Whatever happened to Japanese laptops? | Hacker News Reader

Whatever happened to Japanese laptops?

jamielittle.org

196 pointsatjamielittle154 comments

The japanese companies were pretty amazing in the commercial space.

My employer had a few Fujitsu ultra portables in the circa 2007 timeframe. One of our internal customers mentioned to a salesguy that they needed a particular port in a particular location on the laptop, not expecting anything. Two weeks later, they Fedexed a loaner/prototype with the port.

Really an amazing experience. We were buying 5-6 figure quantities of Dells and HP, and they could barely handle trivial requests re packaging, etc.

You were buying 10,000 - 100,000 laptops, or $10,000 - $100,000 worth of laptops (around 5 - 50 at $2000 each)?

If it's the former, I'm surprised they didn't package them anyway you want. If the latter, I'm not surprised they wouldn't make any changes.

It's probably the latter. You can be not surprised, that's fine. You probably seem hard to impress as you just glossed over the fact that fujitsu did that for them.

I wonder what their manufacturing processes are like, such that they could accommodate this kind of flexibility.

It was probably more like having some engineers and guys in shop/factory work weekend to meet the demand, on top of what they were already supposed to do.

In order to create a prototype with a port in a different location, they would need, at the very least, to produce a one-off motherboard PCB, and a one-off injection molded case. That they could justify doing so to produce near production quality results for a small order either indicates impressive manufacturing flexibility, or an inefficient manufacturing process.

Their process is implemented for flexibility first, then for mass production. Look at Toyota fabric [1]. Do you see lot of advanced robots to reprogram for each new model?

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg5RlapdEtE

So how is/was Fujitsu's laptop manufacturing tailored toward flexibility? I want the details. If all you can do is passive aggressively repeat vague ideas that were printed in mainstream management and manufacturing texts decades ago, don't respond at all. Nobody cares about or wants your input.

And you think that someone from Fujitsu (where it's 8 in the evening, BTW) is going to jump in here and explain their factory layout to you, because you've put your foot down? The best general answer you are going to get is "They made it using whatever process they used to make prototypes. Probably". You want names, ranks, and serial numbers - try writing to Fujitsu. Preferably while being more polite.

Or... that it was an option for port placement they'd already considered, and they pulled an existing prototype out of the library, which seems more likely to me.

Your assumptions that they would need to redesign and tool up for brand new complex motherboard and housing parts are incorrect. This is a foolish way to accommodate a request to physically move a connector.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way

Quote:

Principle 3

    Use "pull" systems to avoid overproduction.

A method where a process signals its predecessor that more material is needed. The pull system produces only the required material after the subsequent operation signals a need for it. This process is necessary to reduce overproduction.

I too have heard of Kanban and JIT from my fellow arrogant valley douches. I would like to understand the specific manufacturing processes that make one-off products of production quality viable.

I suggest to read Gemba Kaizen books. Yes, it is hard to understand first, but then you realize that Toyota Way is like 3D printer — add only what is needed right now, do it fast, be precise.

So yes, you are right — Toyota Way is not viable for mass production, but it perfect for areas where human labor is still plays major role in manufacturing, e.g. programming.

In most manufacturing, you have a prototype hall or floor where you have somewhat more general purpose/flexible machines with a lot of manual intervention to make small quantities of prototypes, and factories with automated machines set up to make the exact parts you need for your full production.

This was always my experience in electronics - you, as the development engineer, set up small-scale production (going from prototypes to EV or engineering validation articles, which are basically the final product produced by these manual/slow methods), and then manufacturing engineers work with you to transfer your processes to an automated assembly line making who knows how many units a minute.

It's not unusual to produce a special prototype in the small/experimental floor; I mean, Apple probably goes through hundreds (or whatever) of prototypes and test articles before releasing their next phone, and they are certainly not stopping their million-per-day manufacturing plants to make them. However, it does show impressive commitment to the customer on the part of Fujitsu.

Also, electronics is more cyclical than cars (3-year-old model may be completely different and useless compared to the current one), so it is common to produce everything in batches rather than "the Toyota way" with just-in-time. In other words, if a laptop model is sold for 2 years, the whole run may have been made in 6 months, and then you have that manufacturing equipment sitting idle while the next prototype is worked on, so you may have equipment and engineers to spare. Only a few of the highest-volume factories (e.g. Apple again, I assume) run at full capacity all the time.

I had Fujitsu laptops from beginning of the 2000s until around 2009; the quality and support were amazing. You paid for it but man these things were good. Panasonic makes great laptops as well but these days it really does not warrent the high pricetag...

I'd buy another Fujitsu if they had any current models with displays that are up to date. Seems someone there thinks that anyone who is using a portable doesn't need a display taller than 768 (or some other absurdly low number of) pixels.

Yes, for Fuljitsu that is a big reason; Panasonic has nice displays but they have insane prices. I was checking one of those (these [0] I think) in Tokyo and they are really nice; insanely long battery life, high res and generally very well built. But crazy prices.

[0] http://panasonic.jp/pc/products/sz6e/

the problem is, this merger collapsed. http://www.pcworld.com/article/3056030/computers/proposed-to...

now Fujitsu is looking to be acquired by Lenovo http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/27/business/tech/fu...

and Toshiba is ending its consumer laptops entirely. http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/toshi...

Toshiba Vaio would still make a good merger, one with sexy consumer laptops (the only PC laptop ever respected by Steve Jobs) and the other with functional utilitarian business laptops.

I didn't realize Toshiba is stopping selling consumer laptops! Such sad news. :( I've exclusively bought Toshiba every since I got my first laptop way back when.

I have seen quite a few Fujitsu machines on sale at eBay via their refurbished store. Plenty have 2160p displays; I recently got a Q555 made-in-Japan tablet for reading that has a 1920x1200 10.1" screen. My 3+ year old T902 (1600x900) is still superb though I might replace it with a T935 (2560x1440) some day.

I've always wanted to buy one of those Fujitsu notebooks with displays that also worked in bright daylight. They were super expensive and I never saw one on eBay, however.

For whatever reason, a number of Japanese companies were really driving the state-of-the-art for small laptops at on point. I also had one of the small Fujitsus and it was really nice for traveling at a time when even the more portable Thinkpads were fairly heavy and bulky in comparison.

In a way, they were pre-Netbook Netbooks--although their processors and memory configurations were often closer to "regular" laptops than netbooks were.

In the early 2000's Japan was way ahead in the Sub-notebook market. As subnotebooks and tablets have come into popularity and wide availability worldwide, this arbitrage opportunity has narrowed significantly.

In 2007, I picked up a Panasonic R6 (10" LetsNote/toughbook). It was a great little machine, and I ran both Windows and Debian on it. The keyboard was a bit cramped, and the circular trackpad was pretty lame, but overall I loved the machine. Everywhere I went people would notice it and ask about it. After about 14 months, the logic board failed, and I discovered that as grey-market import, there was no warranty. This was a hard lesson, as I had paid almost $2k USD for the machine. Fortunately, I was back in the states when it happened, so I wasn't stranded abroad without a working laptop.

Earlier this year, I was in Japan and picked up a Japanese chromebook 10" for under $200. The keyboard is both english and Japanese which makes it a bit of a conversation starter. I installed Debian on it via Crouton (alongside ChromeOS). When I travel, I usually bring both my MacBook Air, and the Chromebook, and particularly in the developing world, I leave my MBA back in my hotel or apartment and bring my Chromebook with me when I'm out and about in the city.

Can you share which Chromebook you got? I'm living in Japan and am interested.

I have the Chromebook Flip C100

Interesting. Seems the price has changed - I can't find it for any less than ¥35,000 without flets hikari subsidy.

> The keyboard is both english and Japanese

So, Japanese, then? Or does it have English labels on the modifier keys?

This usually implies a QWERTY keyboard with Japanese kana printed on the keys and a way to switch modes:

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSH1YLn...

Oh I see, it's US QWERTY with labelled kana, as opposed to the Japanese layout, which adds some extra keys specific to Japanese (mostly for IME use).

It's QWERTY with Kana. You can see a couple images here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqh-TUpLh3/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGGFILmpLsn/

Ah, that looks like the standard Japanese layout; it has the extra keys.

Found a photo of me working on my R6

https://www.instagram.com/p/o4XZ5_hVSR/

Japan is really behind in PC/Laptop. I was just there last week and the big PC and electronic stores only stock up to Geforce. Asus also has a big presence there now, but the prices are a lot more than US pricing for the same stuff. Not much innovation in the computer space. Home eletronics and appliances are amazing though. Their high end electrolux style vacuum stick cleaners easily clear $800 USD and are really awesome. The rice cookers can hit $600-$800 and can make the perfect rice you normally only get in Japan. The mcirowaves have built in toast oven in one unit, and it works amazingly well. Coming home, its kinda sad some of the convinces we dont have like the toilets, bathroom, kitchen, and even video doorbells (out current "smart" stuff are still rubbish).

> The mcirowaves have built in toast oven in one unit, and it works amazingly well

I had one in my apartment outside Nagoya in 1996. Still can't believe I have never seen one in the states. I wonder if they just can't justify the potential marketing friction.

These are on sale at WalMart in the US. Indo think they're rather new there though.

Will have to look out for it! Also stationary is amazing in Japan. They have Pilot Friction erasable pens that erase perfectly and writes amazing. Its been popular there over 10 years and barely a blip here in the US. You can actually find them at depotmax.

Absolutely, Japan is great for stationary. I love the KuruToga mechanical pencils; these rotate the pencil lead some 30 degrees each time you lift the pencil from the paper. This means you always end up with a perfectly round tip and lines of equal thickness instead of the chisel tip you end up with normally.

I used to rotate my simpler mechanical pencils myself before I found these. Never going back.

It's the same reason we still have 2 piece washer/dryers: so they can sell two appliances instead of one. Until our market demands a combo mike/toast, we won't have one.

