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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: dreamcast270mhz on April 30, 2010, 01:58:43 AM

Title: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: dreamcast270mhz on April 30, 2010, 01:58:43 AM
From the Article:
"Pricier, more powerful notebook computers are sucking some of the steam from netbooks, the low-priced darlings that helped fuel sales for the PC industry in the past two years.

Many consumers—searching for more computing power than the compact, portable netbooks can deliver—are opting to pay more for laptops with bigger displays and circuitry suited for jobs like manipulating photos and video, which is beyond the capability of most netbooks."

My views:

I see my 12" iBook G4 1.33 ghz as my netbook, containing a DVD drive (Which many netbooks lack) OS X (the best new OS for general use) 40Gb (More than most SSDs) is a better buy than what I see as a castrated laptop, an underpowered CPU and low RAM, no optical drive. I can buy an iBook refurbished w/ Tiger or Leopard for $200 , like my own or a new netbook, I'll choose the iBook, even if its an ARM because of the proven reliability of the one I have. Thats my opinion, and i find it pretty sound
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: yssing on April 30, 2010, 04:19:26 AM
Are we going to see a lot of irrelevant news on this site?
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Lando on April 30, 2010, 05:05:10 AM
Quote from: dreamcast270mhz;555909
From the Article:
"Pricier, more powerful notebook computers are sucking some of the steam from netbooks, the low-priced darlings that helped fuel sales for the PC industry in the past two years.

Many consumers—searching for more computing power than the compact, portable netbooks can deliver—are opting to pay more for laptops with bigger displays and circuitry suited for jobs like manipulating photos and video, which is beyond the capability of most netbooks."

My views:

I see my 12" iBook G4 1.33 ghz as my netbook, containing a DVD drive (Which many netbooks lack) OS X (the best new OS for general use) 40Gb (More than most SSDs) is a better buy than what I see as a castrated laptop, an underpowered CPU and low RAM, no optical drive. I can buy an iBook refurbished w/ Tiger or Leopard for $200 , like my own or a new netbook, I'll choose the iBook, even if its an ARM because of the proven reliability of the one I have. Thats my opinion, and i find it pretty sound



I agree.  I have owned two netbooks - an Acer One and a Samsung NC10 - and ended up selling them both and used a 12 inch PowerBook as my 'Netbook' - cost about the same or slightly less than the netbooks but many times more versatile and capable, higher resale value, and running OSX.  I wouldn't buy another netbook.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Firedawg on April 30, 2010, 05:28:02 AM
Quote from: yssing;555922
Are we going to see a lot of irrelevant news on this site?

No, but hopefully we will not see a lot of irrelevant comments such as yours on this site. :)

The Dawg
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: koshman on April 30, 2010, 05:32:46 AM
Actually the G4 1.33GHz isn't significantly faster than Atom (if at all) and I personally see the lack of an optical drive as an advantage (lower weight etc.). I wouldn't use it anyway when I have a Wifi home network and broadband. And the weight? That's not even comparable...
OTOH I agree with the fact that xBooks are better constructed and probably more reliable than a typical netbook and the bigger 4:3 higher res screen (if only marginally) is a plus.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: B00tDisk on April 30, 2010, 05:39:12 AM
When I need to type up a quick document, and I don't want to fart around with a machine with an optical drive (or indeed worry about said machine's relatively frail mechanical HD), netbooks more than serve the purpose.  Typing is a tactile experience and the ipad keyboard just falls flat.

I'll keep my netbook, thanks.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: CaptChaos on April 30, 2010, 05:52:19 AM
This site really should just get around to changing its name to mac.org.

The amount of macsturbation threads really need to stop.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: koshman on April 30, 2010, 05:53:15 AM
:) +1
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Pyromania on April 30, 2010, 06:24:52 AM
Quote from: CaptChaos;555929
This site really should just get around to changing its name to mac.org.

The amount of macsturbation threads really need to stop.


Really? Cite sources please.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: mikrucio on April 30, 2010, 07:09:21 AM
why would ANYONE get a netbook when there are iphones!
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: ElPolloDiabl on April 30, 2010, 07:39:45 AM
I'm waiting for AMD to enter the market more. You get a budget cpu, but decent graphics. On a laptop I'm not really after a top of the line cpu, but I want good graphics.
Wait till AMD enter the netbook market and you'll be able to get yourself a nice mini rig.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: dreamcast270mhz on April 30, 2010, 11:38:17 AM
Quote from: koshman;555927
Actually the G4 1.33GHz isn't significantly faster than Atom (if at all) and I personally see the lack of an optical drive as an advantage (lower weight etc.). I wouldn't use it anyway when I have a Wifi home network and broadband. And the weight? That's not even comparable...
OTOH I agree with the fact that xBooks are better constructed and probably more reliable than a typical netbook and the bigger 4:3 higher res screen (if only marginally) is a plus.


My mother's Aspire One is much weaker than my iBook, and I watch a lot of DVDs on the go, I don't have the time to handbrake them all onto a netbook with a squashed screen and cruddy sound. I just don't have a use for them, my iBook serves its purpose well

@yssing & captChaos:

I have a right called "freedom of press" if A.org doesn't have a problem with me posting it then it isn't irrelevant. And "Macsturbation" is both a vulgar and gross comment and I don't want your spam on this thread.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: tone007 on April 30, 2010, 11:55:41 AM
With the price of netbooks not dropping like the prices of laptops, it only makes sense there'd be more competition, for a couple hundred dollars more than the price of a netbook you can get a full-featured system.  Sony, who had generally been in the higher price range, have a few higher performance models under $1000 now.

Netbooks are still in the "buy it and throw it around" price range as far as computers go, I use mine as sort of a Swiss army computer, carry it around without a bag, triple booting OSes, and if it happens to get smashed I'll just grab one of the spares.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: koshman on April 30, 2010, 12:12:13 PM
@ dreamcast270mhz:
Quote
My mother's Aspire One is much weaker than my iBook, and I watch a lot of DVDs on the go, I don't have the time to handbrake them all onto a netbook with a squashed screen and cruddy sound. I just don't have a use for them, my iBook serves its purpose well


The CPU should be comparable, but I agree that OS requirements might be a problem - Vista etc. If you watch DVDs then I understand for you iBook is probably the better machine, BUT squashed screen? iBook is 4:3 and netbooks 16:9 and it's 12" vs 10.1", which means that you have practically the same viewing area for widescreen films (netbooks might even win here) and cruddy sound? I seriously doubt your iBook's speakers are hi-fi quality (I know they weren't on my G3 IceBook) so headphones are a must in both cases if you want decent sound.
Still, I get it that for you iBook is fine, but there are others who value portability above all else (e.g. me) and iBooks certainly cannot compete with netbooks in weight and size.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: jj on April 30, 2010, 12:52:58 PM
I for one am getting fed up with people saying , this shouldn't be on here, that shouldn't be posted.
 
If everything on this site was related to Amiga it would be a pretty barren place.
 
Most people on here, apart from the people still living in the 80s, are interested in computing in General or even just like be here because they have been posting here for ten years and have a lot of friends here.
 
I would suggest that the people who dont like this would be better served by frequenting somewhere else
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Ral-Clan on April 30, 2010, 12:54:33 PM
Quote from: yssing;555922
Are we going to see a lot of irrelevant news on this site?

Perhaps you didn't see that this message was posted in the appropriate section of the forum: "Other Operating Systems".
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: recidivist on April 30, 2010, 01:51:24 PM
Well, it COULD be like the Commodore magazines of 1992,in which the same "news" and  speculation/wishful thinking was repeated issue after issue;and then the story was repeated in the last months of the Amiga magazines.And by  magazines I refer to those available  on newstands or even in the computer shops ,not  online or spare room publications.
 Come to think of it,most Amiga sites DO regurgitate the same discussions and complaints endlessly.
 It is good to take a look around at the rest of the world once in a while.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: jkirk on April 30, 2010, 02:12:00 PM
Quote from: yssing;555922
Are we going to see a lot of irrelevant news on this site?


irrelevant? ever heard of amiga forever? it can run on such an irrelevant machine. i mean  set it up right and you can have an amiga on netbook. then again another thing called aros can also run on it making this a cheap amiga. so i consider this very relevant.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: stefcep2 on April 30, 2010, 03:58:37 PM
Had a HP 2133.  Loved it.  Ran XP like  a dream.  was my portable media player  , retro games emulator, and net machine.  Till the motherboard died 3 months in.  And 4 weeks later.  Then I sold it.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: dammy on April 30, 2010, 04:54:21 PM
When the dual core A9s come out for netbooks, we will see growth in netbook market.   I plan to buy a netbook in the fall or winter.  Should have some really good choices by then based on my needs.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: kolla on April 30, 2010, 05:30:20 PM
What nonsense - the entire point of netbooks is that they are small. A laptop with a 12" display is not particularly small - what you have then is a regular laptop. Anything beyond 10" is certainly not a netbook in my ... book.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: AeroMan on April 30, 2010, 05:52:27 PM
I just love my Asus. It does not make sense to me to buy a big notebook if it is intended to be portable.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: kickstart on April 30, 2010, 05:56:41 PM
Quote from: CaptChaos;555929
This site really should just get around to changing its name to mac.org.

The amount of macsturbation threads really need to stop.


I agree, sometimes the mac propaganda here is sick.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Karlos on April 30, 2010, 08:40:48 PM
Quote
Netbooks Are Losing Steam?


They are? I didn't even know  you could install it 'on em...

I'll get my coat.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on April 30, 2010, 10:16:51 PM
Macsturbation  Ha! I love it!

I have a compaq mini that works great. I have a dvd player for watching movies (portable and one connected to my hdtv) What I needed was a small laptop for taking to class and this works perfectly. All around me are these giant laptops that take up most of the desk and you need a bag to carry them and their power brick. I carry my netbook like a paperback book and it lasts over 5 hours in a charge.
I use my desktop for games but this little netbook has suprised me on what it can do graphically. And yes I do have steam installed on it.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Karlos on April 30, 2010, 10:51:01 PM
This forum is for amiga users. It may come as a surprise to some, but most amiga users also own and have interests involving other systems too. They are perfectly free to talk about them in the forum areas for other platforms, such as this one.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: TheGoose on April 30, 2010, 10:56:27 PM
hehehe, Hey Steve Jobs - I just bought a Driod and I'm rolling around on the floor covered in Flash, eeewwww!
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: yssing on April 30, 2010, 10:59:34 PM
Quote from: ral-clan;555980
Perhaps you didn't see that this message was posted in the appropriate section of the forum: "Other Operating Systems".


Ahh, but when I posted my comment, it was on the frontpage along with all the other news items.
And I could not see any reason why this should be an AMIGA news item.

Regarding Amiga Forever, my copy of amiga forever runs on every wintel setup I have. So in the light of that, I guess any amd/intel/ms news would be equally relevant here then.

If I want Mac news I will go to the relevant places, if I want MS news, well you know what I mean right?
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: dreamcast270mhz on April 30, 2010, 11:03:29 PM
I was in no way propagating mac laptops merely stating the 12" models are my "netbooks", the Air is definitely a terrible machine that should lie with the A600 as the biggest "oops" in industry
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: djrikki on April 30, 2010, 11:13:13 PM
Talking about macsturbation (haha nice one)... I have my iBook G4 from 2005 that I have little use for now I have a iMac for home and a intel Mac Mini for work.

I understand AROS can be installed on a PPC Mac Mini, but has any one ever had any luck getting AROS to work on an iBook?  If not, why not?  Whats the real difference between the two?  Some kind of BIOS/firmware issue?
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: odin on May 01, 2010, 01:17:53 AM
Quote from: KThunder;556052
Macsturbation  Ha! I love it!

iSock?
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on May 01, 2010, 02:05:52 AM
Thanks no, it'd probably cost a grand !
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: mdv2000 on May 01, 2010, 02:26:53 AM
Ouch... as in the immortal words of Rodney King - " Can't we all just get along?".  

Anyway, for someone who wants to watch netflix, check email, ebay, and chat - netbooks are great lowcost way into computing.

For power users like myself - I have to buy a real laptop - but with newegg.com deals, I got a 14" Intel dual core 2.2 GHZ with 3GB of RAM and 160 GB HD w/Windows 7 32-bit and I spent less than $400.

That is why netbooks are losing steam - good laptops are getting cheap - and I estimate in about 1-2 years laptops in general will be cheaper than comparable desktops (minus gaming rigs).

Mike
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: stefcep2 on May 01, 2010, 03:07:11 AM
Actually I don't see much of a future for desktop PC's, other than for tinkerers or servers.  PC gaming seems to be less and less popular-consoles are cheaper and easier to maintain, the HTPC hasn't really become standard in living rooms where PVR's are getting a foot hold, and laptop are getting more and more powerful.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: alexatkin on May 01, 2010, 03:27:48 AM
Speaking of PC gaming dying, I got the shock of my life when talking to member of staff in HMV a few months back who said he sold his PS3 and Xbox 360 in order to switch back to PC gaming for its "better graphics".

I can't say I have noticed the jump in PC graphics (visually in actual games, technically its clearly still moving forwards) so much over the past few years personally, not like I did previously.  For the few games I tried on both, I couldn't really tell any difference between the Xbox 360 version and my 8800GTS despite Xbox being a generation behind that.  Other than the Xbox version juddering less, having better controls, achievements, etc.  Although I guess the 8800GTS itself is a few generations old now.

