The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time | Hacker News Reader

The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time

wired.com

It's a pretty good article. I think it's pretty amusing that Mary Lou gets all the credit for inventing netbooks — from my limited knowledge of the field, not totally unfair, but a little exaggerated, maybe. After today's item from Norvig, though (http://norvig.com/fact-check.html) I wonder how much of the article is fabricated.

Basically it asserts that netbooks are a disruptive innovation that has already changed everything in the industry, that they're useless without a network connection, and that they are sufficient and will wipe out traditional computers except for high-end and server purposes. Plausible. Also it makes the story very engaging.

I don't think netbooks work as a primary / your only machine. They are a great replacement for a PDA and let you get work done on the go, but the comparing a 300$ netbook to a 900$ laptop is a mistake.

PS: IMO, you can see the bias when you look at the machine they compared the netbook to. You can get a lot more machine for 475$ than the laptop they chose: Dual core at 2ghz, 250GB hdd, 3GB ram etc.

I think it depends. Don’t get me wrong, the comparison was a little silly but right now I’m in the process of doing test runs with a few netbooks at work and have found them to be effective replacements in certain areas. Mostly for people who only do data entry into a web application.

For us that means about 97 positions which adds up to big money in the end. So there’s some validity to the idea even if that particular comparison was bogus.

(The caveat being that this only works with the few netbook models that have close to full size keyboards)

From the article:

"In the US, we regard branding and marketing — convincing people what to buy — as core business functions. What Asustek proved is that the companies with real leverage are the ones that actually make desirable products."

Well... I love my Aspire One. With a 160 GB hard-disk, 1.5 gigs of RAM and Ubuntu 8.10 it's a remarkably capable workstation that can hide in my bag in a way nobody would guess I am carrying a computer. I have to explain that: I live in Brazil and there is a larger risk of being robbed than I would comfortably live with. Having a nearly "invisible" computer is priceless.

It is not and will never be blindingly fast, but it's good enough for me.

My fiancée, who is fairly computer savvy but not a programmer, is a big fan of her new netbook because it fits into her purse. Something that perhaps the mostly-male engineer population might not think about.

I like my netbook because it fits my backpack (and it's very lightweight)!

Conservation of Processing Power is in effect, Gordon Moore would be happy. Processing power on the user end may be going down, but it's just transferred over to the servers. Stronger servers, weaker clients, more bandwidth...

I think what they miss about netbooks, it is that in America they are really secondary computers. Maybe I am wrong, but I think that most netbooks are primary computers. Great devices, but you often still need another device.

Netbooks are just a price point / buzzword.

I know they compared it to overpriced crap to make a point that's just stupid 400-500$ is the new sweetspot for most people. You can buy less HW but you get a lot less power.

  From Dell today:
  EX1: 300$ = 9" screen, .5GB RAM, 8gb hdd, 1.6ghz cpu, no DVD drive.
  EX2: 400$ = 15" screen, 1GB RAM, 120GB hdd, 2.1ghz CPU and a DVD drive.
  EX3: 475$ = 15" screen, 3GB RAM, 25GB hdd, 2 GHZ dual core CPU, and a DVD drive etc.

PS: I don't think most people are going to be happy to give up the ability to use a DVD / CD drive anytime soon and using a 9" screen all day is not a great idea.

Who needs power? Gamers and people who do graphics or video work? Barely anyone needs a machine that's "powerful" by today's standards.

I'm pretty sure I peg my CPU and fill RAM a lot more than the representative user. If I'm perfectly happy with my six year old desktop and my Acer netbook, then I strongly suspect the mass of normal users are not looking for more power.

I think the need for more powerful mass market laptops and desktops was met with the hardware of four years ago. People want reliability (or cheap and disposable) and battery life. They want lean, snappy software.

HD movies and HD internet video needs power. I mean, that is where we're moving, isn't it? After all, the auditory for video is almost everyone.

My 9" eeepc plays 720p h.264 video just fine. The only issue is that it has to scale the video down, because there aren't enough pixels on the screen to display 720p :)

Those get hardware acceleration, which is more power efficient than doing it purely with the CPU.

This is total rubbish.

Most 'smart phone' have 2" screens but lots of people watch movies and increasingly live sport on mobile phones.

Computer have always be overpowered and under used. In Brazil, they are installing a 385,000 seat Linux system using virtualisation. Each 'normal' PC is shared with up to 5 people and there is no major different in performance.

I know it's offtopic, but... Mind talking a bit about this 385k seat linux system?

He's talking about this:

http://www2.userful.com/company/linux-desktop-virtualization

DVDs and CDs still exist? Oh.

Anyway, the point of the 9" screen and 8GB flash drive is that it makes the machine easier to carry around with you. You can pick it up and shove it in your bag without worrying about whether the disk spun down or not. The battery lasts 6 hours, so you don't have to constantly wander around looking for an outlet. You just open the thing up, and can work for as long as you like. It's not heavy, so you don't even know that that computer is with you.

It's not just a "price point", it's about having the power and convenience of a "real computer" with you where ever you go.

(And FWIW, I don't really mind working on my 9" EEEPC all day. The screen is stunning, much better than my 15" Thinkpad. The keyboard is nasty, however, so I tend to carry around my HHKB with me. But with that, there is basically no productivity loss. I can, and do, work all day on that.)

You don't need to spin down laptop HDD, you can dropkick a modern laptop without doing any damage to the HDD. Also 6 hours of battery life is fairly normal for non gaming laptops these days.

I think Netbooks are a solid replacement for a PDA if it's with you, but IMO they tend to be a poor compromise between a primary machine a portable one. They don't fit in my pockets and if I have a bag I only really care about weight at that point. I always have a cellphone that works as a PDA, if I am going to get stuff done I want decent keyboard, a high resolution screen, a fair amount of ram, and a HDD large enough that I don't have to care about what I am storing.

PS: Many "normal people" tend to have a web browser (word processor etc) and a IM client open at the same time so Netbooks resolution is still a fairly large sacrifice for most normal people. I use a 15" laptop with a 1920 x 1200 screen and it's great, I could drop down to 1680 x 1050 but that's low IMO.

They don't fit in my pockets and if I have a bag I only really care about weight at that point.

Maybe, but I find the eee a lot easier to carry around when I am at conferences. Sometimes you need to move pretty quickly, and the eee makes that easy. A big laptop has to be closed and stowed away in your backpack. The netbook just floats around with you. (It's hard to describe, so try it sometime.)

Many "normal people" tend to have a web browser (word processor etc) and a IM client open at the same time so Netbooks resolution is still a fairly large sacrifice for most normal people.

That's why the non-Windows netbooks go for a GUI that uses virtual desktops (or rather, all the apps are full-screen). This works very well; the notification tray gets your attention when your IM window needs you, but otherwise you just keep the browser maximized.

(This is not how I use my netbook, FWIW, but I am not a "normal person". I do my IM-ing from inside emacs; so I usually have 3 xmonad desktops; emacs, an xterm, and a full-screen web browser.)

Anyway, the reason why people need 1900x1200 on a laptop is because they don't know how to manage windows properly. Learn that, and you can do fine with a 9" screen.

Netbooks are useless in my country. Coz, the price of these netbooks are almost the same as laptops.

but what us that 5gb RAM thing from Dell???

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