Netbook Industry Shutting Down After Being Squeezed by iPad and MacBook Air

[Lil Chillbil]

The atom was an ok processor if you just wanted a netbook for a note taking machine

[G51989]

Originally Posted by Eidorian

A Chromebook is now hitting $249 running ARM and I believe you might be able to pick one up for $199 soon if not now. Samsung also had a mobile Celeron dual core floating around for some time. A Sandy Bridge based Celeron is nothing to look down at.

Very much so, for a basic user they can be an awesome deal. And those Sandy Bridge celerons have lots of muscle for how little power they consume.

[Lil Chillbil]

Originally Posted by G51989

Very much so, for a basic user they can be an awesome deal. And those Sandy Bridge celerons have lots of muscle for how little power they consume.

god its 2013 and were still talking about celeron processors

[G51989]

Originally Posted by Lil Chillbil

god its 2013 and were still talking about celeron processors

Whats wrong with them?

[Lil Chillbil]

Originally Posted by G51989

Whats wrong with them?

Well nothing really I just thought that intel had abandoned them around 2008

[thekev]

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

No, I'm talking about the 6" ones that are supposed to come out this year. The Note II is fine at the size it is now, but it shouldn't get any bigger than that. Not for a cellphone anyway.

They're trying to push it to fill as many roles as possible. For me once it becomes uncomfortable in my pocket, it loses all practicality.

Originally Posted by G51989

Uh, these were sub 300 dollar machines ( a good one was little more ). Limitations are the name of the game at razor think profit margins.

And under Linux, they actually did very well.

Linux may align quite well in terms of cost to implement depending on how they handle support, and it can run on really lean hardware. I kind of wonder why they didn't stick with that. Going by comments a lot of people who read this site don't check other tech sites, so by the time such news filters in here, all they read is doom and gloom on such products.

[iEnvy]

Originally Posted by Lil Chillbil

The atom was an ok processor if you just wanted a netbook for a note taking machine

Intel couldn't give two **its about the atom processor. They could easily be blamed for the death of the netbook as well as other scenarios.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by iEnvy

Intel couldn't give two **its about the atom processor. They could easily be blamed for the death of the netbook as well as other scenarios.

How can they be blamed for the death of the netbook? They out perform the ARM processors in the same category, they just consume more power.

The netbook was a Fad because it was just a step in the evoultion of portable computing, nothing more nothing else.

There is a market, and Chromebooks will fill it.

[JohnnyComeLatly]

Originally Posted by Amazing Iceman

I do most of my work on iWork for iPad, and it does more than enough of what I need. MS Office has macros, but I would rather use something like Bento or FileMaker Pro than a MS Office with macros and possibly a virus too.

Even on my MAC, I have both iWork and MS Office. I use Excel only for a special spreadsheet with macros that I must use for accounting purposes, which I'm planning to replace soon with an alternative that would run on both my MAC and iPad (Possibly FileMaker). For everything else I use Numbers and Pages.
When sharing documents, I send PDF files, not the original Pages or Numbers file.

Thanks for your comments. It bears looking into iWork again, as I haven't really looked at it in probably 5-6 years. I did briefly try it in ~2008 time frame when I bought my iMac and that's when I bought Office for Mac. I haven't been able to justify spending the $120 on Office 2011, and just keep using the old version when I get newer Macs.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by Lil Chillbil

Well nothing really I just thought that intel had abandoned them around 2008

" Celeron " is just a brand name for a budget and value processor, its not like they've been using the same chips for 15 years, Celerons are damn good low powered processors. They pack a huge punch for what they are.

ARM has its place, but I think people really need to realize that even a low end celeron found in a 300 dollar Wal Mart Netbook or Laptop can really hand it to even an iPad ARM CPU as far as pure performance goes.

[samcraig]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

Oh, I see. I guess they were just super cheap to make and...

Oh...hmmm.

Well now that's funny. That sure looks like they WEREN'T super cheap but were just being sold at an un-sustainable price to try and undercut regular PC laptops which actually weren't that much more expensive.

So what we had were a bunch of tiny, crappy laptops that cost almost the same as regular-sized laptops.

The only difference was that they had a bad business plan attached to them. Great distinction.

Flawed logic. Do you know how much these netbooks cost to make? Just because they weren't profitable doesn't mean they were expensive. Isn't it possible that it cost $250 to make and was being sold for $250? But when you factor in the sales channel/etc they were being sold at a loss. That's very different that not being "super cheap" to make.

So yes - there's a difference between a netbook and a macbook air. And it's very probable that there is/was a large margin in cost differential to make them.

[crewkid89]

This has to be the umpteenth time that the Netbook was declared dead. What Acer is saying doesn't even make sense. They just came out with the C7 Chromebook for $199. I don't care that it says chromebook on the box instead of Netbook. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... I just got my Samsung series 3 2 months ago and it is fantastic at what it does. I would say that the ARM platform is a huge jump forward for the form factor. It is significantly lighter than my dell mini 9 with a much better sized screen and keyboard. When I need to use it outside of wifi range, out comes the iPhone to tether and I just keep going.