So I much prefer the slightly worse but "it just works" gaming of my Xbox 360 to my PC any day. I just wish they would port more Amiga classics over to Xbox Live Arcade.  You would think games like Wiz n Liz would be perfect, but Bizarre Creations seem to have gotten too big to deal with such niche games anymore. :(

And to stay on subject, I think they killed off Netbooks shortly after they started gaining steam.  The instant they removed Linux, the SSD, stuck another £100 on the price, there just didn't seem any point any more as they became underpowered overpriced laptops.

Unless it does 6+ hours (many do not under REAL use) its pointless spending almost as much as my laptop, when that can do 2 and a half hours of fair usage.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: DamageX on May 01, 2010, 06:51:53 AM
Although I'm not a Mac user, I would have to agree that the iBook G4 12" is a nice form factor. A 14" laptop is bigger than what I need (it's true I have small hands) yet I much prefer a proper 4:3 12" screen over the shorter 16:9 screens that all the netbooks have. Also the integrated graphics in netbooks is usually pretty weak. I have a 12" NEC laptop (Versa S820) with a Pentium M and ATI graphics. It weighs less than 3lbs and I can take it to my brother's and play Half-life 2 deathmatch over WLAN.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: kvasir on May 01, 2010, 07:09:19 AM
looks like you either love 'em or hate 'em. lol. I have an Emachines netbook, with Ubuntu, WinXP, Win7, and FreeDOS on it (gotta love GRUB), as well as partitions for AROS and Solaris when I get arouond to installing them. The lack of a cd-rom is a pain sometimes, but .iso mounting software along with a strange hack that can turn a u3 enabled thumb-drive into a bootable "cd-rom" (though a USB cd-rom would be a bit more sensible) has eased that. The really nice thing about it is the fact I can just fold it, grab it, and run off. The typing area is a bit small, but usable, and the Wifi makes it an ideal bail out of the house (with a noisy 3-year old), down the street, to the local café's hotspot machine. Oh, and UAE runs almost flawlessly on it (except for some weird sprite glitch that turns the mouse pointer into an ugly, Barney purple box. Probably a config thing somewhere) Not one to brag about x86 equipment, I actually like this thing. Not sure if Ubuntu's reduced overhead makes it more useable, but it responds really well. (winXP and 7 are on there for school, Grand Theft Auto, StarCraft (which works great with Ubuntu and WINE), and a few other games. Otherwise I'm always using Ubuntu. Haven't figured an excuse for freedos yet).
Though if watching DVD's is your thing, netbooks would really suck. You could do it by ripping the dvd to an iso, mounting it, and watching it, but that seems a bit more trouble than its worth (even to me).
Oh, the resolution works really well when using VNC from the Amiga! No need to scale/scroll/iconify/flip-back the window all the time so you can click behind it. Unless using AGA/ECS, those resolutions would still be a  bit of a pain...
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: the_leander on May 01, 2010, 07:29:12 AM
Quote from: dreamcast270mhz;555909

I see my 12" iBook G4 1.33 ghz as my netbook,


You can see it any way you want, it doesn't change the fact that it's no more a netbook then an IBM Thinkpad 390XD.

Netbooks have a 10ins screen or less.

Quote from: dreamcast270mhz;555909

 40Gb (More than most SSDs)


SSDs come in 256GB models and have been available at 128Mb capacities for a while.

If you're talking about any but the earliest of the second Gen (basically Atom based variants of the EeePC onwards) Netbooks, many of them come with 1.8ins hard drives of far greater capacity then your ibooks hard drive.

Quote from: dreamcast270mhz;555909

is a better buy than what I see as a castrated laptop, an underpowered CPU and low RAM, no optical drive.


Underpowered? It's a satellite system, it's not designed for being a full blown computer, it's for light use on a limited number of things - light browsing, some typing, watching the odd film on... You're not going to be producing a magnum opus or doing 3d rendering on one...

Quote from: dreamcast270mhz;555909

I can buy an iBook refurbished w/ Tiger or Leopard for $200


I can buy a EEEPC for around the same, only mine comes with a two year warranty.

Quote from: dreamcast270mhz;555909

like my own or a new netbook, I'll choose the iBook, even if its an ARM because of the proven reliability of the one I have. Thats my opinion, and i find it pretty sound


You own a notebook, and that's great, I'm truly glad you're happy with it. And yes, it is a little disappointing to see that netbook makers are trying to turn the paradigm of small, cheap computers into a mini luxury item but there you go, older models are still plentiful and in reality offer just about everything the latest models do in terms of features for comfortably around the £200 mark.

Trying to compare a netbook to a full blown notebook is sheer folly. It's not comparing like for like.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: EvilGuy on May 01, 2010, 08:15:38 AM
Quote from: yssing;555922
Are we going to see a lot of irrelevant news on this site?


Yep, this site has been a poor-mans apple.org for a while now..
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: CaptChaos on May 01, 2010, 11:25:39 AM
Maybe the OtherOS forum could be moved to coffee house since it is really off topic on an Amiga forum. I personally would rather not visit this website click new posts and be exposed to mac/linux/win news and propaganda. Plenty of other places to go for that.

Back on topic, netbooks are losing steam because they gradually got bigger, more powerful and more expensive. They are trying to take on laptops but cant because the value just isn't there any more.

I still have a 7" eeepc and for the uses I need it for it does a great job. Its a tiny little thing that didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Karlos on May 01, 2010, 11:40:34 AM
Quote from: CaptChaos;556123
I personally would rather not visit this website click new posts and be exposed to mac/linux/win news and propaganda. Plenty of other places to go for that.


Propaganda? :roflmao: That's being a bit excessivet, isn't it?

Quote
Back on topic, netbooks are losing steam because they gradually got bigger, more powerful and more expensive. They are trying to take on laptops but cant because the value just isn't there any more.

I still have a 7" eeepc and for the uses I need it for it does a great job. Its a tiny little thing that didn't cost an arm and a leg.


Strange that having complained about it, you still see fit to contribute to this propagandist thread :p Seriously though, I think you're right here. Netbooks have perhaps "lost their way" so to speak, confusing themselves with notebooks.

I expect the niche they originally filled will soon become overrun with pad type devices.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: the_leander on May 01, 2010, 06:37:00 PM
Quote from: CaptChaos;556123

Back on topic, netbooks are losing steam because they gradually got bigger, more powerful and more expensive. They are trying to take on laptops but cant because the value just isn't there any more.


That's just it though, the latest EEEPC 1005PE is no more powerful then a 90x series system. They all run a variant of the  1.6Ghz Atom cpu and offer virtually no additional performance over their predecessors.

