unit.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada