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Does 2012 Mark the End of the Netbook?
Voline writes "Digitimes reports that Asus and Acer will not be producing netbooks in 2013, signaling the end of a product category that Asus began five years ago with its Eee PC. The Guardian looks at the rise and fall of the netbook and posits some reasons for its end. Reasons include: manufacturers shifting from Linux to Windows, causing an increase in price that brought netbooks into competition with full-on laptops that offered better specs for not much more money; the global recession beginning in 2008; and the introduction of the iPad and Android tablets."
Samsung ChromeBooks, Apple 11 inch devices. Tablets with keyboards not running windows 8 or 7 for everything else...
2010 was the end.
The problem is that they don't know how to make a netbook. I think there is a valid market for a device the size of the original Acer ZG5 netbook. The problem is that the hardware companies allowed Microsoft to define what a netbook was and not the market. I'd love something the size of my Acer ZG5 that had a quad i7 and 8GB of ram and came with linux installed but that never happened. Underpowered Atom based machines with 2GB ram at nearly the price of a dual core equiped laptop. Who wants that? No one and I can't believe they could not figure that out.
It's "its", and that's killing my eyes. As for the subject, I believe netbooks had and still have their use but they're simply not for everyone and we've got to learn that and stop bitching about it.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Netbooks filled a couple of niches that are no longer needed. Netbooks were the low cost laptop, now 17 inch quad core laptops can be had for $350-$400, your hard pressed to sell a cheaper than $250.. with such a small differance why have a distinction between network and laptop.
Netbook also filled the "small computer" market, quick and easy to carry around, Now smart phones and tablets are everywhere offer as much if not more performance than a netbook.
I love my little netbook, it meets all my needs as a portable presentation system that I got it for, but If I could find a tablet with a VGA output on it, I would replace it in a heart beat.
Posting from my Samsung Chromebook. The Netbook is dead! Long live the Netbook
but geez price much?
some of these thngs cost as much as a decent laptop and what do you get?
A sickly cpu that struggles with desktop applications
A small often bad screen
A small keyboard thats very easy to fat finger
and not all that impressive battery life (average yes, impressive no)
I bought a netbook because I figured it could do everything a tablet could do, and more.
It turned out to be frustratingly slow, largely due to Windows 7 needing too many resources, Microsoft putting ridiculous limitations on what kind of specs a netbook could have while still qualifying for Windows Starter 7, and the agonizingly slow hard drive (which was accessed far too often due to Windows 7 needing lots of RAM -- while at the same time, Microsoft demanding it not be allowed to have much RAM).
Later, I bought an iPad, with a slower CPU and less RAM ... and I love it. Even though it's just a lowly iPad 2, the user experience is wonderful. I can't help but think Microsoft is partially responsible for making the iPad a success, because Microsoft were the ones responsible for ensuring a poor netbook experience. If my netbook experience hadn't sucked, I'd never have purchased an iPad.
Wish I hadn't wasted my money on a POS netbook.
The Atom processor is, IMO, the reason for the downfall of the netbook. Not to mention the fact that 7-10" screens are barely usable. A 11.6" screen with a decent processor (at least 2.0 Ghz i3), and a usable amount of ram (at least 4 GB) and it would have made a fantastic netbook. But Atom processors are so painfully underpowered, that using the machines was painful. My netbook died and I had to temporarily use a 10 year old Pentium 4 laptop with 256 MB of RAM, and that machine was WAY more powerful than my 1.6 Ghz, 2 GB RAM netbook.
Then you had that ridiculous Windows 7 Starter edition that was extremely crippled as an operating system. Pick any Linux distro and it was far superior to Windows on netbooks by miles.
Now you have these companies who didn't market and didn't properly build netbooks trying to go the other direction with Ultrabooks, which aren't much more powerful than netbooks, but cost 4 times as much. I simply will not pay $1,000+ for a machine with a 1.5 Ghz processor and 2 GB of RAM just because it's slim and pretty.
I'm sure it still has a niche somewhere. But tablets probably ate most of the Netbook market. Laptops are better at producing content (while mobile) and tablets are better for consuming content while being more portable. A netbook sort of splits the difference, being more akin to a de-featured laptop.
Still it will have its niche. Somebody out there will still want something to serve whatever purpose they have in mind where a laptop is too much and a tablet too little. (Devices in the netbook category are probably best suited where you need a "dumb" terminal in a wireless network environment.) But the majority of the market for that kind of thing will have shrunk greatly, even if the demand hasn't gone away completely.
I can still see why some companies got out though. The market isn't completely gone, it's just not that profitable anymore.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The "netbook" was nothing more than a marketing term for hardware that was available at the turn of the millenium but with a lower pricetag. In 2001, a netbook was considered a desktop replacement and cost $2000. A netbook was nothing more than the same hardware with a different label and a bargain pricetag.
We still have slim laptops. Nothing really changed.
The MBA is just the Apple netbook.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They serve as ideal small computers in all sorts of laboratory set-ups. Use them as network line-debuggers, use them as front-end mockups - I just love them!
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
for linux, hence partly why i think asus is canning them. its not to say other manufacturers wont give the atom chipset a run in the same vein as asus, just that they might not call them a netbook anymore. They ran most distros with ease and had few driver problems (except the one they released with poulsbo 500 chipset, and even then issues were resolved in about 6-8 months.)
the market for linux probably didnt pan out the way asus figured it might, and the chromebook certainly pounded a few coffin nails in the overall concept, but thats okay. I use netbooks because of their great battery life and low cost. If i lose or break my encrypted EEEPC 901 in the airport, i hop onto ebay and pick up another used for around $100 or so. Theres also something quite liberating about having a four an a half hour flight across the country where you get to operate a laptop during the entire thing.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"Will 2013 mark the end of the redundant apostrophe"
Wish for something more likely to happen, such as honest government or world peace.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Had I anything to do with netbook manufacture and marketing, I would have made some hardware improvements.