In fact the only netbooks that do offer anything extra are ones that come with the Nvidia ION chipset and for those you're well into reasonable quality notebook price territory.

Essentially you're paying for a 3 year old system in a new shell. I think people have pretty much worked this out. That they're charging some pretty outrageous prices for the privilege...
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: B00tDisk on May 01, 2010, 07:26:18 PM
Quote from: the_leander;556174
That's just it though, the latest EEEPC 1005PE is no more powerful then a 90x series system. They all run a variant of the  1.6Ghz Atom cpu and offer virtually no additional performance over their predecessors.

In fact the only netbooks that do offer anything extra are ones that come with the Nvidia ION chipset and for those you're well into reasonable quality notebook price territory.

Essentially you're paying for a 3 year old system in a new shell. I think people have pretty much worked this out. That they're charging some pretty outrageous prices for the privilege.


$289 is outrageous?
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: persia on May 01, 2010, 07:27:21 PM
Yeah, I think the only uses for desktops left are the power users (couple of quad cores and hefty storage, graphics cards etc), DIYers and TVs (just throw one behind your TV), everything else will be done with notebook, netbook or pad....
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: B00tDisk on May 01, 2010, 07:35:00 PM
Quote from: persia;556188
Yeah, I think the only uses for desktops left are the power users (couple of quad cores and hefty storage, graphics cards etc), DIYers and TVs (just throw one behind your TV), everything else will be done with notebook, netbook or pad....


Probably so.  Still, I'm a desktop kind of guy myself (I make no bones about the alleged supremacy of the platform - you're spot on in your assessment of the future, I think) so as long as there's stuff to tinker with, I'm happy.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: the_leander on May 01, 2010, 08:04:47 PM
Quote from: B00tDisk;556187
£269 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-10-1-inch-Netbook-Processor-Bluetooth/dp/B00336EN9C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272699380&sr=8-4#moreAboutThisProduct) is outrageous?


Fixed that for you. And yes, just shy of £300 for a 3 year old piece of kit that when it came out initially cost £250 is an obscenity.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on May 01, 2010, 11:38:45 PM
I got my compaq mini for $178 us, but it has the single core 1.6ghz atom and came with only 1gig of ram.
The newer atoms are dual core 1.8ghz they really aren't much faster for what I use this for.
I think netbooks fill a niche, the small ultraportable, larger than a smartphone, much smaller than any widescreen notebook niche, and they do that quite well. When I got this there was a full notebook for $225 that was a reconditioned return with a full warranty; I didn't get it. I'm not looking to replace my desktop, and portable dvd players are much more suited to watching movies on the run.
The chipset doesn't matter to me as long as I can surf the net, complete online assignments for class, do email etc.etc.
The main requirements were small size and cheap. If you don't fit that niche don't even consider them.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Amiga_Nut on May 02, 2010, 02:24:28 AM
Netbook is just a buzz word for something that pretty much existed anyway since the late 90s.

IBM 240 series come to mind, as Does the later P2 based Libretto from Toshiba. Truth is Netbooks were just some cheap tat (from companies that always make cheap tat) to get a foothold in the market with marketing hype. And this allowed the already useless laptops to stop dropping in price.

I already owned an IBM x40 and could get anyone who wanted one in warranted mint condition for less than the price of some cobbled together rubbish from Acer et al LOL. Centrino CPU, extremely lightweight yet thoroughly useable 12" screen and excellent keyboard, optional dock for DVD/RW capability. ATI Radeon graphics.  The list goes on, Netbooks mean nothing to me, the x40 will outperform even the most expensive one out there and you can even run a business on it...now that's what you call a quality machine, and all years before ASUS and Acer marketing teams had their 'brain wave'  ;)

The only other thing is....Windows 7 on Intel Atom....who's stupid idea of a pairing was that then lol. If you have to run Windows for god sake run XP....nothing uglier than bloatware running on tiny elegant machines ;)

(a laptop with shared memory/integrated graphics IS useless)
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: B00tDisk on May 02, 2010, 02:25:48 AM
Quote from: the_leander;556196
Fixed that for you. And yes, just shy of £300 for a 3 year old piece of kit that when it came out initially cost £250 is an obscenity.



Let me fix that back for you and correct myself...$249 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152138)[/url] at newegg.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: tone007 on May 02, 2010, 03:21:52 AM
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;556231
Netbook is just a buzz word for something that pretty much existed anyway since the late 90s.

IBM 240 series come to mind, as Does the later P2 based Libretto from Toshiba.

Difference is back then you paid a high premium for the small size, now they're the cheaper item, big difference from a buyer's perspective.

Quote from: Amiga_Nut;556231
(a laptop with shared memory/integrated graphics IS useless)

Now you're just making things up.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: gazgod on May 02, 2010, 03:52:54 AM
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;556231

(a laptop with shared memory/integrated graphics IS useless)


What a load of cr@p. If that is true than I can't be typing this on a Aspire One 150 which I am :)

I bought this machine about 18 months ago to replace my occasionally used P120 Liberetto portable linux server and my Tadpole Sparcbook as a portable Solaris workstation, and it performs admirably with both a full install of Ubuntu and Open Solaris.

The size of a netbook to me is great or portability, I have a 17" laptop which is used for serious work, but it is a pain to lug around for checking email, web etc yes this netbook may not be gamers heaven or even great for long typing sessions but it runs my development databases, test web server and associated development tools, and still has room for lots of technical documentation, manuals and the all my source code going back 15 years and still has lots of room the the disc ( i didn't get the SSD version).

All in all it is one of the most versatile purchases I've made and unless I need to do a lot of typing absolutely need lots of CPU power my core 2 duo 17" beasty tends to sit in its bag.

My uses are far from typical I know but this machine is far from useless

Gaz
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: B00tDisk on May 02, 2010, 04:45:49 AM
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;556231

(a laptop with shared memory/integrated graphics IS useless)


Hmm.

A computer with a pool of memory used by both display and applications.

HMM.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: koshman on May 02, 2010, 10:01:47 AM
@ Amiga_Nut: Were you daydreaming again? Thinkpads X4x have Intel integrated graphics that share system RAM ....... Radeon LOL ....
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: ElPolloDiabl on May 02, 2010, 10:10:20 AM
So was the original post just opinion or was there something he heard or read?
What I've read is that they are still seeing strong growth in sales. Although with more low spec AMDs and Celeron/Pentium in the same price range the definition of a Netbook is blurred.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: gertsy on May 02, 2010, 01:04:32 PM
I just bought a cheapy NEW Acer emachine netbook for $238 AU with a $39 cash back to bring it back to $199 AU.
You can lookup online what $199 AU is in Euro/Pound Stirling and US $.  But in Aussie terms it's "Bugga all".
I got it to do portable email, browsing(Inc Amiga Org). I was hoping to get an Ipad to do the same but it's limitations are too many.
Works fine for online video.  But not 720p. (only has 600v).  But 720 don't stream very well on cable(10mbit) anyhow.
No DVD drive but who watches DVDs on anything other than a large screen.

