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Why Ultrabooks Are Falling Well Short of Intel's Targets
nk497 writes "When Paul Otellini announced Ultrabooks last year, he predicted they would grab 40% of the laptop market by this year. One analyst firm has said Ultrabooks will only make up 5% of the market this year, slashing its own sales predictions from 22m this year to 10.3m. However, IHS iSuppli said that Ultrabooks have a chance at success if manufacturers get prices down between $600 to $700 — a discount of as much as $400 on the average selling price of the devices — and they could still grab a third of the laptop market by 2016."
I'd go as far as to say MacBook Air.
If the price is the same, I'm going with the easy purchase, even if it's just to run Windows/Linux (though I suppose after-market Windows license messes the price some).
They really need good screens though, as someone that wants to actually do work, I want higher res screens, I'm perfectly content to move my face closer to see the details, I want to read full pages in the height of a monitor, I really need at least 900px of height.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I'm at the point that unless I get the same specs as apple for like half the price i will buy a Mac.
All the crap pc makers lost my trust a long time ago
I spent $1100 on a 13"Mbp last year and the closest pc counterpart was about $1000.
Apparently, it's a trademarked Intel name, because the article referenced in the summary said:
Devices such as HP's $579 Sleekbook - which runs AMD's chips, so can't be called an Ultrabook
I always thought Ultrabook was a generic term for a more powerful netbook (or a notebook in a smaller formfactor), but apparently it's Intel specific.
Running linux on apple products is no longer an easy thing to do.
Many of the products are a fucking bastard to get working well (much harder than similar PC products).
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I don't think anyone is looking forward to Windows 8 outside Microsoft HQ.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
There's a lot of netbook haters out there, and I understand why. Truth is they weren't the right thing for everyone.
I found two great niches for them - children and physically active people on the go.
First of all - children. The first netbook I every bought was one of the 7" eeePC's on that was on Woot.com with a 4GB card SSD. The SSD was so small the included OS couldn't even run its own updates out of the box. I put an ultra small version of Linux and SNES on it (came with a heftier Linux), stuck in a 32 GB SD card - instant portable movie and game machine for my daughter. A couple of years later I upgraded her to a 10" Acer similar to mine and my niece and nephew now have the 7" one. You can fit a lot of movies on a 32 GB SD card if you use the PSP or iPod preset in Handbrake.
Second niche - myself. I bike places, as often as I can. I have a small backpack that's big enough to carry my bike tools, a netbook, and some accessories/other crap I need for my commute to work or just about anywhere else. I BMX a lot and I don't like to carry a bunch of extra garbage I don't need. For coffee shop Internet use - including work responsibilities when I'm consulting - every thing I have to do on the road can be done on my 10" Acer Aspire. I've had two chain related failures on my BMXes while this thing was in my backpack, I wound up tumbling down the road both time my little Aspire took the beating better than I did. Sure a tablet fills this niche for most people, but I like a keyboard and mouse. That being said if Google does come out with a Nexus 10 I'll probably get that and use my old mini Apple bluetooth keyboard on it.
I drool over Ultrabooks - I really want one. Fact is they cost too damned much and they won't fit my physically active lifestyle - I would have to switch to a bigger backpack for more than about a 12" screen, maybe a bit bigger but I don't want to push it too much. Intel's greed - not the kind that motivated them to release Ultrabooks but the kind that made them strong arm manufactures into killing netbooks to do it - is a large part of why they aren't taking off well enough.
If they stopped their excessive manipulation and gave control back to the manufacturers they may see a surge in Ultrabook sales.
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That is correct. They have to have certain Intel processors in addition to meeting height, weight, battery and storage performance guidelines.
It's what happens when marketing people want to say "MacBook Air clone".
They really need good screens though, as someone that wants to actually do work, I want higher res screens, I'm perfectly content to move my face closer to see the details, I want to read full pages in the height of a monitor, I really need at least 900px of height.
Actually, the 13" MacBook Air does have 900px of height--it's 1440x900. Kind of interesting, because the 13" MBP is only 1280x800.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I don't understand how the crappy pc manufacturers still haven't learned that just because Apple can do it doesn't mean they can try and make a shitty copy and actually sell it.
They've keep trying.. tablets that flop, ultrabooks that flop, all-in-ones that flop..