Maybe they're much better now, but 15 years ago, I used a machine that washed and dried in the same drum, and it was pretty bad at both. A full cycle for one load on minimum settings took an hour and a half or two hours, and the load was tiny in comparison to any other washer or dryer I've ever used. Even if it had taken slightly less time than separate units, and even if the load size had been realistic, I would have had to use two of them to get the usual throughput I'm used to, where I can do a week of laundry in about 5 hours (two people's clothes, bath and kitchen, bedding). If I had to use that machine currently, it would be running for a few hours every day.

The problem with combined washers/dryers is that dryers need to be more empty than washing machines. That means you can either only wash a rather small amount of clothes or you have to take out some clothes after washing and before drying.

My Grandmother had a combo oven / microwave in the 80s. Sears model, I think. It was a full size oven and I believe it ran the microwave part off the 220 connection. The control panel was pretty complicated looking.

It suffered the inevitable result of TV/VCR or TV/DVD combo units where I don't remember which half burned out first but once one half broke it was time to buy two separated devices.

We've got a Samsung with that, it's pretty old (90s-ish). (Germany... maybe we have a thing with the Japanese... but then again Samsung "is" Korean?!)

Asus also has a big presence there now, but the prices are a lot more than US pricing for the same stuff.

The same Asus stuff or other brands?

I live in Spain and although I haven't looked recently, Asus was the best quality-price relation here. In particular, batteries duration similar to macs, for half the money. If I needed a laptop now, I would see their offer first for sure.

Time ago, I read that Asus doesn't sell in the USA, what explained how little comments I saw in specialized webs about their laptops.

I had a Panasonic CF-Y5. As one review had it: "The exterior design of the machine's casing is reminiscent of a Sherman tank cross-bred with a 1970s sports saloon, while the lid opens with the grace of a bank vault door."

It was incredibly lightweight (1.53kg at 14" with an optical drive!) and built like, well, a Sherman tank. It wasn't only the casing reminiscing it. In a weird little apartment overcrowded by all startup coders attending a conference someone accidentally kicked it off the table and yet it was completely OK.

I could only afford it because the CF-Y7 just got out and for a while I couldn't afford them and then the B10 was no longer so incredibly tough (although the current models do mention a drop test and a pressurized test). Anyways, I am back to ThinkPads ever since. The keyboard is much better but the weight is worse. I am currently using a T420s upgraded with an 1080p screen and waiting for the Retro to happen. Our last hope.

One thing likely contributed to their downfall was US manufactures moved operations overseas and many Japanese manufacturers kept production in Japan making them expensive to the Us market --that and Apple and others catching up in terms of "sleekness" and aesthetics. People would buy Vaios despite poor hardware because they were thin and looked cool.

>that and Apple and others catching up in terms of "sleekness" and aesthetics.

Wasn't Apple always ahead of the Japanese laptops in terms of sleekness and aesthetics?

No, not always. The Sony Vaio was attractive enough back in its day that Steve Jobs offered Sony to run Mac OS on them (which they declined).

Wow. Was not aware of that. Thanks.

For those who couldn't be bothered googling... http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5380832/sony-vaio-apple-os-...

Had to look this up because I had no clue.

> Most of Sony's executives spends their winter vacation in Hawaii and play golf after celebrating new year. In one of those new year golf competitions back in 2001, " Steve Jobs and another Apple executive were waiting for us at the end of golf course holding VAIO running Mac OS" recalls Ando.[President of Sony at the time]

> Ando liked Apple. He always felt Mac and VAIO were so close in philosophy. He especially admired the original iMac introduced in 1998. But the timing was bad for Sony, it is just about the time, Sony's VAIO gained popularity and it is just about the time that VAIO team had finished optimizing both VAIO's hardware and software specifically for Windows platform. Because of this, most of the VAIO team opposed asking 'if it is worth it.' And that was the end of story for this Mac-compatible VAIO.

http://nobi.com/en/Steve%20Jobs%20and%20Japan/entry-1212.htm...

A couple of things about these anecdotes to give some context:

Steve Jobs used a Thinkpad (a 560E I believe) running OPENSTEP for quite a long time after taking over Apple, because of his objections to using what he considered to be the primitive MacOS 8/9 OS. So Jobs had no problems with using non-Apple hardware.

The Titanium Powerbook and the iBook G3 Snow were already in the production pipeline when Steve Jobs met with the President of Sony, so aesthetics probably weren't the reason for trying to partner with Sony, perhaps Jobs may have already concerned about the PowerPC Alliance's ability to produce mobile processors and wanted an x86 partner to help pivot Apple away.

When Sony's president was shown a Vaio running "MacOS" what it was running was the preliminary build of Cheetah, MacOS X 10.0[1] without either the Blue Box (the classic Mac emulator) [2] or Rosetta [3] the "dynamic binary translator" (which didn't come out until 2006).