The closest Laptop (14" with DVD) is over twice that.

Seems to be steaming along well thankyou.

Gertsy
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Amiga_Nut on May 02, 2010, 02:35:49 PM
Quote from: tone007;556236
Difference is back then you paid a high premium for the small size, now they're the cheaper item, big difference from a buyer's perspective.



Now you're just making things up.


Well if all you do is MSN and Facebook and stuff like that then sure a current laptop is fine, but so is a 1ghz IBM Pentium 3 laptop with 512mb of RAM and XP for about 5 quid on ebay. Hell you can do all the stuff that Xandros on a Netbook offers on a Celeron 400 and XP SP1. Just don't try and do anything like run a game that a 100 quid second hand 2005 model Dell Latitude D810 with ATI X600 graphics can do on any 350 quid laptop of today. like perhaps running Battlefield 2 from 2005 or Colin McRea 4 ;) Just because you can switch on AERO type effects in Vista doesn't mean it has a proper graphics card, that's just M$ bullshit coding to force people to buy new machines (with their crappy new OS) because a hardware transform and lighting GPU in a laptop was common place half a decade ago. There is a price to be paid for the cheap tech sold in PC World by the bucket load. Don't ever imagine a CPU and bucketloads of RAM makes a quality technical solution, nope.

Hmmm and ALL laptops were expensive back in the late 90s and early to mid 00s. The price difference between an IBM Thinkpad 240/240x with it's 9" LCD TFT and a slightly higher spec P2 full sized 13" screened SXGA TFT laptop with CD/DVD playback was no more of a difference in percentage terms between them as it is today between full sized crap and netbook crap :)

Even in 2005 you could get £600 for a second hand IBM T23 in good condition on ebay ;)
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Amiga_Nut on May 02, 2010, 02:46:05 PM
Quote from: koshman;556265
@ Amiga_Nut: Were you daydreaming again? Thinkpads X4x have Intel integrated graphics that share system RAM ....... Radeon LOL ....


Nope mine has an ATI Radeon chipset, which took a lot of hacking to force Win7 to use the XP driver lol. Sorry yes not the X40 but the previous x32 ie same as the T40 GPU (it was late give me a break man!) and with the same Centrino CPU as the x40 hence my mistake. Sprayed it electric blue years ago so who knows what it says under the hood now :)

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-59144.html
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: paolone on May 02, 2010, 04:53:02 PM
Quote from: mikrucio;555934
why would ANYONE get a netbook when there are iphones!

Because on netbooks you can do this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzb1T98pGzI), this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZAXpqCuQfc), and this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn8TW0gF5xQ). With the ease of use of a COMPUTER (with a keyboard, a big screen and all the USB expandibility you would love to have). Please let phones do phones' job, and computer do their own.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: tone007 on May 02, 2010, 05:40:41 PM
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;556307
Just don't try and do anything like run a game that a 100 quid second hand 2005 model Dell Latitude D810 with ATI X600 graphics can do on any 350 quid laptop of today.


I'm not much of a gamer, but I did a couple of months of WoW on a laptop with an Intel 945 chipset back in 2006 or so, and it ran nice and smooth with the quality settings turned up pretty high.  I'm sure games are more hardware intensive than they were then, but I imagine integrated graphics are more powerful as well.  Ideal? Probably not.  Usable? Most likely.
 
Quote from: Amiga_Nut;556307

Hmmm and ALL laptops were expensive back in the late 90s and early to mid 00s. The price difference between an IBM Thinkpad 240/240x with it's 9" LCD TFT and a slightly higher spec P2 full sized 13" screened SXGA TFT laptop with CD/DVD playback was no more of a difference in percentage terms between them as it is today between full sized crap and netbook crap :))


Right, all were more expensive than they are now, but the "ultraportable" ones cost more than the usual laptop.  Right before the netbook boom, Toshiba put out a Libretto that was something close to $2000 when you could get a regular laptop with better performance for $1000.  Netbooks are cheap compared to anything but the lowest-end laptops.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: jkirk on May 03, 2010, 12:39:31 AM
Quote from: yssing;556064
Regarding Amiga Forever, my copy of amiga forever runs on every wintel setup I have. So in the light of that, I guess any amd/intel/ms news would be equally relevant here then.

did you forget that amigaforever can be installed (with a minimal linux distro) as the primary os? also aros is a primary os too. as such in this context the discussion of netbooks are hw discussion. this is not an os discussion.

Quote
If I want Mac news I will go to the relevant places, if I want MS news, well you know what I mean right?

well see above this is a hardware discussion. if you wanna talk software go to those places.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: DamageX on May 03, 2010, 03:20:51 AM
Quote from: tone007;556350
I'm not much of a gamer, but I did a couple of months of WoW on a laptop with an Intel 945 chipset back in 2006 or so, and it ran nice and smooth with the quality settings turned up pretty high.  I'm sure games are more hardware intensive than they were then, but I imagine integrated graphics are more powerful as well.  Ideal? Probably not.  Usable? Most likely.

I heard that Intel is just now coming out with a chipset that works with Atom so they can finally ditch the 945. The problem with the 945 and Intel graphics in general is the very low polygon counts. The fastest version of the 945 can't handle as many triangles as a GeForce 2 (decade-old hardware). So it isn't just a matter of having to turn down the detail level or use a lower resolution, games with complex models will have low framerates at any resolution, even games that are now pretty old. Intel offered discounts to manufacturers who bought their CPUs if they bought their crappy graphics as well. The proliferation of crappy graphics reduced the number of choices available on the market for those of us who would prefer to have something that performs at least as well as a mid-range desktop card from several years ago. It is something I find frustrating.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: StormLord on May 03, 2010, 03:43:08 AM
just to comment to original post....

I have an Powerbook 12 at 1.5Ghz with 1.25GB RAM and 320GB HD that covers my needs for portability.
but its not faster than an average netbook with real Hard Disk. At most tasks my PB is about the same speed or just a bit faster than a single core atom, but when it comes to flash videos, oh well....
the difference in favor of netbooks are magnitudes!!!
I can't explain why, maybe flash implementation on PPCs are sh!t, maybe the bus of the G4 is strangling, but I can view without skipping only 360p youtube videos, 480p is BARELY watchable and 720p is worst than a slideshow...

as it comes to the format, my PB 12 is about 25% larger than a netbook, about 2x heavier, BUT 4:3 format with 768 pixels vertical resolution is the smallest but still comfort format ever existed. it just fits a full size keyboard!!! the golden line between usability and small factor.