The failure of the netbook market is due to the inflexibility and lack of vision of the vendors. Should MS Surface join this downward spiral, I will not be surprised.
Nobody cares about some underpowered turd running Windows 7 or 8 when the primary niche of netbooks, media consumption and web browsing, is done far better on an iPad or a decent Android tablet.
I purchased my first netbook ( a 1st gen EeePC) long before tablets were out. Of course I used it for consumption, but the primary purpose for me was getting work done while traveling. It was (and still is) much easier to cart around something I could put on an airplane tray table and work than it was to lug around my 15 inch laptop and end up slumping in my seat to view the screen.
A lot of other traveling workers did the same. Sure, I would never edit video or music on one, but any kind of document processing or other "office" type work could easily be done. As others here have said, I'd buy another one - the form factor suits me. I still use my Aspire One that I bought last year for most things these days.
Reading this on my Eee makes me sad. I was hoping for an upgrade soon - like the Eee 1225b perhaps for graphics improvement. But I'd like an 11.5" screen in the same package as the 10.1. Or increasing the size a little may allow a 12" with a tad wider keyboard and that's getting into laptop size range. Those laptops cost quite a bit more but IMHO should not.
The conceptual purpose of a netbook is to be an extremely portable computer with good battery life that's primarily used for web browsing and media consumption, with just enough internal storage to serve as a local cache of data from the internet. They exploded in popularity when Steve Jobs figured out that touchscreens were better input devices than keyboards for that use case.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
This isn't true at all. Netbooks were made possible by super low-power, low-cost Intel Atom CPUs. A $300 netbook had about the same power as an old laptop, but coupled it with a small screen and halfway decent battery to create a small, cheap, modern laptop with 8 hour battery life at about 3 pounds.
There was no Atom in 2000. There were CPUs about as powerful as an Atom, but they used 10 times the power.
Get either an iPad or a Surface, which ever one with a keyboard case. That's as high-end in power and build quality as any netbook ever was, and they have around nine-inch screens.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's all this 'was' and 'were'? My eee901 is still going strong as an industrial tool (running debian squeeze) that helps me diagnose/configure/monitor all sorts of BIG machines. Battery life is fine, so is screen brightness and resolution. It quite happily bounces around on top of said machines while I plug in Ethernet, USB, serial over USB, and projectors (for display and education purposes). Back at the office I'm spoiled for choice as to which method I use the transfer the stored data. Oh, and this little baby, plus mouse, various leads etc. fits nicely in a padded sandwich bag.
The end was when XP was no longer available on netbooks.
It's unfortuneate that Linux never really got much of a market on netbooks. Asus used to have it as an option on their models, however they happened to chose a really bad distribution (Xandros).
Actually, the original Eee PC (the one with the Celeron processor), was surprisingly good at editing video. I was forced to use one for this when my desktop took a dive, and I was shocked at how fast it was. It wouldn't hold up to anything more modern, but I was able to get done what I needed to without spending hundreds of hours waiting (which was what I expected before I actually tried it).
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Netbooks were made possible by super low-power, low-cost Intel Atom CPUs. A $300 netbook had about the same power as an old laptop, but coupled it with a small screen and halfway decent battery to create a small, cheap, modern laptop with 8 hour battery life at about 3 pounds.
One problem I found is a number of our faculty (we're an engineering department) purchased these, not really looking at the specs other than weight and battery life. Then when they couldn't usefully run a lot of their normal software (Matlab comes to mind), they quickly discarded them. I also saw a lot of students come to school with them... then, a month later, they were back to using their MacBooks.
It's not really the fault of the manufacturers or Intel, per se, but - people didn't really seem to grok the performance tradeoffs that came with these devices. Once that became widely known, the netbook died pretty quickly.
#DeleteChrome
As a PC Technician I got a lot of use out of my netbook, both on-site and in the shop. I liked it because it was light and easy to carry around. If you own a netbook and are not pleased with how it runs with Win 7 throw Linux Mint on there. Your boot times will increase 5x but the OS itself is a lot more responsive on the skimpy hardware.
OK, I'll give at least one netbook some love. I got a Toshiba NB205 for free a few years ago from someone who wrecked the Windows on it with a virus and was just going to toss it. Bodhi Linux runs really fast and smooth on it these days with up-to-date Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, etc. It includes a 250gb hard drive, webcam, and a tough as nails metal case. The built-in speakers suck but that's what earphones are for. I throw it in the backpack for school and travel. I figure it must be six or seven years old but it still works really well for a lightweight computer on the go. It seems to be indestructible and it still hasn't cost me a cent. Maybe if they'd built more netbooks like that...
People just don't want a computing device that can do 99% of the daily activities for under $400.
Budget ultrabooks, Chromebooks and convertible tablets are taking the netbook's place. They all offer higher profit margins and all cater far better to a specific need. Netbooks haven't died, they've just evolved in three directions.
If you want a ultra slim and light but cheap laptop with basic functionality, Chromebook, if you want a small light full featured laptop, ultrabook, if you want "pick up and use instantly", tablet.
Yup, it was partly a timing thing. MS was transitioning at the time to a next gen of their OS with more security and other overhead, ahead of even where most desktop hardware was at the time, and then this niche of older, even slower componentry became hot, and MS didn't have a good offering for it.
Glad I snatched up an XP Home based 12" netbook, before they were outlawwed at that size I guess and before XP ceased being available. I don't think I've ever seen mine get into the 2nd GB I added to it, but while my desktop runs Vista like a dream, I'd hate to try that on the portable.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
I love my $400 Lenovo X120e. The AMD E-350 chipset is fantastic. Weighs 3.2 lbs. 6-7 hours battery life. Does pretty much everything I need to do that I would do on a laptop. Before the X120e I owned an EEE which was equally fantastic.
