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$200 Intel Android Laptops Are Coming
symbolset writes "Outbound Intel CEO Paul Otellini created quite a stir when mentioning that touchscreen laptops would reach a $200 price point. CNET is now reporting in an interview with Intel chief product officer Dadi Perlmutter that these touchscreen laptops will run Android on Intel Atom processors at first. 'Whether Windows 8 PCs hit that price largely depends on Microsoft, he said. "We have a good technology that enables a very cost-effective price point," Perlmutter said. The price of Windows 8 laptops "depends on how Microsoft prices Windows 8. It may be a slightly higher price point." ... Perlmutter didn't specify what the Android notebooks will look like, but it's probable they'll be convertible-type devices. He also noted that he expects the PC market to pick up in the back half of the year and heading into 2014 as new devices become available."
Hmmm... android winning... windows dying... Is it finally the year of linux on the laptop? (even if it's an intel androidy laptop)
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I thought that the sub-$300 laptops were declared dead last year and at the beginning of this year. Are people finally realizing that holding a tablet upright isn't all that it's cracked up to be?
:>)
And also that {unbundling a touchscreen laptop and selling its parts individually as a touchscreen tablet + case cover + attachable keyboard + carryalong recharger which ends up costing twice the cost of the comparable bundled together laptop in the firstplace} is untenable in a market-place where people are still interested in saving money.
PC manufacturers won't bother - the $200 price point was not appealing the first time around. There was absolutely no money to be made then, just like now. Unless Intel is shovelling parts at the OEMs for free, there's no way.
Hell, before the iPad came out, you want to know what happened to the $300 netbooks? They became $400 and $500 netbooks! The $300 ones were basically clearances or older models that haven't moved because they were tiny 7" screens or other compromises that people didn't like.
Even Chromebooks are compromised to get them to that price point, mostly by going ARM.
At this point, the question of $200 will depend on what crap they can cut in order to meet the price - most likely you'll see the return of crappy screens (ye olde 800x480), tiny RAM (2GB or so if you're lucky), and miniscule hard drives (8GB SSDs). All of which would make a Windows 8 experience pretty terrible.
A $200 retail laptop would have to have $150 tops in parts (the $50 is eaten as retailer profit, manufacturer profit, shipping and warehousing, etc). A cheap spinning rust hard drive is probably $50 for 500GB, way too expensive. 8GB of SSD storage from a thumbdrive, say, is cheap - $5. Then there's RAM, CPU, battery, and all the other pieces which quickly eat up that BOM cost.
Office doesn't run on Android.
That means both of Microsoft's cash cows will have been bypassed. They'll HAVE to respond in some way.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I don't want a touch screen. How about saving the touch screen and making a $150 laptop? The touch screen is just unwanted extra cost. I have a hard enough time keeping the screen clean without people intentionally smearing their grubby fingers across it. It's definitely not anything I want to pay extra for.
Netbooks are quite useful. I'd also like to see more ARM units with long battery life. The netbook form has more room for battery than a tablet does so there really aren't any excuses any more for not having 10 - 12 hours of battery. That's enough to get through a full day at a conference or long flight with transfers.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
...crappy screens (ye olde 800x480), tiny RAM (2GB or so if you're lucky), and miniscule hard drives (8GB SSDs)...hard drive is probably $50 for 500GB...
With a polished+supported OS and an 80GB drive, at $200 it'd work for a lot of people, either as a primary system if they're poor or a secondary/work-only one if they're not. I'm speaking firsthand from my single-core 2GHz Thinkpad T43 after finally upgrading it to 2GB of RAM today; it has a 60GB hard drive, 1024x768 14" screen, runs SimplyMepis 11 Linux (currently using 4.8G + 1G swap), and does everything I'd like it to do.
My laptop's specs give a good idea of what a manufacturer could get away with in creating a polished Linux-based laptop. The OS and most Linux programs don't take up much room, so even an 8-12G SSD (or 30GB HD to be generous) would be fine and a SD/microSD card reader would then allow the user to take on the cost of additional storage based on his/her needs. If the timing's just right, the company could take advantage of others pushing towards super-high resolutions by buying the WXGA or XGA screens at a huge discount.
I don't know the OS costs, so it's hard to comment much on them -- but there are at least a few computer repair/building services out there that sell PCs they've set up with very newbie-friendly Linux distros and have had a lot of very satisfied/repeat customers, which suggests it's possible to pull it off; seeking out those successful geeks and finding out their "secrets" might be the wisest approach. The most important thing there, I believe, would be to ensure the customers know that the computer wouldn't run Windows, so there's no confusion/shock when they go to use it (as with the netbooks a few years ago); hell, with word out now that Windows 8 is a giant clusterfuck, it shouldn't be hard to market the fact that the OS isn't Windows as a desirable thing.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
Uhmm, General Motors, Wal-Mart and pretty much all financial institutions already use Red Hat. Windows is a niche product running on about 1 billion devices. The other 100 billion devices run Linux.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Well obviously this Intel Android Laptop is not targeted at you. Everyone knows exactly who it will be targeted at, Android phone users who want to do a little bit more and need the keyboard and screen interface and of course tossed in with an Android phone contract, a pretty good and could be a well targeted sweetener, with an interface they are already accustomed to. What will be interesting is how much data storage expansion the device allows for and how readily an Android phone can be hooked up to it to transfer data and charge the phone.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I was the submitter and barely half those words were mine.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Every time I think of Microsoft hating their customers I think back to one of their old ad campaigns where they actively and blatantly made fun of their customers.
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