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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."
Intel can fire sale Atom chips, but they can't achieve price parity with competing non-Windows ARM-based devices without ditching the Windows tax.
Interestingly, Google is currently selling an Acer Chromebook, using a dual-core Celeron chip and 320GB hard drive for $199 retail. It would appear the hardware would be Windows-capable if you wanted to bother. The first round of $200 netbooks flopped because they didn't change the paradigm. As Steve Jobs said in the iPad launch keynote "They're just cheap laptops". It didn't help that mainstream consumers had never heard of, and were wary of Linux. OEM's fixed this problem by adding Windows, which also required more memory, rust-based storage, a bigger battery to power it all and a larger casing to fit it all in. By the time this Windows tax was baked into the price of these second generation netbooks, the price was within spitting distance of a "real" notebook. Mainstream customers just ponied up the extra $50 to get a real laptop with a much bigger screen, decent keyboard and a DVD burner.
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!)
Because you want your computer to be independent from the cloud?
Because you want to do things which are not available on Android?
Because you just want a desktop interface on your laptop, instead of a phone interface?
Because at some point, someone might unveil a competing OS which is vastly better than what exists now, and you might want to switch your laptop to that?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.