Over and over they make shitty copies of apple products, price them the same, and then are bewildered when they don't sell.
VirtualBox, while I love the open source concept, isn't quite as generally stable as something like VMWare. Aside from that, what would be the point of having a OSX/Linux combo? Macports works well enough on OSX. Why not just save a bundle and get a standard laptop to put linux on if you don't need to run OSX software?
It's also hard to install a Yugo drivetrain in a BMW. But it doesn't really matter because, why would you want to?
Terrible analogy, as it's well understood that the guts of a Macbook aren't necessarily any higher in quality than those of many typical namebrand PC laptops.
Now, the bodyshell of a BMW compared to that of a Yugo... you might have been onto something, if you'd gone that route.
You are completely correct.
PC manufacturers are in a constant race to the bottom. They don't value their products, so neither do consumers.
> sure its not as slim or as light
Well, umm, there you go. Small and light costs money. This has been the case for the past 15 years with laptops.
This. The macbook air has a decent trackpad, keyboard and screen. You can get a decent keyboard and something close screen wise on a PC ultrabook but every trackpad I've used so far sucks.
It also looks pretty.
The PC Ultrabook is the same price. For me, its a no brainer. Even if I'm looking for a machine to run Windows on, I'd still buy a Macbook air rather than an Ultrabook PC.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
When I was shopping for an ultrabook, I found the MacBook Air was quite competitively priced. I wasn't terribly impressed with the competition either -- the Samsung Series 7, for example, is not only more expensive for the same specs, but it's made of plastic!
Not that I'm an expert, but as far as I can tell from some brief Googling, the Samsung Series 7 is:
1. Made of metal not plastic,
2. Not an ultrabook,
3. Cheaper than the Air.
Specs appear generally better than the Air since it's a "full" laptop rather than ultrabook. More memory, more pixels, faster CPU, 1TB HDD vs 128GB SSD on Air, and of course thicker and heavier.
I'm basing this largely on specs here and here.
"Running linux on apple products is no longer an easy thing to do."
I just stuck in a vanilla Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 (32-bit) on a USB flash stick on a rMBP for the first time and it booted right up. I've also used VirtualBox with Ubuntu for years (which is probably more practical/useful in most cases).
Ubuntu is certainly easier and faster to run these days on a Mac than how I remember Yellowdog Linux was. (Ahh, those were the days.)
It was one of those quick 5-minute tests, but I'm willing to reboot and check some more things for giggles. I can tell you that audio worked, trackpad worked, keyboard, WiFi hardware was recognized but needed the firmware file downloaded and copied into place (been through that before with other Broadcom WiFi stuff), video wasn't horrible VGA res but I didn't try to up it. Let me reboot and post a reply in a few! :')
A "so called" Retina Macbook Air 13"
No need to imply that the Macbook Air 13" falsely claims to have a Retina Display. No one is saying it does. The only one that has that option is the 15" MacBook Pro.
You are complaining about high-priced Apple hardware. Apple hardware used to be expensive 10 years ago, when it was still manufactured in the US. In those days, everyone complained about the high price.
Nowadays, Apple hardware is competitively priced, and people complain that it is made in China, and they would be willing to pay an extra X% if it were built in the US. In general, these people are naive, "Buy Made USA" campaigns have been a failure since the 80s. It doesn't motivate people to buy.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Back but forgot to try hardwired ethernet, oh well. The Live Ubuntu works in a pinch, I would say, but I'd recommend using something like VirtualBox or installing on partition and taking the time to fiddle to get things tweaked out. No backlight on the keyboard and can't tell you about if the video was accelerated (probably not).
This week I installed Windows 7 Pro, Office 2010 Pro Plus, and a slew of other business software on a 40GB SSD with room to spare. Amazing what you can do without porn.
This week I installed Windows 7 Pro, Office 2010 Pro Plus, and a slew of other business software on a 40GB SSD with room to spare. Amazing what being without porn can drive you to. [FTFY]
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There were lots of Windows machines sold right before Vista's launch that couldn't run it. But hey, three months life out of a computer isn't bad!
Summary: you're cherry picking.
Ordinary "netbooks" like the EeePC 1000 are quite competent computers for $275. How much computer do you need to carry around? I run Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, LTSpice and Autodesk 123D on mine. It will play video. What more do you need?