Cheetah was pretty exciting to us NeXT junkies but if it was running on x86, then it was quite limited in the amount of "Mac" software available for it, most everything that didn't start on OPENSTEP would have needed a lot of work to be recompiled and a lot of what would eventually be ported to Carbon would never have made the transition.

So it's understandable that the VAIO team wondered if it was worth it, since there was still a lot of uncertainty about Apple's ability to pull off the transition to Mac OS X.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_10.0

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

No. I remember my wife bought a Sony Vaio N-505 back in 2000. An amazing machine with a magnesium case, very thin and very lightweight. Only the 10.4" screen was pretty crappy (but they all were back then).

Apple had the Powerbook G4 at that time which was a very high-end machine but much much bulkier of course.

Not quite at that time, the Powerbook G4 wasn't announced until January 9, 2001, at the time it was the Powerbook G3 Pismo that was Apple's main pro notebook.

I don't think the magnesium case played much a role in the weight difference between the 12.1" VAIO N-505 (3.75 lbs / 1.7 kg) vs the Powerbook G4 (5.3 lbs / 2.4 kg), so much as the bigger 15.2" screen and integrated optical drive in the Powerbook (which at the time was remarkably unbulky for its size)

For the new post-Sony US-market Vaio laptops, they're apparently "inspected" in Japan, but the manufacturing is now finally taking place in China -- like pretty much everyone else.

I had a Vaio Z once (This was ~2010, probably the first Vaio Z series). Performance was good in the 11" package. But... the hinge was terrible, and I snapped it with a light drop. Agonizing 1.5 month repair sendout. $300 bill. Same day it came back, broke the hinge in the same place.

Never bought another Vaio.

And this is why I just buy Macs now. Repair is easy - a couple hours at the Apple store. And the things are built well. They can take a bit of a beating, which you need in a computer you're moving around, have in a backpack that'll inevitably be tossed around a bit, etc etc.

Using a 13" 2013 Vaio Z right now. It's a really great machine: 2x SSDs in RAID0, HDMI + VGA, 2x USB 3, SD reader, ethernet port with an interesting hatch mechanism to support its very thin form factor, 1080p, good thermal design.

The product design is quite nice as well, which was an important factor for me. When researching the model before purchasing, I found a YT video with one of Sony's industrial designers disassembling the entire laptop, describing all the components and a few of the design decisions, to a tech reporter. There was definitely a level of design consideration and technology craft that reminded me a lot of Apple, albeit not as sophisticated with material science. But it was the nicest 13" PC laptop at the time.

That said, there are issues with it: small key travel, flexible plastic body, bendy screen, out-of-box Sony bloatware (which I formatted away), lack of dedicated graphics, and it has absolutely terrible speakers.

I have the same model (SVZ13), I'm sure. Is yours carbon fibre? It's super fast and hasn't slowed down with a little maintenance. I'm sure it will go for a few more years with care. The docking station external graphics are useless though (only marginally better than the onboard intel HD) That said...

Limitations I'm coming up against right now:

1) Cannot upgrade from 8GB RAM which is soldered to the board. I want to run more VM's!

2)I want two bigger SSD's to replace the current 2x128GB scenario. Once again, these are soldered to the board.

3)My sim tray broke and if I remove it it will definitely not be usable any more.

4) would love to install linux on it but not sure what the RAID0 story is there with this machine.

There might be a way to do it, I just need a guide to parts etc (for ssd and hdd).

No, I didn't get the carbon fiber version (nor the dock, which I'm glad I didn't based on peoples negative reviews of the video card).

I've been surprised at how much it has held up its speed, even with upgrading to Windows 10. I can see myself using it for at least 1.5–2 more years.

The on-board RAM and SSDs are unfortunate. I experience memory limit issues occasionally, especially with heavy Adobe usage.

I believe linux will support the RAID configuration (seeing it as one drive). Good way of checking is to boot Ubuntu on a thumb drive.

solid block of cnc machined aluminum vs. flimsy plastic. not a real hard choice.

I spent a lot of time on http://www.dynamism.com/ looking at the ultralight computers they had in Japan. Almost pulled the trigger a few times, they had awesome stuff.

The OQO was from that era too.

Good times.

I spent thousands with them on teeny teeny computers, including the OQO. Worth it!

As we speak, I'm literally looking up OQO on wiki/elsewhere to reminisce ... good times indeed.

I think Japan is going to be one of the first markets to see laptop sales dry up almost completely. Most people are fine with their iPhones. Where I work, all developers use macbooks and everyone else uses a thinkpad. A lot of other laptop models, like a lot of tech in Japan, is targeted at the Japanese market only. Dynabooks are the budget windows machine of choice at the moment, it seems. Although most young people choose Apple whenever possible anyway.

Really not trying to start an OS war but for the sake of accuracy Android is the dominant mobile OS in Japan, not iPhone.

If you aren't trying to start a war, please provide a citation to back this up so there can be no dispute.

3rd party citation after searching "dominant OS Japan" in google https://www.statista.com/statistics/260415/market-share-held... Android 64.6%

Looking at the pattern: if the statistic would end in autumn instead of summer, then iOS could also have come up on top.

