Netbooks Are Losing Steam?

[B00tDisk]

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.

[the_leander]

£269 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.

[KThunder]

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.

[Amiga_Nut]

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)

[B00tDisk]

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[/url] at newegg.

[tone007]

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.

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

Now you're just making things up.

[gazgod]

(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

[B00tDisk]

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

Hmm.

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

HMM.

[koshman]

@ Amiga_Nut: Were you daydreaming again? Thinkpads X4x have Intel integrated graphics that share system RAM ....... Radeon LOL ....

[ElPolloDiabl]

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.

[gertsy]

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

[Amiga_Nut]

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

[Amiga_Nut]

@ 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

[paolone]

why would ANYONE get a netbook when there are iphones!

Because on netbooks you can do this, this, and this. 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.

[tone007]

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.
 

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.

[jkirk]

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.

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.