They are abandoning the netbook market because the margins are too slim and the audience too few. Most people are information consumers that are happy with the tablet interface. The others tend to be professionals have the money for expensive powerful laptops with the netbook form factor.
Netbooks are great devices for frugal people that type a lot. If you need to do real work or play, no laptop is going to compete with a desktop.
This isn't true at all. Netbooks were made possible by super low-power, low-cost Intel Atom CPUs.
...which gave you all the actual horsepower of a mid-range Pentium 4 (benchmarks be damned). Intel had to make compromises somewhere in order to get the longevity, and performance took the biggest hit. That was GP's point: It wasn't that they were packing actual P4's with RAMBUS in there**, but that they packed in 2008-9's equivalent to that into the things.
I used an HP Mini for awhile - worked well enough for what it did (best described as a 'glorified SSH terminal and occasional WiFi detecting device'), but I damned sure wouldn't want to inflict it on someone as their main machine.
** good lord - the heat factor alone would've burned the skin right off your lap...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
racing to the bottom of every market.
That is called competition and its why Apple logo is not selling computers anymore. Apple had their best quarter in 5 years and only sold 1 in 20 computers that has since has dropped, its market share for phones has dropped from a high of 23% now down to 14.9 and tablets have hit 50% hard. Its market cap had the value of 12 Dell companies wiped off its market cap in three months.
The reality is now that tablets; smartphones are simply commodity products, and its products are neither innovative or unique. It has to compete like everybody else...and that is price [and product range] as its high mark-ups become unsustainable . Seriously a macbook air...with its low resolution screen that costs the same as 5 nexus tablets they are out of touch.
As for the touch being Unix...seriously that old chestnut, Android is too I suppose??
And lo, Nostradamus predicted this:
"In the twelfth year of the second thousand,
The race of the small thinking machines shall disappear,
Ignored by their creators, their essences recharged by their masters no longer,
Cursed to exist only in the great waste heaps and in the hands of the computer illiterate."
A tool is defined by how it's used, not what it is.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
My next purchase will be an 11" Macbook Air.
I gave serious consideration to the iPads, Nexus, et al, but
in the end I need a machine which doesn't limit what I can do.
Your seriously going to mention a $1000 next to a $200, that is completely different form factor. I bought a nexus 7 because it didn't limit me like the Air notice it now can run Ubuntu and WebOS as well as Stock Android, that does not sound limiting to me...and I can buy 5 for the price of the macbook air...no wonder people have stopped buying them.
Google this year were going to announce [pre hurricane] some good value Chromebooks, but decided to push its Nexus range with its 4,7,10 instead...and it was a good move. We know that the Chromebook next year is coming with touchscreen [and I suspect Android compatibility], so I suspect Google will not push Chrome until then, and I suspect we are going to see it more as a Google Docs device or whatever they market it as.
People forget that before netbooks appeared, the smallest regular notebooks were 12 inch models weighing nearly 4 pounds, which came at a price premium (upwards of $2K), and while smaller devices existed, they were expensive, quirky, and underpowered, yet Microsoft demanded that they only run Vista. The original eee PC obliterated the cost/weight barrier, which contributed to its extremely popularity in spite of its other shortcomings, and indicated that there was enormous latent demand for low-end mobile devices. Microsoft, demonstrating its continued cluelessness in the mobile market, took the minimal steps necessary to ensure that netbooks woudl run MS Windows, not Linux, but otherwise did nothing to promote or improve the platform, and sure enough, iPads, smartphones, and their ilk have taken over the market from the low end while pricing pressures have forced down the cost of traditional notebooks from the high end.
My Samsung netbook [Ubuntu NBR] hits the sweet spot for a full-featured "laptop", which I absolutely need when traveling, but is small and light enough that I no longer bother to check bags, even on the smallest regional jets. It will be tough finding a replacement that works as well.
I got an 11inch Acer Aspier One for use at university. It's really nice, small, and surprisingly nimble. Unlike the 10inch models I see my friends with, that chug and chop while playing Youtube videos, mine does pretty well on day-to-day stuff. I subject it to the same kind of things I would my old 850MHz PIII laptop, and it performs a little better than that, so I'm fine. Sure, it's not a screamer of a machine, but it works fine and was $270. Absolutely fantastic. If you need lots of power, you aren't going to be spending so little.
Reading Slashdot for the vulnerability announcements is like buying Playboy for the articles --A.C.
It wasn't that they were packing actual P4's with RAMBUS in there**, but that they packed in 2008-9's equivalent to that into the things.
[...]
** good lord - the heat factor alone would've burned the skin right off your lap...
About 10 years ago I had a Compaq Presario laptop that came with a desktop P4 CPU. That thing was getting so hot, I am surprised that it never caused a fire one of the few times I fell asleep and left it running on the bed.
I never knew if Speedfan was right but it showed a temperature of 90 Celsius for the CPU. With the fan spinning loudly all the time. Awesome piece of engineering for which I spent over $3k.
lucm, indeed.
I'm still running my ASUS 1000HE eeepc as my everyday computing device. I chose it because it was the first EEEPC that really was completely Linux-compatible, needing no proprietary drivers at all. It's easy to carry around, it runs fast enough for most of what I want to do, and I run Debian testing on it. I've never had a problem with its battery life, and am glad that ASUS emphasized good battery life instead of overpowering it with hyper-fast processors and graphics -- mostly unnecessary for what I do. Yes, there's still a Windows lurking in a small corner on the hard drive, used only for running Adobe Digital Editions because Adobe broke their promise to implement it for Linux once the publishing industry standardised on it.
I'm not sure I want much changed about it, except maybe a bigger hard drive. But I do use sshfs to access a bulk storage machine in my basement, and that seems to take care of that. sshfs works even when I'm in a coffee shop.
I use it mostly for writing English text and for software development. It's the machine I wrote and debugged my Pixel cup Challenge game on last summer. It contains my working monotone and git repositories and a variety of programming language implementations.
