Comments on: Resolved: There Are No Such Things as Netbooks

By: PC Pitstop’s “Top Loved Netbooks” | Technologizer

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:01:57 +0000

[...] People are buying scads of the pint-sized laptops known as netbooks these days, but there’s some controversy over whether they’re happy with the machines they get. Here’s some pro-netbook fodder: My friends at PC Pitstop scan millions of Windows PCs as [...]

By: JDoors

JDoors — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:37:00 +0000

@Charlotte: “I used to work for ASUS and we were watching carefully in the channel to make sure no one uses any terms to describe Eee PC as “small notebooks” or “mini notebooks”. Otherwise, the consumers would expect that an Eee PC to perform as a normal notebook. That was ASUS’s effort in market segmentation.”

Harry, that says (to me, anyway): There IS such a thing as a “netbook.” It’s a notebook, sure, but with limited functionality compared to other notebooks. To use your example; a Ford Focus is a car, sure, but with limited functionality compared to other cars such as a Lincoln Continental.

They are all functionally different in many ways that will be important to entirely different consumer targets. You wouldn’t “market” a netbook to the notebook consumer, just as you wouldn’t market the Focus to the Continental consumer.

By: links for 2009-06-24 | Señorita Murrell

links for 2009-06-24 | Señorita Murrell — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:06:46 +0000

[...] Resolved: There Are No Such Things as Netbooks | Technologizer (tags: netbooks article) [...]

By: KM.

KM. — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:16:09 +0000

I bought my Eee PC last year and I got exactly what I wanted – a cheap portable Internet device. I’m perfectly happy with it.

By: Netbooks are nothing but basic notebooks. Period. Says NPD | TechFever Network | The Hot Tech News and Gadget Network

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:49:07 +0000

[...] [Link] [via] Written by TechFever.NET • Filed Under ALL NEWS, NEWS • [...]

By: HP’s Mini 5101: Netbook Deluxe, With All the Trimmings | Technologizer

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:02:12 +0000

[...] all: News The PC industry may continue to be a tad uneasy with the popularity of netbooks, but there’s no question that the little guys are selling well–and not just to folks on [...]

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:10:38 +0000

@ drew you’re right; it is a marketing gimmick. I used to work for ASUS and we were watching carefully in the channel to make sure no one uses any terms to describe Eee PC as “small notebooks” or “mini notebooks”. Otherwise, the consumers would expect that an Eee PC to perform as a normal notebook. That was ASUS’s effort in market segmentation.

The line between the netbooks and notebooks is blurring, though. The difference between a 10″ Eee PC + normal hard drive and ASUS N10 (categorized as a “notebook) is minimal (only in graphics performance, in fact). Such is the trend of the market.

By: Tom Reestman

Tom Reestman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:27:49 +0000

I’ve always considered netbooks the “cheap” cheap laptop.

You’re right about them making Microsoft nervous. Microsoft’s new maximum specifications for Windows 7 Starter Edition attempts to “hardware fix” the bottom end of the hardware spectrum. In Microsoft’s eyes, a netbook good enough for an 11- or 12-inch screen is good enough for Home Premium.

I think Microsoft’s rigid, structured tiered edition/pricing model is being outdated here. They’re going to have to adjust in a manner other than strong-arming hardware manufacturers to create a class of machine the market isn’t calling for.

By: drew

drew — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:26:50 +0000

You wrote:
“Ford insisting that a Focus isn’t a car because it’s smaller, less powerful, and less luxurious than a Lincoln Continental.”

But Ford would say that one is a luxury car, and the other a subcompact. I think the issue here is the form factor, rather than the guts of the machine. My netbook can do most of what my old notebook does, and it weighs a lot less.

I think the term “netbook” is a marketing gimmick, although it does capture well what I use mine for: connecting to the web for e-mail, Google Docs and such.

By: richardmitnick

richardmitnick — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:23:55 +0000

I just went to the bog box store to buy some DVD-R blanks on sale. I walked past this neat little thing, a netbook, an Acer 150-1635. Wow!! Ethernet port; three USB 2.0 ports; VGA port; 160 gig hard drive; 1 gig DRAM – the perfect replacement for my almost dead Dell Inspiron 8000 PIII machine. That machine was at this point managing a 1Tb hard drive full of music and video and “crunching” for http://worldcommunitygrid.org and http://boinc.berkeley.edu.

US$299.00. Terrific. But, none in stock. Quick run to five other stores. All with the same aisle-end stand-up Acer display with this neat little blue netbook. None in stock. Run home. Check on line. In stock for immediate shipment at another outlet. Two days shipment, because I am leaving on a trip and I want to get it configured before I go.

Success. It arrives, I do the security with a free anti-virus (no suite, please), register WinXP, get Open Office, load the software I need. Ready for the trip.

The netbook has been worth exactly what I paid for it. It is NOT a substitute for my two Core-2-Duo Dell XPS machines. But it adequately does what I want, manages the hard drive and “crunches”, and with the Atom N270, which is hyperthreaded, crunches two work units at once and each twice as fast as the PIII it replaced.

So, my experience, and I am 68 yeasr old, not 18-24, is exactly what I expected. Thank you Acer and Microsoft.