Netbooks Are Losing Steam?

[B00tDisk]

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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.