Who Killed the Netbook?

itwbennett writes "Netbooks died the death of a thousand cuts and there were conspirators aplenty with motive, weapons and opportunity. Was the unpopularity of Linux to blame? What about Microsoft and its efforts to kill XP? Ever smarter smartphones certainly played a role, as did the rise of the App Store, and lighter full-featured notebooks. Or maybe it was just that the American consumer wasn't going to be satisfied with technology designed for third-world use. 'In late 2005, the only computer found for $100 was stolen, was dead, or was ancient enough to require Windows 95. A real and functional computer for $100 was a dream, but also made people wonder what sacrifices might need to be made to offer such a comparatively inexpensive machine,' writes Tom Henderson, in an in-depth look at what contributed to the netbook's demise." Before solving the murder mystery, it's worth considering whether the netbook is actually dead.

Comments

I don't get it

[MichaelSmith]

Shops near me have five or six netbooks on sale.

Re:I don't get it

[asdf7890]

You aren't just getting less CPU and GPU power and screen size/resolution though. You are getting a smaller lighter device with (in many, but not all, cases) better battery life.

My current netbook (N550, 1Gb RAM, 250Gb HDD) is about perfectly capable for what I do on the move (basic web browsing & email via tethering to my phone or using wireless where available, a little development, documents/spreadsheets in openoffice, some MP3s and occasionally video) while being significantly more convenient to carry than a larger device and still having a usable keyboard unlike those touch-screen things (almost perfect because I may have been better to go with the N450 based model for the better battery life claim, and I might open her up and put in an SSD in place of the spinning disc at some point in the future, but those are nit-picks rather than problems).

I suspect there is large enough market for netbooks in people like me for who the format is closer to ideal than either a bigger laptop or a tablet, for the market to survive for a while yet.

If you need/want a bigger screen or more power, and don't mind the extra size and weight (or don't mind the extra cost for one that doesn't weight a chunk more than a netbook - there are some surprisingly feather-light models at the more expensive end of the market), then yes a netbook is a bad choice for you. You probably wouldn't need to spend as much as that extra $100 either, especially if you keep an eye out for special offers. My old man is considering a 15"/3Gb/250Gb model with a reasonable CPU and GPU that is only £15 more than my netbook cost. If you are happy with a lower umpth (but still significantly faster than an Atom) CPU & GPU, 1Gb or 2Gb RAM and a 160Gb drive then there are models that are cheaper still. My netbook wouldn't be great for him, but for me the price/performance/convenience/utility balance is excellent and given how many I see in use on the train when I travel I'm guessing there are plenty of other people who also find then the best choice from what the current market offers.

tl;dr: netbooks are the best choice for a lot of people. If you are not one of those people then yes you will be better served by the full-size laptop or tablet markets. Strokes for folks and all that.

Netbooks are dead?

[DiSKiLLeR]

I see them everywhere in Australia and New Zealand.

Every computer store carries a bunch of them... I own one, and absolutely love it, and use it along side my 17" Alienware all the time.

Smartphones are great, and i've had an iPhone 3G since it came out and now an iPhone 4.... but it still can't be used for real work running real apps like a netbook.

The iPhone/iPad and other tablets are just for consuming media, not real work. Ultra portables like my netbook are a godsend when I need to be mobile around a large office or in the datacenter.

Re:I know who!

[TheRaven64]

although most ARM-based netbooks are NOT competitive with Atom in the price/performance arena

I have an ARM-based laptop. With an 800MHz Cortex A8, it is fine for general use. Compiling takes a long time, but clock for clock it compiles things at about the same speed as my Core 2 Duo (i.e. the dual-core 2.16GHz machine runs make -j2 in about 1/5th of the time that the 800MHz one runs make on a big project). The main problem is that Freescale has been really rubbish at releasing specs, so there are no accelerated drivers for the GPU or other coprocessors. The hardware has a decent 3D accelerator and can do H.264 encoding / decoding in a dedicated coprocessor, but the current software stack does all of that stuff on the ARM core, which makes it seem much slower than it should be.