How can market share dramatically swing between 30% and 60% like it's doing in this chart?

Is this bad data? Is the market expanding & contracting so greatly that existing users are a minority of future marketshare?

> How can market share dramatically swing

You pay for results?

The data is bad.

I have a lot of insight into the apps side of things, and Android is somewhat smaller than iOS in Japan, both on revenue and downloads.

Most android phone owners don't use it as a smartphone - it's a cheap feature phone they buy at the phone store and they just use it to make calls on. The number of true 'smartphone users' in the android world who are using them to browse the web and download apps is comparable to or less than the number of iOS device owners.

> Most android phone owners don't use it as a smartphone - it's a cheap feature phone they buy at the phone store and they just use it to make calls on.

Do you have a source for that?

Yes - see above.

Where?

This data looks bad and not in line with other reports:

https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-vs-ios-market-share-201... http://techjapan.tumblr.com/post/42142826707/why-iphone-mark...

According to our internal data which tallies tens of millions of app store installs on Android vs iOS, iOS both gets more downloads & revenue than Android in Japan.

You have posted a link about web browsing and another from 2012.

Do you gave a reliable report about marketshare because all reports tells that iOS have way less market share than Android in Japan

I dont know why the data looks that wonky, but the graph that business insider uses (taken from Kantar) shows a similar pattern. http://www.businessinsider.my/apple-v-android-market-share-b...

This is from last year, so could have changed, but Q4 2015 web traffic was 66% iOS vs 34% Android in Japan:

https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-vs-ios-market-share-201...

If you are selling phones, Traffic /= market share. There is good reason to believe that iPhone users use more traffic. They are the premium phone and their users spend more. Similarly, app installs are also not market share for the same reason.

There is even an argument that handset sales isn't market share, that the only real measure is to survey some people to see exactly what phones they own and use. That's the only way to include old phones that aren't used for much other than making calls.

Would traffic not be a good indicator of the parent's argument about that the iPhone is a replacement for a laptop? Based on the assumption most computer usage is internet-dependent now (a stretch, but not completely illogical), then a user with an Android device not connecting to the internet would probably need another device to do so?

What % of laptops in Japan do you think developers buy?

Japan has, by G8 standards, always been very PC wary. Where American kids would have a computer, Japanese kids would have a console. Where American kids finally got a laptop, Japanese kids had moved on to smart-phones.

I'm not sure if Japan is ahead of the curve or on a whole different curve altogether. If there's any modern country more full of contradictions, I don't know of one.

What's the laptop market like in Japan anyway? I don't really know a lot about it, but it's always interesting to see these random Panasonic or Fujitsu laptops not sold here, or those rare Japan-exclusive experimental ThinkPads.

One thing that I noticed when looking around was that screen resolution didn't seem to be a big focus.

The Panasonic models still have optical media. I can't think of a single western laptop that has a Blu-Ray burner in it. There might be some gaming laptops with that, but they would probably be 17 inch monsters and not extremely lightweight laptops.

In the US, PC gamers at least abandoned physical media very early.

I work for a startup with roughly half of its employees working from Japan. All developers use Apple laptops. I can't remember off the top of my head if non-developers used other brands.

I work with a few developers from Japan - MacBook Pros running Windows, across the board.

Why do they run Windows on an expensive MacBook Pro, e.g. how is power management, HiDPI, driver support, etc? Is this mostly Windows 7 or 10? Why not macOS + Windows in a VM?

probably USA centric company that forces macbooks on all employees for IT policies. But then the devs need to work on compilers/debuggers for hardware that only runs on windows.

How do IT departments manage policy for a lot of Macs? MacOS server MDM is for small biz. Are there good OSS tools? I've seen a paper on cfengine, https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa10/tech/full_papers/...

Everywhere I've worked that deployed Macs in any large capacity also used this management suite from Jamf.

https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-pro/

I'm amazed that works, but don't do what they did. Use configuration profiles where possible.

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/featuredarticles...

ironically my 20k employee corp uses Microsoft Active Directory.

I don't know about running Windows in a VM, but drivers are very good and battery life (even on Windows) is probably better than most Windows laptop. Not to mention you could get a fully-loaded MacBook Pro almost anywhere on the planet if something happens.

I live in Japan and laptops here are real expensive. Macbooks are not much more than similar-spec'd windows laptops (well until the newest generation came out). I wanted a decent windows machine with a dedicated video card and was looking at $1700 (for something I could get on sale in the US for $1200 from Dell).

Can confirm: developers here that work with foreign companies are almost all on Macs.

Windows still reigns absolutely supreme in native companies, though.

As others have said, Apple has a very strong presence in Japan. If I go to an electronics store, usually half the models on display are Apple. Panasonic and Fujitsu pretty much rule the desktop with bizarre television/computer fusions. Imagine a TV about the thickness of one of the old plasma TVs. It usually has a stand, but I think you can also wall mount it. You can watch and record TV on them, so they are basically consumer devices.

