Netbooks Are Losing Steam?

[djrikki]

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?

[odin]

Macsturbation  Ha! I love it!

iSock?

[KThunder]

Thanks no, it'd probably cost a grand !

[mdv2000]

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

[stefcep2]

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.

[alexatkin]

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.

[DamageX]

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.

[kvasir]

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...

[the_leander]

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.

 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.

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...

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.

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.

[EvilGuy]

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..

[CaptChaos]

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.

[Karlos]

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?

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.

[the_leander]

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...

[B00tDisk]

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?

[persia]

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....

[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.