I really can't understand why the display vendors abandoned this format... we could have 1280x1024 and have the same viewing factor as the 1024x600 at 10", and I'm sure laptop vendors with new electronic technology will had the the weight being only 25% more than a netbook.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: ElPolloDiabl on May 03, 2010, 03:56:07 AM
@above
The latest version of flash for Mac got graphics processor acceleration. They couldn't do this previously because Apple wouldn't let them at the APIs.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Arkhan on May 03, 2010, 06:10:34 AM
Quote from: CaptChaos;555929
This site really should just get around to changing its name to mac.org.

The amount of macsturbation threads really need to stop.


macsturbation.

That is the best word ive heard in awhile.

anyway, my blunt 2 cents: netbooks are dumb as hell.

I'm glad the little netbook fad is dying in favor of similarly priced but way better laptops.  seeing people gingerly poking at the keys of one on a screen the size of a slice of bread makes me cringe.  You're better off busting out a nintendo DS or a PSP man.

alot of people use them at my school.  They most often carry them in a giant bag with other stuff.   If you can carry that giant ass bag around, you can carry a real laptop around.

man.

I mean I guess they're neat to putter around the internet on, take notes, or look cute while computing on....ESPECIALLY if you have a pink netbook....which is the only kind I'd ever consider. (serious!)

but when you have Joe Linux pulling out his eee PC and rubbing his pole as he talks about how he put Linux on it and it's so great to do school work on it......thats where the line is crossed.

Doing programming work on a computer that tiny is for the effin' birds.  Trying to pretend your cheap netbook is a powerhouse and marvel of modern technology makes you look stupid and annoying at the same time.

Having all that crap open on a tiny screen is worse than doing work on a 13" CRT in 800x600.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: whabang on May 03, 2010, 11:32:48 AM
Netbooks are losing sales because the market is slowly getting filled.

There is limited use for a small system which is incompatible with applications requiring 800x600 displays, decent 3d chips, or *gasp* performance.

The best selling products the last few years has been 13" to 16" notebooks with low-end discrete graphics chips (non Intel/Via) like the Geforce 8400M and 9600M. Those are actively becoming obsolete, and users are looking to replace them.

Netbooks, on the other hand, are still sold with 1.6 GHz Atoms, and five year-old 945 chipsets. While it is amazing that Intel has been marketing the same product for five years, even though it's video part was obsolete at release, it simply does not give any reason for upgrading.

Give me a netbook with good battery life, a decent i7 CPU, a video chip that can play modern video games at 1680x1050 resolution, AND a good looking docking station, then I will get one. :D
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: paolone on May 03, 2010, 03:08:09 PM
Quote from: whabang;556418
1. Netbooks are losing sales because the market is slowly getting filled.

2. Give me a netbook with good battery life, a decent i7 CPU, a video chip that can play modern video games at 1680x1050 resolution, AND a good looking docking station, then I will get one. :D

1. Finally, a glimpse of smartness in this thread. Netbooks sales are slowing down due to the simple fact that everyone who needed one, just bought it. The others are buying used ones from people that thought they were buying a real notebook, instead of a high-specified low-power, low-performance product.

2. That wouldn't be a netbook.

I simply can't understand why someone still compare netbooks to regular computers or even to iPhones. They are different objects and they must do different duties. There's no need to buy a pricey hi-end laptop to send an email or to browse the web, so for these simple tasks a netbook is OK. But there is also absolutely no motivation to buy a netbook if you want to run Premiere, Photoshop, inDesign, Autocad or whatever hi-performance application. The only operating system that really fits well on that platform is - incredible, eh? - AROS.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: tone007 on May 03, 2010, 03:14:30 PM
Photoshop runs fine on my netbooks.  About the only thing I wouldn't want to try is video editing.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: paolone on May 03, 2010, 03:32:11 PM
Quote from: tone007;556433
Photoshop runs fine on my netbooks.  About the only thing I wouldn't want to try is video editing.

Yep. Version 6.1 still runs fine. I never tried newer ones though (lack of license...). OpenOffice is still good on netbooks, too. But MPlayer and Janus-UAE are better ;-)
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on May 03, 2010, 04:44:44 PM
Quote from: whabang;556418
Netbooks are losing sales because the market is slowly getting filled.

There is limited use for a small system which is incompatible with applications requiring 800x600 displays, decent 3d chips, or *gasp* performance.

The best selling products the last few years has been 13" to 16" notebooks with low-end discrete graphics chips (non Intel/Via) like the Geforce 8400M and 9600M. Those are actively becoming obsolete, and users are looking to replace them.

Netbooks, on the other hand, are still sold with 1.6 GHz Atoms, and five year-old 945 chipsets. While it is amazing that Intel has been marketing the same product for five years, even though it's video part was obsolete at release, it simply does not give any reason for upgrading.

Give me a netbook with good battery life, a decent i7 CPU, a video chip that can play modern video games at 1680x1050 resolution, AND a good looking docking station, then I will get one. :D



Like I said netbooks are a niche not everyone needs or wants one. As for campatibility I have found very very little that won't run on my compaq mini. and it has a 1024 by 600 display by the way.
The main problem with this chipset and modern games is shaders, not polygon pushing power. the 945 does not have shaders so any game that needs wont work.
That said I use my netbook literally every day. I'll probably kill it from overuse if anything.


Making fun of a netbook for its lack of gaming ablity is kinda like making fun of an xbox 360 for its poor office suite benchmark scores, or a desktop machine for its poor portability. I do run lots of emulation and open source games on mine though.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: whabang on May 03, 2010, 05:12:56 PM
@KThunder

I think you misunderstood me. I was not making fun of netbooks; I was merely pointing out why sales are going down, which was the topic the last time I checked. :)

Unfortunately, many netbooks are sold with 1024*576 displays, giving problems with a lot of applications that refuse to run on lower resolutions than 1024*768 or 800*600.

@paolone

Why not? Is there some kind of limit on how powerful a computer may be before it can no longer be called a netbook?
The main features of a netbook is portability, battery life, and internet connectivity. Any computer sold for less than 300 USD, and being designed with that in mind could be classified as a netbook.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on May 03, 2010, 05:54:53 PM
my comment on making fun wasn't aimed at you. there are several posts here that talk about performance etc. that are totally missing the point of netbooks it was aimed at them.