I could use a larger screen, but only if the larger screen fits into the same form factor for carrying around in my backpack. Looking at a 18-inch screen can be good, but lugging it around isn't. I do a fair amount of writing and programming in coffee shops.
If I were to have to replace it, I'd want another like it. Too bad if they're disappearing from the market.
It's wonderful little machine.
I bought an Asus Eee PC 1001PX for a couple hundred bucks mainly as an overseas travel computer. Back up pictures to it, blog, check e-mail, etc. If it gets stolen, no big loss. Currently running Peppermint (Lubuntu variant) on it quite nicely.
there was no large market for ultra-portables with no power.
"No power"? An Atom could do everything that a comparably clocked P4 could do. I use mine for lightweight Python programming. I bought a 10" because it fits in a bag that isn't an obvious "mug me" magnet.
People buying ultra-portables were used to paying $5000
Once my $300 10" laptop finally breaks, I'll be severely disappointed if I have to pay $5,000 to replace it.
There's a difference. Netbooks can run PC operating systems such as Windows and GNU/Linux, which means they can run PC applications. The vast majority of currently popular tablets can't; instead, they run a "mobile operating system" designed around all maximized windows all the time, no scripting or automation, and in many cases a walled garden.
The next question is the following: Where should these niche customers turn now that netbooks are discontinued? Tablets that come with iOS, Android, or Windows RT can't run PC applications, or at least they aren't warranted to.
32-bit (castrated) intel atom (N270?)
nvidia ion1-LE (castrated) till I gave it back it's testicles (nvidia ion LE vs. full fledged ION just a configuration issue, bios updated ) now my video playbacl is hardware accelerated
1gb ram
32-bit win7
very good keyboard could compete against Thinkpads!
it's small I take it everywhere I go, and it's fast to boot and so on...
sad that some people don't understand the term NETBOOK
As far as I can tell, the applications that I routinely run on my netbook are not available for the iPad and not available for the Surface RT. A netbook can run anything that is ported to Windows or GNU/Linux.
For even better battery life and less weight, I could carry a pad of paper and a mechanical pencil. But those don't run the applications that I want to run, and neither does an iPad or Surface RT. (I imagine that these specific apps violate the devices' monopoly app stores' respective inclusion guidelines.) My netbook does, at least until it breaks.
There's no point going for a crippled tablet OS based device and trying to turn it into a laptop
Is that supposed to be a criticism of Windows 8?
when you can just outright buy a laptop with a proper full functioning OS on instead.
Agreed. I bought a 10" laptop because I wanted a laptop that could run "a proper full functioning OS" and still fit in my existing bag.
the ambiguity as to when something stopped being a NetBook and started being a tablet
The difference between a netbook and a tablet may have something to do with two "features" not present in netbooks: 1. a walled garden (as seen in iPad, Surface RT, and Nook Tablet), and 2. a window manager that enforces a policy of all maximized windows all the time.
Perhaps the problem is that the "silent consumer drone" is the most profitable among web users.
A Chromebook will work provided that all the applications that you want to use have been rewritten as web applications with full offline support. I use my netbook for some lightweight video game development while taking public transit to and from work. I don't necessarily think the device simulators that I use for this task can run anywhere near full speed in a JavaScript interpreter on an Atom-class machine. And good luck getting them to run entirely out of HTML5 application cache and HTML5 local storage because I have 0 bars while on the bus.
The reason why this Betteridge gets quoted is so many articles, are basically "pop politics" or other [mildly] controversial opinions...on the internet we call the click bait/troll articles is what passed for real news these days. This is not one of those articles its in response to major manufactures, including the company that brought the form factor to market are simply not making them any more. The bottom line is there are still netbooks around...and their spiritual successors tablets/ultrabooks/surface, but If I has to give a one word answer is would be as resounding YES!!!
That depends. Can a Transformer run activities in overlapping windows or split the screen down the middle? Or does it enforce the same all maximized all the time window management policy that virtually every other Android device implements? And how good is it for lightweight programming?
That is the essence of a netbook: An ultra low end computer that ran a browser, an email client and maybe a text editor.
And an NES emulator (at full speed). And a text editor. And GNU Image Manipulation Program. And a 6502 assembler and a set of image conversion tools written in Python. And anything else that a Pentium 4 PC could run, as Atom was comparable in performance to a similarly clocked P4. You don't really need anything more than a netbook to develop a video game for a retro console, other than a way to test a nightly build on the actual console to make sure you aren't relying on emulator bugs. Developing a 2D game using Pygame is similarly undemanding.
I don't really know why you say Microsoft defined the netbook design
Microsoft defined what qualified as an "ultra-low-cost PC". Only ULCPCs were eligible for discounted Windows XP (during the Windows Vista era) or for Windows 7 Starter (during the Windows 7 era). Quantities of scale spread the Microsoft definition to the design of the GNU/Linux hardware, as they tended to share most if not all components.
They were just printing money by dramatically shortening an upgrade cycle that had stalled because proper computers had become fast enough.
So what should people who want a laptop the size of a 10" laptop buy now?
Netbook also filled the "small computer" market, quick and easy to carry around, Now smart phones and tablets are everywhere offer as much if not more performance than a netbook.
More performance? Bah. How many overlapping windows can your tablet's window manager show at once? Sometimes I want to have more than one document open at a time in, say, a text editor or an image editor. This use case works fine in Windows (other than RT), and it works fine in Xubuntu. Both operating systems' window managers support both the overlapping paradigm and the tiled paradigm (left half one activity, right half the other). Applications on tablets, on the other hand, are all maximized all the time.
PC users simply have more choices than that. We're not stuck with whatever singular choice one singular hardware vendor wants to ram down our throats. We have plenty of options and we can pick the one we think is right for us.
Except the article is about having lost one of these choices: the PC with a 10 inch screen.
If i lose or break my encrypted EEEPC 901 in the airport, i hop onto ebay and pick up another used for around $100 or so.