For laptops, the biggest brand (other than apple) is probably Asus (based on retail floor space ;-) ). Sony, Panasonic, Fujitsu and Toshiba pretty much share the rest. Toshiba is apparently exiting the market soon, though. From my perspective, it seems that the market is split between very high end, large format, desktop-replacement machines and tiny machines. There is not very much in the middle. I live in the countryside, though. It is very possible I don't see the interesting models where I live.

When I worked at a high school, all of the machines were actually Dell. It surprised me greatly.

One thing that most people don't realise is that Japanese electronics are expensive compared to the rest of the world. If you have high end purchases (like a computer), you can fly to Korea and the money you save will pay for the flight, easily. Especially with the insanely high yen, American machines are also a pretty good deal.

I like to support the local economy, but when Toshiba exits, I might be stuck finding the kind of machine I like to use.

I'd like to add NEC to your list (surprised no one is mentioning them). They completely dominated the Japanese PC market during the 80's and 90's, and even though the've been declining heavily since, it's still a strong brand in Japan holding about a fifth of the market share.

That's really interesting. You are right. As far as I remember, though, I've never seen one in a shop. I'm going to go to the electronics store today, so I'll have a peek for them. I know that they sell routers and and things (and in fact I will probably buy one of their routers today). Hmmm... Definitely something to consider.

Edit: I take it back. Should have did some poking around before I posted. NEC sells the Lavie model in Japan, which I have definitely seen. Looks like they are filling in that middle tier that I like as well. I wonder how well it supports Linux...

Funny you mention it - I actually have a LaVie (PC-LL750TSB http://kakaku.com/item/K0000704707/) that I purchased late 2015. I appreciate the robust feeling and the touch screen. Initially I thought the touch screen was just gimmicky, but actually started using it a lot (perhaps due to the touch pad not being sensitive enough for my taste). Also the four USB ports is something I miss on my MacBook Pro. The Intel HD Graphics 4600 handles multiple displays and 1080p video fine, but is not great for games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-9800_series

> One thing that most people don't realise is that Japanese electronics are expensive compared to the rest of the world. If you have high end purchases (like a computer), you can fly to Korea and the money you save will pay for the flight, easily. Especially with the insanely high yen, American machines are also a pretty good deal.

This is pretty interesting because my experience has been that electronics were pretty expensive in Korea, as well. When my wife's laptop died while she was working in Korea, I ended up bringing her a new Samsung laptop from the US on my next visit because it was considerably cheaper here than buying it there.

I bought a Toshiba Libretto L1 back in 2001 via the Internet (using translation services) and had it shipped to Germany. It was a fantastic form factor: A super wide 10" 1280x600 display (143dpi) which was so wide that it left enough room for a decent keyboard. The CPU was a Transmeta Crusoe 600Mhz which was, unfortunately, the bottleneck of the system.

One other highlight I remember about this machine: Despite not having any international warranty that I was aware of, when the machine developed a problem, I called Toshiba Europe and they picked it up and send it back repaired a week later for free.

I was in Japan this summer and also had a look at the notebooks on sale there but nothing really caught my attention. With the arrival of Netbooks and later the Macbook Air 11", small notebooks are no longer hard to get in Europe.

I've got a few Libretto's kicking around, they are fantastic machines, full pentium class UMPC's

I've also got a GPRS modem for my 100CT and it makes a nice portable IRC machine.

http://i.imgur.com/IUp4U7p.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/SuMjceM.jpg

Oh boy, I'm not going to hide my envy, those beasts look really sexy.

I still have my Libretto 30, which was right on the bottom edge of usable performance with its 486-class processor and 8MB RAM. I remember being able to play MP3s - but only with the Fraunhofer codec, not WinAMP, and I eventually lost the PCMCIA sound card. It also ran Opera quite nicely. Eventually I installed Redhat.

Still the best "touchpoint" interface I've ever used, since you worked it with your thumb rather than an extended index finger. And the keyboard is just adorable. The whole thing fit in a pocket if you had very large pockets.

I'm a fan of the wallpapers.

I bought a Sony VAIO MultiFlip 13A for my wife because she loves Sony's design and she wanted a touchscreen, so we bought the basic model with an SSD.

a) of a 128GB SSD, only 90GB was left after Sony took wat they thought was necessary

b) the fan was incredibly noisy, it would crash randomly and would eventually die and take the notebook with it

c) when put in a less performant mode, it's really less performant and still gets really hot

d) the touch screen freaks out and other issues once it gets hot

e) it still ran Windows

That's what happened to Japanese laptops in my personal experience. Now I could eventually fix a) and b), e) was still required for Adobe software and it's still a freaking hot slow laptop that freaks out once in a while.

> a) of a 128GB SSD, only 90GB was left after Sony took wat they thought was necessary

> e) it still ran Windows

Your "e" item indicates that it was not Sony who took 90G of the 128G SSD, but rather it was Microsoft who took 70% of the drive space.