I can't comment on all netbooks but mine has run everything I've thrown at it. some of the older netbooks may have problems but mine is pretty average. newer ones have even better displays, dual core cpu's, and more memory.

some internet discussions make very little sense (not saying anything about you, your comments have been pretty good) like when people sit around discussing some product none of them actually own or have any direct experience with.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on May 03, 2010, 06:03:20 PM
Quote from: whabang;556418
...still sold with 1.6 GHz Atoms, and five year-old 945 chipsets. While it is amazing that Intel has been marketing the same product for five years, even though it's video part was obsolete at release...


you did write this though, Intel has not been marketing the 945 for 5 years. It is still available but they have much newer chipsets the newest GMA chipsets have shaders, much faster clocks etc. If intel really marketed video chips and developed them as much as they could, with their chip fabrication capabilities nvidia and ati would have a tough time competing.

they have upgraded significantly from the 945/950 I ran some benches in our office computers with one of the newer chipsets and they really weren't too bad.

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-014257.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: tone007 on May 03, 2010, 07:14:42 PM
Quote from: whabang;556455

Why not? Is there some kind of limit on how powerful a computer may be before it can no longer be called a netbook?
The main features of a netbook is portability, battery life, and internet connectivity. Any computer sold for less than 300 USD, and being designed with that in mind could be classified as a netbook.


I'm betting if you put an i7 in a netbook, you'd lose the battery life aspect, and if you put a bigger battery in, you'd need a bigger case, so you'd lose the portability aspect.  Sounds kind of like a laptop to me.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: DamageX on May 04, 2010, 03:10:46 AM
Quote from: KThunder;556466
If intel really marketed video chips and developed them as much as they could, with their chip fabrication capabilities nvidia and ati would have a tough time competing.

Riiiiight... I'll believe that when I see it.
Quote
there are several posts here that talk about performance etc. that are totally missing the point of netbooks it was aimed at them.

Just because netbooks are not focused on performance doesn't mean we can't talk about their (lack of) performance in comparison with other products.
Quote
The main problem with this chipset and modern games is shaders, not polygon pushing power. the 945 does not have shaders so any game that needs wont work.

You don't know what you're talking about. For all it's worth, GMA950 "supports" shader model 3. The question is not why it can't run modern games, the question is why it can't even run older games at a playable speed, and the answer which I already pointed out is polygon count. GMA950: 10Mtriangles at best, GeForce 2 MX: 17Mtriangles.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on May 04, 2010, 05:25:17 PM
Quote from: DamageX;556544
Riiiiight... I'll believe that when I see it.

Just because netbooks are not focused on performance doesn't mean we can't talk about their (lack of) performance in comparison with other products.

You don't know what you're talking about. For all it's worth, GMA950 "supports" shader model 3. The question is not why it can't run modern games, the question is why it can't even run older games at a playable speed, and the answer which I already pointed out is polygon count. GMA950: 10Mtriangles at best, GeForce 2 MX: 17Mtriangles.


Intel has far more and better chip fabrication facilities than nvidia, ati, and matrox combined. their focus is on cpu's, chipsets, and then video chips, they don't seem to care about performance video chips. just because they don't care doesn't mean they can't. they provide basic video.

You can compare the performance with whatever you want, it doesn't mean it will make any sense. netbooks aren't very good supercomputers, or servers, or smartphones either.

According to the links I provided above the 950 has shader 2.0 support but no hardware t&l so most directx shader stuff will not use shaders. vista aero etc. will but that isnt game support.
I do know what I am talking about, I am sitting here typing on a system with a 945 chipset, I have run halo, quake III, and many other games on it including open source games with shader support which i had to turn off. all these games ran at playable speeds, with hardly any framerate issues. My athlon64 system with geforce 8 series video is much better and can run any shader stuff, but this is fine for light gaming.

do you have a 950 or 945 chipset system? have you actually run games on one? do you know what you are talking about?
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: pyrre on May 04, 2010, 07:01:00 PM
Hmmm...
My girlfriends old Siemens laptop.
Pentium M 1.4ghz, 512 ram. ++ crappy cpu, way to little ram....
No longer running xp, it gets bluescreen every time i turn on the wifi radio. Is now installed with linux. Radio works perfectly. still has some (limmited) battery time. but it plays DVD fine, no laggy playback, plays files over network. connects to TVs. (only 720P though)...
What more would i need....?
And the best part, i got it for free.... :D
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: whabang on May 04, 2010, 08:12:32 PM
Actually, Intel is marketing the G945, as it was the only available platform for the Atom for quite some time. :) If they'd built the platform on the X3100 then the video performance would probably be better.

The GMA 950 has no hardware vertex shaders (tile-based rendering, und so weiter), but has slow but functional pixel shaders. The driver reports shader 2.0 compatibility, at least on my server, which admittedly runs old drivers, but anyway. :)

At the time of its' release, the GMA 950 had quite impressive performance for an integrated chip (look at my post history for my first impressions of it), and while it required a fast CPU, it was actually able to play most games, albeit on "low" settings.
The Atom CPU sacrificed performance for battery life, thus the 950, which by the time of the Atom's release was getting old, was crippled even further.

Regardless, the 950 has a low power usage, which justified its' use in the Atom platform. I just don't see why Intel hasn't tried to at least use the X3100 or the 4500 and developed a new platform. As I stated earlier, I am convinced that it is the lack of recent development is a main reason for the stagnation of the netbook market.

On a side note, Intel is working quite hard on improving the performance of their 3D-chips, and since they integrated the GPU's into the CPUs, they are actually beating low-end video cards like the nVidia 8400. With the rate they are improving the GPU performance, I wouldn't be surprised if Intel catches up sometime during the next five years. Considering that MS is trying to create a DirectX computing platform, it's not unthinkable.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: DamageX on May 05, 2010, 05:55:39 AM
Quote from: KThunder;556643
Intel has far more and better chip fabrication facilities than nvidia, ati, and matrox combined.

lol, especially considering that nVidia has TSMC manufacture their parts and AMD spun off their manufacturing operations.
Quote
no hardware t&l

Exactly. It's missing a decade-old feature. That's my whole point.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-950.2177.0.html
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: KThunder on May 05, 2010, 04:00:27 PM
lol you are dancing around my point.
like them or not Intel has some of the most advanced and capable chip fabrication facilities in the world and can produce literally any design they want. the don't directly compete in high end video chipsets for reasons of focus or antitrust avoidance.
this doesn't mean they are incapable, incompetant of whatever. chipset video shares a die with other motherboard functions so there are limited transisters available for video function. therefore there will not be all of the functions available for video t&l shaders etc.
my whole point is have you actually used a 945 or 950 chipset system to provide a real objective view
the 945 in my objective view provides more than sufficient capabilities for a netbook for all internet and office software and older and limited gaming. I have actually run benchmarks on this and other systems and can campare them realisticly. I have this 945 based netbook as well as pcs with 845g, 865g, geforce2, geforcefx5200, geforce6200, geforce 8100, radeon 9800pro, and radeon hd 3200.
I have run many games like halo, quake III, elder scrolls marrowind, as well as many opensource games such as cube2 sauerbraten, open arena, and others and many demos and benchmarks including glexcess.
I have tested these systems and played games on them I can tell you for real and honestly if they work and what they can do.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: the_leander on May 06, 2010, 02:37:40 AM
Quote from: B00tDisk;556232
Let me fix that back for you and correct myself...$249 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152138)[/url] at newegg.