Except as the article states, netbooks are retired now. I imagine that you won't find many for $100 very long now that they've been retired. Ever seen what happens when a Beanie Babies toy is retired? Its price on eBay goes sky high.
What's all this 'was' and 'were'? My eee901 is still going strong
But once your Eee PC finally bites the dust, what will you replace it with?
They all offer higher profit margins
This is exactly the problem.
if you want a small light full featured laptop, ultrabook
So if my Dell Inspiron mini 1012 breaks, I'll have to replace it with an ultrabook. This means I'll have to pay twice to thrice as much for a new one and start carrying it in a bag that identifies it as a theft target instead of in a generic messenger bag.
A tool that is cryptographically locked down is defined by how its manufacturer allows it to be used. Tablets are cryptographically locked down.
I love my netbook(s). I think vendors just got scared once they realized that people could do most everything they needed with a sub-$200 device, that was competing with tablets.
What a load of nonsense, Stop quoting Apple propaganda of why they are allowed to overcharge their customers because of good old fashioned branding its a failing stratergy in a maturing market...ask its ex-shareholders, when other companies compete of price; innovation and diverse product lines.
The sad fact is the companies who cripples the netbook by limiting their specifications was Intel and Microsoft [ironically as Microsoft produces a spiritual successor to the netbook the Surface...and shit on its OEMs saying they weren't innovative enough. Please!]
The Irony of your post is [read the damn header] its about ASUS dropping the netbook, yet is famous for redefining the tablet market with killer hardware on lower margins...aiming for mass market adoption....that's right the Nexus 7.
Search Alibaba for "Netbook": "185,881 Product(s) from 2,239 Supplier(s)". You can buy individual items. "Hot sell Mini Notebook 10.2 inch laptop Atom D425 Processor 1.8G Memory 1GB HDD 160G netbook wifi camera - US $217.00 / piece ", from Shenzhen Lihaicheng Tech Co., Ltd. Many sellers will ship directly to the US. Quality may be iffy, but there are seller reputations, and it's probably no worse than eBay.
Some of these are probably the same machines the big names were selling.
The Netbook category was created by Asus when they made a machine that was smaller than typical, lower priced than typical, had a longer battery life than typical, had solid state storage (which was not typical), and ran Linux. The EEE-1000 (with no letter behind it) was just a fantastic machine for the money and was probably the last true Netbook.
The Netbook died the moment the manufacturers added hard drives and replaced Linux with MS-Windows. Because at that point, they were no longer Netbooks, they were just crippled, slow, MS-Windows notebooks. They lost what made them different. The MS-Windows slowed the machine down to being unusable. It also jacked the price up a bit (and with the low prices, even a bit was significant). The hard drive made it fragile and less battery friendly and even slower still.
I was waiting FOR YEARS for a replacement for the EEE-1000; a true Netbook without the MS-Windows tax, and with a bump of specs to match the year (more RAM, more CPU, larger solid state storage, more res, but similar price and same form-factor and battery life). It never came.
Oh well.
Apparently, you've never tried fucking a sheep before. Don't knock it until you try it.
Some chromebooks allow you to install another OS on them and dual boot.
Doesn't installing any operating system other than Google Chrome OS void the warranty on the hardware?
I would not want it as I view it as dumb terminal network computer of old that uses Google Docs and an internet connection for everything.
Wouldn't it make more sense to use Android? Android has the apps and rumor is Office is coming to it as well as iOS. Google still gets to monitor your keystrokes and search engine results so there is no loss of revenue.
It seems reminiscent of Microsoft in the early 1990s. NT or Win 3.x/95? MS couldn't decide. Eventually with NT 4 the decisions was to run win 9x apps on it and move everyone to the new kernel which finally happened in XP. THe most successful OS to date and still is today.
I think Google shock kick ChromeOS. We do not want it.
http://saveie6.com/
Your engineering faculty couldn't spec out a computer?
Would you mind telling us what they've built recently so we can stay away from it?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
and replaced Linux with MS-Windows. Because at that point, they were no longer Netbooks, they were just crippled, slow, MS-Windows notebooks.
Yup, it was Windows CE all over again *shudders*
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
ok, but for some people it fits their needs perfectly. I'm fine with it because it lets you root it without too much difficulty.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You'd be surprised how insular faculty members' knowledge can be. Plus they often tend to be rather removed from the real world. They're generally not dealing with stuff that has real-world applications today; they're trying to work on stuff that'll be practical a decade or more down the road.
#DeleteChrome
Ditto. I am old school. I still want to feel physical keys. I can't get into those touch screens/tablets. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
All of the IP KVMs that I've used in the last seven or eight years (admittedly not a large sampling) used a Java-enabled browser.
Which tablets are not. To view a Java applet, you need at least a netbook, but netbooks are discontinued now.
"As for the touch being Unix..."
You mean the Macbook Air the GP said runs UNIX? Yeah, OSX is certified UNIX 3, the highest level of UNIX compliance. After spending fifteen years using nothing but Linux, I recently was given a Mac desktop. From the command line, the Mac feels entirely comfortable. In some ways it's more Linux-like than FreeBSD. There are a number of things to not like about Apple. Mainly the fact that an Apple machine is always THEIR machine, not the purchaser's. Apple is in charge, not the consumer. It is, however, absolutely UNIX. I even have admit it's done very "well", for Jobs' definition of what it should be.
They basically arrived stillborn anyway. I have one, they are wonderful machines, but you really have to handroll your own OS to get them working properly. A properly functioning netbook is a beautiful thing - they are tough and robust and just work. But the OS that shipped was just absurdly bad. It was a pain for me to get this thing working right - and for most of the market that meant they were just worthless.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Netbooks and tablets, while seeming to be similar, are really designed for very different uses. A tablet is designed to conusme media and it's really good for that. A netbook is essentially a scaled-down laptop that allows you to produce things as well as consume them.
