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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...
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.
I agree. The netbook was nothing but a quick bait and switch by manufacturers that wanted to make a quick buck off of the recession. The image of a business person using a netbook is just that. Users of netbooks were people with little money looking for a new toy, and nothing more.
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I don't think that's a fair assessment. I'm a system administrator and bought one of these to help around the server room. It's much more than a cheap toy.
Yes, but you have to realize that sysadmins don't represent a large segment of the market.
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I bought a netbook because I wanted a really small laptop, and netbooks were the only ones I could find which had a nine inch screen. The problem was that everyone focused on making it as cheap as possible, and as a consequence used components with very low performance. I wouldn't mind a modern laptop with good performance at that size.
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 not trying to say that data centers aren't a large industry in and of themselves, but using a consumer level netbook in one doesn't necessarily make usage of netbooks by system admins a large chunk of their sales.
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I agree. The netbook was nothing but a quick bait and switch by manufacturers that wanted to make a quick buck off of the recession. The image of a business person using a netbook is just that. Users of netbooks were people with little money looking for a new toy, and nothing more.
They aren't a desktop replacement. Normal laptops can be, but netbooks aren't (although I have stretched one to it, with a 24" monitor and keyboard.... worked alright, slightly underpowered but not terribly so for simple work). They never were intended to be. They were intended to be super light-weight, super small, super mobile, and have long battery life with decent specs. For portable web use, nothing was better. Tablets? Sure, if you never intend to type anything and don't mind cradling it uncomfortably in your arms, plus paying quite a lot more for similar or less power.
What killed the netbook was the manufacturers. They wanted higher margins, which meant shoving in more features and power (mostly completely unnecessary). That kills the battery life, raises cost, and completely destroys the whole point of the device. But the original netbooks, for simple web usage, email browsing, and light document editing? Incredibly useful.
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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!
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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.
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.
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The funny thing is I still take a lot of my work meeting notes on a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 that was given to me last year. I constantly get people asking me what it is, where to get one, etc. Its keyboard isn't amazing, but it beats a lot of the add-on keyboards people are using (or trying to use) with their tablets, plus it's a lot more durable. It's also running a full Linux setup which I've used for some light development, writing sd cards for a couple embedded projects, and had no trouble with a lot of USB peripherals.
It may not be as cool as a lot of new tablets, and its battery life may not be up to what it was when it was new, but it's been a great thing for me. I have a 7" Android tablet too and haven't found a decent keyboard for it yet that isn't more than I want to pay. But the tablet does do media a lot better, Youtube and Netflix and such. So I tend to keep the netbook for work and the tablet for lying in bed watching something on Netflix. /csb
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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??
Yes. Typing any text at all on a touchscreen is infuriating. Anything without a hardware keyboard is effectively a read-only device; unless one is a silent consumer drone, the web is a read/write medium.
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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.
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'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.
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.
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
Perhaps the problem is that the "silent consumer drone" is the most profitable among web users.
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?
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?
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.
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!
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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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 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.
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.
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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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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.