Lay the blame where it belongs, on Microsoft, they created an OS that consumes 90G of disk space. Sony did not create mswin, Sony just installed it because it is what most of their target market believes they want pre-installed.

90 GB is what was left, not what was used. But even 38 GB seems a bit too much for a fresh OS, I assume that includes a recovery partition or the good old GiB/GB mix-up.

> GiB/GB

That's only 7%

Nope, that was wat Sony took for all kinds of rescue stuff. After that we were still looking at Windows and various Adobe Software plus scratch (working with external drives for storage, naturally).

> they created an OS that consumes 90G of disk space

Was it some sort of Sony-only release? I've run every major version of Windows over the years and never had one come anywhere near this sort of size.

VAIO were always beautiful garbage. Toshiba, on the other hand, were amazing, both in the regular size and the tiny Librettos.

I have a strong feeling that Sony VAIO probably has the worst quality BIOSes for years.

Your disappointments are not reflective of the Japanese industry. I can criticise Japan a lot, but honestly your complaints are only about Sony.

Sony was floating in the bowl during the mid-80s and becoming a content producer was what flushed them into the sewer.

The quality, innovation, engineering and thoughtfulness that Sony Electronics worked so hard to build their reputation on did not disappear overnight, but it is all gone now.

Today, Sony Electronics is a junk factory and a remarketer of junk. Your life will be better if you simply avoid anything with a Sony nameplate or that incorporates Sony components.

> Your disappointments are not reflective of the Japanese industry. I can criticise Japan a lot, but honestly your complaints are only about Sony.

Sure, but I was still expecting to get a Sony

I love Japanese stuff in a lot of other categories. Can't beat Korg or Roland in terms of price and quality, even the cheapest stuff.

I've always loved their[Japanese] ultraportables for as long as I can remember. Probably their prime placement in the film and television I watched growing up. I've ended up with quite a collection of them at this point, ranging from the amazing little Vaio UX through the little Vaio P up to my 12" let's note. It weighs nothing, has an i5 and tons of RAM, I'm amazed they haven't taken over the US. Not to mention its tough as bricks. They certainly have a quirky, unique charm to them.

I thought this would be about the tiny models like the Toshiba Libretto

My drinking buddy in the early 2000's carried his libretto around in big baggy jeans pockets so he could pull it out and code on his game any time he was out and about and had a free moment. I always thought that was so 1337.

I used to code on the Voyage 200, which also fit in my coat pockets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-92_series#Voyage_200

My fingers were small enough to touch type on those keys.

After I grew out of TI-BASIC, I always wanted something like that for computer programming, too, but I never managed to find one.

A laptop in regular-laptop shape that was 6" or so would be ideal for me. I've also been considering a phone/phablet with a keyboard case or keyboard cover, but none seem to be touch-typable. :/

How about the Pyra? Seems to be close to your ideal. https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

I had a Sony Vaio Picturebook around that time and would use it to do homework, listen to MP3s, etc. I turned the sleep function off when listening to music and would just keep it in the pocket of my jacket. It was a beautiful little machine.

My current laptop is a toshiba, and I bought it in the US. I've had good luck with the brand over the years.

I've had really good luck with Toshiba Qosmio's, but they've stopped making these really high end machines.

This may be a regional issue, but where I worked about a decade ago resold toshiba laptops as part of an equipment package (medical imaging). I'd ring up support to ask where I could find some documentation (I worked in support) and they'd refuse to talk to me without paying $55 first. Not even calling for troubleshooting help. '$55' or 'sod off' (paraphrased) were the options.

They were very nicely spec'd machines, but I'd never recommend a Toshiba based on the support experience. Hopefully they improved over the years.

I have a Japanese Toshiba KIRA V63 (only sold in Japan, for some stupid reason). It's a great machine and quite cheap for it's specs. I bought it for battery life (I can do a whole day of programming on a single charge in Linux), but it has good performance as well. I've been very pleasantly surprised at how well the Intel 5200U has performed. Also at only 1.2 kg, I can easily stick it in my bag and carry it with me anywhere I go.

I've seen on the news that Toshiba plans to shut down its laptop division in the near future. Some people have told me that it isn't 100% for sure, so I'm hanging on to some hope. I've been looking at offerings of other Japanese makers (I live in Japan) and there is nothing else comparable. I'm not sure what I'll do when I need to replace this one. Toshiba has been my go to maker for the last 10 years or so because virtually everything they make "just works" on Linux.

>Toshiba has been my go to maker for the last 10 years or so because virtually everything they make "just works" on Linux.

This is honestly a pretty shocking statement for me, because Toshiba has long been my go-to example for the worst-case scenario of installing Linux on laptops. I have never once had a Toshiba laptop that "just worked" out of the box with Linux. Whether it was power management, display drivers, or wifi, there was always something that was broken out of the box and needed to be fixed. Heck, I have a Toshiba A305 for which Linux still doesn't have proper power management drivers, even though the laptop is about a decade old.