US prices, now tell me how much that'd cost with import tax and VAT. Oh and £20 or so for a replacement charger.

Not living in the US, that price is not available to me without risking a visit from Customs.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: ChuckT on May 06, 2010, 02:55:24 AM
The problem with Notebooks is heat, not being able to expand or change your system easily and one of the things I've researched about them is they don't last as long as desktop computers.  What I've also discovered through research is that most netbook users use them at home.  So why didn't they just get a laptop or desktop?

If I buy a PC, I believe I will have to start with Linux because Windows is really getting on my nerves; I've almost had enough with Internet Exporer crashing every day, viruses that appear even when you are running virus software, Outlook Express Crashing and losing my email.  This is actually true and I'm not making it up.

I'll go to use system restore and even though it is enabled, Windows tells me that I can't restore.

I'm not excited with Windows and I'm tired of the system registry which is why I want Linux which isn't supposed to have one.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: ElPolloDiabl on May 06, 2010, 03:03:56 AM
RE: Any design they want

They can't produce an itanium. They can't produce a GPGPU. Really there is probably only a handful of engineers (spread across the big 3) who can make things go faster. Intel's graphics division seems to have Cyrix's philosophy, make em cheap, but fast enough at office programs.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: the_leander on May 06, 2010, 03:43:35 AM
Quote from: ChuckT;556863
The problem with Notebooks is heat


Actually of all the things netbooks commonly suffer from (thin casings on them that allow too much flex which in turn damages the motherboards, for instance) heat related issues rank fairly low.

Quote from: ChuckT;556863
not being able to expand or change your system easily


Same goes for laptops. But here's the thing: You don't buy one of these things for upgradability. You buy them for portability and price.

Quote from: ChuckT;556863
and one of the things I've researched about them is they don't last as long as desktop computers.  


You get what you pay for. You buy an el cheapo desktop and you're tempting fate every bit as much as with a poor quality netbook. It also has to be said that netbooks are subject to stresses that a desktop system rarely, if ever encounters in its service life.

The original netbook brief of small cheap computing meant that they were all but disposable, if you dropped them, meh who cares.

Quote from: ChuckT;556863
What I've also discovered through research is that most netbook users use them at home.


Care to provide citation for this?

Quote from: ChuckT;556863
So why didn't they just get a laptop or desktop?



Size, cost and what they intend to run on it. You don't need some C2D 17ins laptop if all you want is something to browse the net occasionally.

Quote from: ChuckT;556863

I'm not excited with Windows and I'm tired of the system registry which is why I want Linux which isn't supposed to have one.


I've got some very bad news for you. Just about every modern OS that runs on a variety of different hardware platforms has some form of database to help with driver config. MacOS, Linux, Windows, Solaris, BSD, hell even BeOS.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: DamageX on May 06, 2010, 07:48:48 AM
Quote from: KThunder;556778
lol you are dancing around my point.

I don't know what your point is. I stated that polygon counts are a serious weakness of Intel's graphics and you contradicted me.
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this doesn't mean they are incapable, incompetant of whatever.

No, you're right, I'm sure Intel has the resources to be competitive at a higher level in the graphics market. But they aren't doing it, instead they have been flooding the market with cheap low-end products. If their integrated graphics is good enough for you, that's fine, but I would rather avoid it because I believe the other vendors' parts are better. I don't play that many PC games, but I play Half-life 2 and some other source-engine games and these old Intel parts without transform & lighting just don't get the job done. I had a laptop with the 915 chipset which is almost the same thing and most maps would run really slow. Maybe the 400Mhz version of the 945 would just barely suffice, but it is not clear which laptops (if any) have the 400Mhz version as opposed to the lower clocked versions. Further, since it is made with the old 130nm manufacturing process it would also be less efficient than something like a GeForce Go 7300.

I think the Pentium M was a great CPU for small laptops and I was just annoyed at the time that so many of them were stuck with the GMA 900 for graphics. That's why I have to rant about it, you see.
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: whabang on May 06, 2010, 09:03:31 AM
Quote from: Fanscale;556864
RE: Any design they want

They can't produce an itanium. They can't produce a GPGPU. Really there is probably only a handful of engineers (spread across the big 3) who can make things go faster. Intel's graphics division seems to have Cyrix's philosophy, make em cheap, but fast enough at office programs.


Which is why they have a 40% market share on the video market. :)

Not developing/supporting an API for GPGPU operations does not make the chips incapable of handling those operations. Last time I checked, the recent Intel video solutions had programmable shaders and directX-capability; it's just as with the slow speed that those chips run with, combined with the fact that they do not have their own RAM, which makes them horribly unsuited for GP computing.

Oh, and Cyrix actually had the integer performance crown for a while in the 90's. ;)
Title: Re: Netbooks Are Losing Steam?
Post by: Arkhan on May 07, 2010, 10:57:27 PM
Quote from: ChuckT;556863
The problem with Notebooks is heat, not being able to expand or change your system easily and one of the things I've researched about them is they don't last as long as desktop computers.

I have a few NEC Laptops from 1998 that still function as if they were new.
The problem isn't the hardware, its clumsy people tossing them around like toys, eating near them, smoking, etc.

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  What I've also discovered through research is that most netbook users use them at home.  So why didn't they just get a laptop or desktop?

What research?  I see about 100 netbooks a day at school.    Seems like maybe most people use em on the go.


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If I buy a PC, I believe I will have to start with Linux because Windows is really getting on my nerves; I've almost had enough with Internet Exporer crashing every day,

Stop using Internet Explorer?

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 viruses that appear even when you are running virus software,

Well if you run virus software, thats why you have viruses!  :roflmao:
Do you have a proper firewall set up?  If not you WILL get viruses, and the ANTI virus software is there to notice, and destroy it.   Resident scanning, etc.  doesn't prevent it from arriving, it just prevents it from staying.

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Outlook Express Crashing and losing my email.  This is actually true and I'm not making it up.

Stop using Outlook Express?


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I'll go to use system restore and even though it is enabled, Windows tells me that I can't restore.

Did you set up restore points?   Turning it on and not having a restore point wont accomplish anything.

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I'm not excited with Windows and I'm tired of the system registry which is why I want Linux which isn't supposed to have one.


Emmm.  Stick with Windows.  Linux will probably give you more issues.