Posted on 10/27/2009 9:53:03 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Netbook gravy train starts to slow as euphoria fades
Netbook shipments have started cooling after witnessing an explosive surge since late last year as customers started realizing its limits and looking for portable and affordable alternatives for full-size laptops.
According to Xia Li, vice-president of Lenovo Group, growth in netbook sales during the second half of this year has slowed as consumers have started becoming more rational in their purchases.
"Netbook sales surged in the past as consumers bought the product as gifts or as first laptops," he said. But with consumers starting to realize the limits of the products, the growth has started to slow, Xia said.
He expected the growth would decline back to the industry average of accounting for 20 percent of the overall PC market in China.
Designed to perform basic tasks like word processing, netbooks have received a good response from consumers all over the world. Ever since Taiwanese firm Asus launched its first netbook Eee PC in 2007, the product has became the market engine of the world's PC industry that was severely impacted by the economic slowdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at chinadaily.com.cn ...
Ping!
I imagine there’d be headaches looking at such a screen.
A netbook is a good second computer for taking on the road, but the small screen and keyboard would be a pain (literally) if it was your main machine.
The things have their limit. They are great entry laptops, for kids, and good for mobility when you don’t have the space or the strength to handle larger notebooks but overall that is where their usefulness stops.
In the end they will fill a niche and not much more.
Plus and minus’s
Plus: 9 hrs battery life, WinXP, runs any application you would normally run on a laptop. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB and ethernet ports.
Minus: No DVD/Cd drive, only 10.1 inch screen; Atom processor is not suffient for game play. Need external DVD player to watch DVD movies.
Perfectly adequate for doing homework, business work on a small unit that travels very well. Or, use your home PC to do the work, load it on the Netbook and take that on the road.
Love’em.
I think the standard smart phone renders the netbook pretty pointless. And if laptops are your thing it seems much better to shell out a little more and get a machine with a bigger screen and some decent power.
I think the slow is because it filled an empy niche. Once the niche was filled, like a flooded ditch, the sales rate slowed to match replacement/upgrade levels.
My wife just got one. 7 hours of battery life, a screen big enough to surf, a keyboard big enough to type 90%normal speed and small enough to fit in a cargo pocket. What is not to like?
Lots of other upside - Linux screams, basic apps are free, and Win7/64 makes Vista look glacial. Next upgrade is going to be a solid-state HD. They're coming down.
Bottom line - it's a low-powered machine that sacrifices processor speed for portability and long battery life. Seems like a good compromise to me - YMMV.
We have all three, iphones, fullsize laptops and a netbook. Sometimes you want a different form factor.
I’ve got two in the house. I bought a 9” Asus and I couldn’t type! I spent half my time hitting the backspace button. I bought an Acer aspire 10.1” and it’s great.
I just watched Woot.com sell off a bunch of Aspire One’s just like mine for $224.95 shipped.
The advantage to these is that they are great for internet browsing, portability, and great battery life. Not a replacement for a “real” laptop or computer. I have different missions for each, and they are both great for their respective missions.
I don’t get headaches from reading these small screens and I need reading glasses to read written type. I don’t need them for the netbooks.
I have a netbook and a regular 15” laptop. I use the netbook for travel. It provides all I need without sore arms.
My wife got one for work because she liked that it would fit into a purse. Now I never see her using it. :)
I got a 17” laptop for work. I use it every day.
We’ve been testing a demo netbook from AT&T for a few weeks. Not a laptop substitute, but good for occasional remote service calls for after-hours support personnel. Makes a fine Citrix terminal for remote support too.
Some of my colleagues find they've gotten used to the smaller keyboards on the 9" notebooks but I found it difficult so I opted for a slightly bigger platform. Again, YMMV.
They will continue to drag the cost of laptops down and down and down as people demand the same functionality if a slightly larger package for a similar price. Like the clones, these things blew out the pretenses that were propping up the prices on entry level laptops.
I love them, most come with graphics cards that support an extra monitor. For those that don’t know dual monitor mode is very effective. You can work on both screens separately and move the mouse from screen to screen. Net books are the way to go for most uses.
“Sometimes you want a different form factor”
Ha, aint that the truth.
I love the iphone between that and google docs I never have to bring a laptop with me, even when I travel. We also use a mac book, I’m a bit less enthused about that product. Mostly though I stick with a PC that runs ubuntu.
People have figured out that the Atom chip is very limited and is in fact a bottleneck for many applications beyond the basics. Personally, I’m waiting for the new Pine Trail chip from Intel.
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