When people ask me about Linux on laptops, I say that they should go with either Lenovos or (more lately) the new Dell XPS models. Never Sony, never Toshiba. I've never heard of anyone having a good experience installing Linux on laptops made by those two manufacturers.

Toshiba was my first laptop back in 1999.

One of the reasons I went with them was that besides being famous for making good laptops, was that they had a dedicated Linux web site and forum for supporting Linux on their laptops.

While most other OEMs couldn't care less.

Extra info as I cannot edit my comment any longer.

They still have it, here is the German version

http://www.toshiba.de/generic/np-linux-support/

Interestingly, my first Toshiba laptop was whatever the Canadian equivalent of the A205 was in 2007. No problems other than it needed a custom driver for the wifi (which eventually made its way into the kernel).

Toshiba used to maintain a webpage on their Japanese site that listed what worked and what didn't in Linux for all of their models. It also listed any custom drivers that it might need. It's the reason I switched to Toshiba originally. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be there any more (or I can't find it). Last time I looked at it, every single modern model had no problems. When I bought the K63, the trackpad didn't work properly (I bought it days after it was first released), but they said that a driver was being updated on that page. Sure enough, about 2 months later it was fine.

It's a moot point now I suppose since they are apparently leaving the business.

May be an outlier but i'm running Arch linux on a Sony Vaio Pro 13 and it's nearly perferct. I put the BIOS into legacy mode though.

I had a Toshiba Tecra M11-17z and it worked flawlessly with Linux. Before I bought it, I made sure that the Wifi, Graphics etc were Intel and not some iffy RealTek/Broadcom nonsense.

The first boot after it arrived (to check it was working before I installed Arch) took an hour, it downloaded updates to the vast array of crapware that came bundled and did all sorts of other 'customisations', truly awful. Look at the bundled software list on the link below, it actually makes me feel sorry for Microsoft.

http://www.toshiba.co.uk/discontinued-products/tecra-m11-17z...

Similar experience here. They are the Toyotas of laptops.

My little Toshiba has been very reliable, runs Linux perfectly.

I would never buy anything else so I hope they manage to restructure so their talent survives. It is increasingly difficult to get quality products these days. More and more it is a choice between constantly breaking crap and unaffordable. It's in cars, houses, everything.

From the start Toshiba have had a vision that laptops will replace desktops. They were also first to market.

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-07/business/fi-1099_1_co...

I have fond memories of the Toshiba Satellite Pro models that had the battery charger built into the laptop. The power cord was the same figure eight lead that you could find powering radios and other home electricals. If you worked in server rooms, meeting rooms, your own desk, at home or in the field, the lack of power brick was a huge bonus.

The desktop models 'failed' but look how advanced some of them were:

https://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/1996_09/pr1101.htm

Here you get a remote control and a home media centre that I wouldn't mind having today!!! It is like a desktop version of what a mobile phone offers, functionality wise.

Another Toshiba special were the Portege tablets that they brought out before iOS/Android tablets redefined what a tablet computer was. One had to pretend that the pen input was viable, pen to text was theoretically possible but not what you would use. Superb engineering including a 12" 1400x1050 screen and their own HDD.

Another retro Japan favourite is the Canon BN22. This was a laptop with a printer built in. There were models of laptop + printer than what made it to the UK market, the first one failed to find a niche in the UK and there were none coming to the UK after that, in Japan the concept was updated with the times into the Windows 95 era. I can remember seeing a Canon BN22 and being genuinely awed. It had the same form factor of laptops of the era, i.e. ungainly with the keyboard at the front. The space at the back had a printer sneaked in and the paper path went from the front to the back of the machine. Looking back the dimensions of this machine were a bit nearer what you would expect for a printer rather than a laptop.

Really interesting, here's some more about BN22 http://www.computerweekly.com/photostory/2240107195/Photos-H...

Trivia: Toshiba was involved in the development of the ACPI 1.0 spec back in 1996. I think they even used to develop their own laptop chipsets.

I bought a 11" Vaio in 1990 and loved it, but it only lasted about 18 months. I just bought one of the small 12" MacBooks last Friday and it reminds me of the Vaio experience, but I am concerned that it is not physically robust.

Japan is more active around smartphones rather than laptops and desktops, since you can use them on trains, the preferred way of transport. People spend some considerable amount of time on trains.

Small spaces make desktops not a very good choice.

Your anchor tags are using curly quotes, so external links aren't working.

I love Panasonic's feature-packed laptops. Too bad they aren't sold in Europe, and with some strong components, too.

The iPad happened. Most of the uses for the Japanese laptops can be covered by the iPad.

If thats your site. Please check the mobile view.

> I have a strange attachment to Panasonic

I have a lifetime prohibition on any Panasonic products after experiencing the most craptastic DVD recorder ever to grace this Earth. It crashes at random, takes forever to boot, won't boot reliably with a disc in the drive, can't play Audio CDs without locking up, responds to remote button presses with multi-second lag, and gets the tuner channels out of sync with the OSD. Basically a complete fuckup. Their "fix" in the successor model was to add a reset button. Never again Panasonic.

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