I have an Acer netbook, and a Nexus 7. The tablet is great as a "carry it around with me" computing device that lets me browse the internet, keep up with my email, write short replies, etc. It's also great for watching videos, and even reading books. Even better, it does all this and will last 8 hours or more on a single charge. This is fantastic if you're spending a day in an airport and on planes. It's an entertainment device that also allows for some productivity. And sure, I can do much of this on my small andriod phone, having the larger screen makes it enjoyable to use.
The netbook, on the other hand, is a lightweight and portable working computer. It's great if you have some place to sit down and actually use it. But it's not so handy when you're standing on a train or trying to look something up quickly. I use mine for school and have done quite a bit of programming on it. I put Linux Mint on it, and frankly, I think it IS sexy, especially when I can run Virtualbox to do whatever windows things I need to do.
If I had to give up one, I'd grudgingly give up the tablet. Though I'd strongly consider giving up the netbook and my larger laptop (home computer) for a smaller but more powerful laptop and keep the tablet.
It's not a matter of people being sheep, but wanting to do different things. A friend of mine was complaining for quite a while that her old laptop was slow and wanted me to work on it. She got a larger android phone and stopped talking about her laptop. Pretty much everything she needed to do computer-wise was on her phone - and for her, a netbook wouldn't fit her needs as well as her min-tablet phone.
I'd say that there are very few people for whom ChromeBooks fits their needs "perfectly". It does show promise, but it's too incongruent with how most people want to use their computers and devices.
Unless Google does something more consumer-oriented with their ChromeBooks, like combining it with Android and opening up a vast swath of apps for it (more than just the Chrome apps that are available now), I think the ChromeBook's biggest potential in the near term is as something of an enterprise cloud-based dumb terminal. Google would still have to beef up its Google Docs and related services, but I can see it as appealing to just hand these out to employees vs full-featured PCs with all the Office apps and VPN/Exchange CALs/etc. to keep them running.
But as a consumer, I can't see why I'd want a ChromeBook over either a MacBook Air or iPad (for portability) or even just a regular PC or Mac notebook. Price? It just seems that, for now, you give up way too much to justify not spending just a little bit more for, at the very least, a $400 HP.
But as a consumer, I can't see why I'd want a ChromeBook over either a MacBook Air or iPad (for portability) or even just a regular PC or Mac notebook.
Price and a keyboard. For some people, the extra $200 is significant cash.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I looked and found a number of tablets that will run full Linux. And with Windows 8, a number of "tablets" run full Windows. So I understand the distinction you are trying to make, but it doesn't seem to be one others make (unless they are facetiously ignoring the tablets will full operating systems on them.
Maybe I'm just too old. I remember the first tablets. They were laptops with touch screens, running full OSs. That's where the name "tablet" came from.
Learn to love Alaska
I prefer a netbook over a tablet for a wide variety of reasons. One, I don't like Apple all that much and find their products fairly overpriced for what you get. I have a small Android tablet I tend to use more as a toy, as I don't see it being useful for productivity. And since tablets have no keyboard to speak of (yes, I know you can get a USB keyboard for them) I don't ever see me using a tablet for anything other than the occasional eBook or game.
Now, my Samsung netbook has been upgraded with extra memory, a solid state drive, has a SD slot for still more memory storage, runs Windows 7 Home, and I have absolutely no qualms about it. It does what I want, how I want it, and does so far more efficiently than a smartphone or a tablet would. Mine is about 5 years old now, and I love it for what it provides, a good working environment that's small and extremely portable. And the battery life is around 6-8 hours, even with the screen set to a moderately high brightness level.
Now I realize that folks have bought into the tablet craze (and that's really what it is, a craze in my view) just as they've bought into the smartphone craze. But it's what people want... it's not what I want, nor would I want it pushed on me. I'll take a netbook that's easily configured and upgradable over a tablet that's a fixed device any day.
Yup, it was Windows CE all over again *winces*
FTFY
Yeah but I can get a cheap laptop for $450. I can even still use Google Docs if I were computer illiterate with IE. Chrome browser is available on it too with Windows.
So why bother with such a limited device?
http://saveie6.com/
Silly slashdotter, he meant what he could use the device for. Installing some random OS does not constitute doing something (ok, for you and me it does, not for the op)
You do understand that installing the OS is not the end objective, most people actually run Applications from within an OS :)
I think what will completely replace netbooks are lower-cost Windows 8 tablets with optional keyboards running a new, lower-power version of the Intel Core i3 CPU along with a new, very efficient Intel graphics chipset. These will start appearing once SSD drives become less expensive in the next few years.
How about Toshiba with the Libretto range?
Fran
:):):)
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So why bother with such a limited device?
Why on earth would you pay an extra $250 for capabilities you don't need? You really should consider improving your money management skills......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After playing with one frankly if they put me in charge of ChromeOS I could kick the living snot out of Windows in less than 2 years, as it really only has 2 major problems that need fixing. 1.- it needs to lose requiring a 24/7 connection, Google has partially fixed this with Google drive but its still not enough, it needs the ability like Android to run anything on the system with ZERO net access. There are just too many places where free Wifi isn't available to make everything cloud based yet. 2.- Lack of support for popular Windows legacy apps, this could be fixed by Google buying Crossover and bundling that into ChromeOS, with some Google engineers helping out I'm sure you could make Crossover "clicky clicky" simple and it already supports most of the major programs and games so it really wouldn't be hard to do.
If Google did that they could still get all the search data while at the same time taking a large portion of the low end. Frankly MSFT is committing suicide under Ballmer who has made it clear he intends to fuck the OEMs and make MSFT into an ersatz Apple by having them make all their own (overpriced) hardware including phones, desktops, and laptops. Just as the gang of nine got together back in the day and fucked IBM who were trying to do the same thing with OS/2 and the MCA bus so too could Google snatch the OEMs away from MSFT. Its clear the OEMs are NOT happy with MSFT price gouging and using the money they pay to try to squeeze them out of the market and since Google is really more interested in the search data than building hardware this would be a perfect time to swoop in and take the OEMs away from MSFT.
I could easily see a year or so from now the OEMs having tons of different model ChromeBooks and ChromeTops in all different kinds of forms and prices while having a couple of overpriced MSFT Windows units in the corner, it really wouldn't be hard to do as I'd say a good 70%+ of what your average PC user does is net related anyway. A true offline mode would take care of when they are out and no network is available, and Crossover would let them have those one or two "must have" Windows programs. Hell Google could get Valve to port Steam to the ChromeOS and have it work with Crossover to support more and more legacy DirectX games, for the first time in years I could see a day when Windows is nothing but a little niche on the computing landscape.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yes, I would love to find a 9" ultrabook. I don't mind the price being in Ultrabook range if it gave you the decent CPU, SSD and battery life of an Ultrabook, in a size that you can actually carry everywhere...
Advanced users are users too!
$200 is significant, but the set of people for whom it is significant to the point of being a deal-breaker who are also in the market for something like the ChromeBook is close to nil. And for those people? Kindle Fire (mistakenly) or Nexus 7 (more properly) will suit them much better, and be cheaper as well! Or even just finding a used notebook on Craigslist, or spend $50 more and get a discount notebook at Best Buy.
The main problem with the Chromebook is that it's not useful. If you are good with just a Chrome browser as essentially a web terminal, then you are probably good with an Android tablet that runs the Chrome browser plus all the apps available for Android.
And if you have even just a small amount of additional money, so many more options open up, including iPads and proper notebooks that do everything a ChromeBook can do and more.
All that said, I do like the idea of them, and like I said before, I see a lot of potential in them. Google is strangely able to keep at things even if they aren't very well received by the market (like Android) until they grow to fit a real demand in the market (like Android). Though I do think it will take a healthy app ecosystem to really kick it into gear, and although Chrome has some "apps", somehow finding a way to open up the greater Android app ecosystem would really turn the ChromeBook from an interesting concept to something truly useful with a much broader appeal.
Those that can run windows are x86 based, and tend to be hugely more expensive, heavier and with inferior battery life to the ARM based tablets...
ARM based windows cannot really be called "full windows" because it cannot run 99% of the applications generally associated with windows, whereas ARM based linux can run 99% of linux applications without issues.
That said, most existing linux/windows apps are not designed for touchscreen input, so while they might work they won't be terribly usable.
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Good for you, but they are 3-4x the price of a netbook. They're an entirely different beast.
I'm glad that you're happy to spend that much on your mini-laptop, but I'm not. Netbooks filled my niche for a real computer to take with me when I couldn't take my proper computer with me. For £800, I'd expect a proper computer in its own right; and for me that involves a bigger screen for one.
Oh there was a year of it, it just sucked. Xandros was an abomination; I lost a lot of faith in Asus that they were willing to ship products in such a shoddy state when such great alternatives were easily and freely available. I whipped Xandros off mine after a week and replaced it with an Ubuntu Netbook Remix variant, and it was fantastic.
I can only presume there was corporate dodgy dealings going on between Asus and Xandros to make that happen. And I'm certain corporate dodgy dealing was what led to Windows becoming standard and the form factor creeping.
notebooks - sub par computers, bad keyboards, low quality displays. And now with the tablets, the better paying customers stay way from them. I guess they want to kill the notebook because, frankly, they are the alternative of the desktop for the poor.
The average user doesn't program shit.
I agree with you that the average user does not use a traditional programming language. But why can't products designed for users who are not identical to the average user exist?
Real notebooks are cheaper than ever (by real, I mean with an adequate processor - I see a 15" on costco now for $400, sure there are even cheaper ones)
Which manufacturer makes a 10" model with what you call an adequate processor? Because if I were to start carrying a 15", I'd have to start carrying an obvious "laptop bag", and that would be an invitation to have it stolen from me.
Netbooks used to cost $300, including the keyboard. Which of these "tablets that will run full Linux" without voiding the hardware warranty is near the same price range, including the keyboard accessory if it's not a convertible?
If setup properly, you only ever need to physically enter the server room to perform hardware upgrades/replacement... Day to day maintenance should always be done from outside, wether via IP KVM or much better via serial console.
Or to move the IP KVM device or serial console device from one server to another. If "setup properly" includes a separate IP KVM device or serial console device per server, that's something that a lot of operators of server rooms apparently can't afford, given my experience with at least one dedicated server provider.
smaller tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 have beat [$300 netbooks] on price.
Do tablets still win on price when you include the price of a Bluetooth keyboard?
I'd rather either have a proper Linux PC (desktop or notebook)
I chose a 10" laptop because it fits in bags that aren't obvious "steal this" laptop bags.
or go with something like a Chromebook or Android tablet for portable geekery.
Chromebook is OK if all the applications you ever use are web applications with full offline support. Otherwise, good luck rewriting all your applications in JavaScript and hoping that they run at anywhere near full speed. As for paint programs, what should replace GIMP for, say, pixel art? The one I tried didn't even have copy and paste, the ability to create a colormap for an indexed-color image, or the ability to open multiple documents.
Isn't that exactly how the Surface RT is positioned? But to be fair, I keep a netbook on the desk next to my laptop to do things I need it to do - run Pandora w/o skipping when I run a browser and have to turn Java script on and off, run MS Office, download YouTube videos. But the biggest obstacle to me is the keyboard. I will never get used to the too-small keyboard no matter how much I use it. Which I why I have a USB keyboard plugged in. A mouse that came free with the Targus case just crapped out though; I should get a trackball or something. And the keyboard problem is never going to get solved with any tablet, they're just too small.
Back in the bad old days IBM had the Thinkpad 701 with the fold out butterfly keyboard which oddly they never took forward or developed or maintained. It was a fantastic solution to this problem. Tablet makers have to make a fold out detachable keyboard that's no larger than the form factor of the tablet itself and it has to be wireless/connector-less unless they mount all the full sized physical ports on THAT and use the keyboard as a dock with a docking port to the tablet proper.
That's what netbooks offered and still do. Perfect for touching up a presentation on a long flight without having to double the amount of carry-on with a fracking laptop case/bag. Macbook Air provides precisely that functionality but at $1200US compared to the average netbook's $200-300. Tablets? They are entertainment, _not_ working machines. MS Surface might seem like a good working tablet, but it's priced as a laptop; MS successfully co-opting both the network and tablet markets while extorting an unreasonable price. Once again, big companies hijacking affordable computing from users.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Netbooks and tablets, while seeming to be similar, are really designed for very different uses. A tablet is designed to conusme media and it's really good for that. A netbook is essentially a scaled-down laptop that allows you to produce things as well as consume them.
I don't understand why so many people try to make everything a one size fits all device. A device is either an amazing success, or it's a complete failure. Desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets, smartphones: no one device is the best, they're good at different things, but people have problems with niche devices.
Certainly tablets seem to be good for couch surfing, and along with smartphones, both can be pulled out and used quickly, while a laptop or netbook has more inherent "setup" involved. A smartphone can be used on a bus to watch videos, or snap a quick picture, a tablet would be better waiting around an airport departure lounge surfing, or watching videos.
A netbook has value as a mini, cheap, PC that can run PC operating systems, and applications. I've used mine to run proprietary software to interface with industrial equipment. Don't need a lot of CPU power, but small size is nice. It can run required software for university courses.
I don't own a tablet, but when traveling I use my phone for quick email checks, or quickly look something up, but at the hotel I like to setup my netbook, where I can copy photos off of my digital camera onto the large hard drive. If I need to look at something with a "real" PC browser, I can.
I just installed a 1TB hard drive in my uncle's netbook which he uses when traveling. He likes being able to have all his old photos so he can look back for reference. He likes having a keyboard to type emails when he gets to the hotel. He likes having all his PC-based car service manuals in case he has a breakdown. He likes having an offline version of wikipedia for transcontinental flights. But yes he likes his smart phone to do a quick email check.
Likewise with cameras, my phone has an okay camera. It's slow to use, and the quality isn't the best, but unlike my point and shoot, I always have it on me, and it's a lot quicker to snap a picture and email it to someone. That doesn't mean point and shoots are a failure. When traveling, or taking family photos, I'm going to grab the better camera. Each device has strengths and weaknesses.
Check your REAL history. Microsoft set maximum specs for netbooks that were allowed to install cheap XP starter licenses.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/22/microsoft-publishes-maximum-windows-7-netbooks-specs/
XP/Vista/Windows 7 netbook specs
Manufacturers jumped all over the chance to sell netbooks with real Windows to customers afraid of Linux. Economies of scale prevented manufactures from producing better "Linux only" low cost netbooks. They raised prices for "Windows based" netbooks just at the time regular notebook prices were plummeting. The price/performance delta shrunk and you were left with a single core Atom, low resolution, 1GB - upgradable to 2GB - netbooks, versus a full blown notebook for $100 more.
Microsoft killed the low cost netbook in a calculated move to kill Linux on netbooks. Ultrabooks became the only remaining (high cost) viable alternative for lightweight, low power, ultra portable computers. It is funny that Chromebook, with the exception of size, is now becoming the "new" netbook that the old netbook could have been if Microsoft had not sabotaged the market.
Most console servers have a significant number of ports, so there's no need for one per server... Serial hasn't changed in years so the servers would likely have been replaced while keeping the same serial console devices. Also most servers have built in lights out management cards these days anyway.
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I am sort of torn between getting a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad and getting a cheap chrome book.
With the cost difference being only $150 or so having yet another device to test websites with has me sort of leaning that way. (and the escape key)
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Atom is really, really poor at running Flash, which is what Joe Average cares of. If YouTube and web games don't work on your new netbook, and Flash banners grind your browser to a halt, that's a major problem for consumers. The anecdotal evidence I have of people purchasing netbooks, the primary decision point in getting one was the price. I haven't personally talked to a single netbook owner who was happy about the device's performance more than a week after they got it, so you can probably consider yourself to be in a minority, with a specific primary use-case that does work on the device. For most other people, netbooks just didn't perform well enough.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
He didn't say "same power as." He said "same hardware as." Beyond that, there's a lot more netbook hardware than just the CPU. The form factor didn't exist at all in 2000, not even remotely.
Atom is really, really poor at running Flash, which is what Joe Average cares of.
And Android tablets, which are the commonly suggested replacement for netbooks, are even worse at running Flash because Adobe refuses to port Flash Player to Android 4.1 or later. They can run YouTube, but half the videos are blocked on mobile by an owner of copyright.
If YouTube and web games don't work on your new netbook
YouTube works just fine on my Dell Inspiron mini 1012 running Xubuntu.
and Flash banners grind your browser to a halt
The solution to that is Flashblock. This is an extension for Firefox that makes SWF click-to-play, with YouTube, Newgrounds, and a few other select sites whitelisted.
so you can probably consider yourself to be in a minority, with a specific primary use-case that does work on the device.
What do you recommend for other members of my minority once our existing netbooks finally bite the dust?
If a P4 had "no power", then why did the P4 sell during the P4 era?
Considering the top selling laptop on Amazon is the Chromebook, which is basically a cellphone with larger screen and attached keyboard, it appears there is still a market for shitty low powered laptopish kinda computers. However I think that market will now be dominated by Windows RT.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Once enough blogs publish success stories about replacing Chrome OS with an operating system that can show multiple windows and run code in languages other than JavaScript, such as Xubuntu, then I'll admit that a Chromebook can replace a netbook. Is this the case yet?