I think Chrome OS might just save the Netbook.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by crewkid89

I think Chrome OS might just save the Netbook.

The " Netbook " just evolved into slightly larger cheap laptops. Its possible to pick up a totally usable brand new laptop for 220 dollars these days.

[surjavarman]

Seriously every notebook is dead except for these: 13 MBA, 15 MBP retina and the 12-15" pc laptops in the $300-$700 range.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by surjavarman

Seriously every notebook is dead except for these: 13 MBA, 15 MBP retina and the 12-15" pc laptops in the $300-$700 range.

Source?

There are tons of Laptops to choose from in the high end and performance range, Apple doesn't even make performance laptops, so clearly high end Windows laptops arent dead.

[Eidorian]

Originally Posted by G51989

The " Netbook " just evolved into slightly larger cheap laptops. Its possible to pick up a totally usable brand new laptop for 220 dollars these days.

Netbooks have just evolved and I think with CES rolling around we are going to see more x86 based low priced 11.6" sized tablet/notebook computers around. AMD, Intel, and nVidia are all pushing to get quad cores into the 5-15W space. The raw performance per core might not be there but slap in 16-64 GB of flash storage and you will have load balancing galore.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by Eidorian

Netbooks have just evolved and I think with CES rolling around we are going to see more x86 based low priced 11.6" sized tablet/notebook computers around. AMD, Intel, and nVidia are all pushing to get quad cores into the 5-15W space. The raw performance per core might not be there but slap in 16-64 GB of flash storage and you will have load balancing galore.

Indeed, I still think we'll see Netbook Form factors around, as well as the convertibles and straight up tablets, you just won't see tiny laptops at Wal Mart for 200 bucks anymore, you'll see tiny laptops for the 400-500 range, which will be the " low end " ultrabooks.

Indeed, I think most of the new stuff will be Intel based, their next generation of chips is looking very promising.

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by samcraig

Flawed logic. Do you know how much these netbooks cost to make? Just because they weren't profitable doesn't mean they were expensive. Isn't it possible that it cost $250 to make and was being sold for $250? But when you factor in the sales channel/etc they were being sold at a loss. That's very different that not being "super cheap" to make.

So yes - there's a difference between a netbook and a macbook air. And it's very probable that there is/was a large margin in cost differential to make them.

I'm not sure why you keep dragging specific mac models into this, we're talking about netbooks and laptops as a category, so let's compare oranges to oranges, as it were.

An Acer Netbook: $330

An Acer Laptop: $480

So my argument is: The ONLY advantage the netbook has is that you save $150. If Acer was saving $150 to make it, then great, that's a business model. But based on what I'm hearing, they weren't saving that much. A lot of that $150 was them just eating a loss.

So as a business, what's the freak'n point? This is why netbooks failed and it has nothing to do with Macbook Airs.

[thehustleman]

Netbooks suck,I always hated them.

Didn't take jobs to know they would eventually die off, they were terrible.

[Eidorian]

Originally Posted by G51989

Indeed, I still think we'll see Netbook Form factors around, as well as the convertibles and straight up tablets, you just won't see tiny laptops at Wal Mart for 200 bucks anymore, you'll see tiny laptops for the 400-500 range, which will be the " low end " ultrabooks.

Indeed, I think most of the new stuff will be Intel based, their next generation of chips is looking very promising.

The $199 tablet is now viable and Google/ASUS along with Acer, who did not appear to plan on doing so until recently, are targeting $99-129. Intel and AMD are both rolling out their next generation ultra low power x86 chips in 2013. AMD might even beat Intel to the punch with Atom in 22nm not showing up until Q3 2013. That means sub-$400 x86 hardware in a tablet form factor is more than likely and now more powerful. Flash prices are only sweetening the pot along with cloud storage subscriptions.

My only major concern is going to be display quality. CPU/GPU performance is there and battery life too.

The x86 netbook is evolving into the x86 tablet/netbook along with Windows RT or Windows 8 across both platforms. We even have VLC coming to the Windows 8 store! Everyone wants to compete for this space.

[apple-win]

Originally Posted by thehustleman

Netbooks suck,I always hated them.

Didn't take jobs to know they would eventually die off, they were terrible.

Netbook is just a thing. Why you hate it? Do you own one?

[samcraig]

My apologies. I thought you were riffing off the other people that were dragging the MacBook Air into the conversation as if that were an actual comparison.

Originally Posted by Small White Car

I'm not sure why you keep dragging specific mac models into this, we're talking about netbooks and laptops as a category, so let's compare oranges to oranges, as it were.

An Acer Netbook: $330

An Acer Laptop: $480

So my argument is: The ONLY advantage the netbook has is that you save $150. If Acer was saving $150 to make it, then great, that's a business model. But based on what I'm hearing, they weren't saving that much. A lot of that $150 was them just eating a loss.

So as a business, what's the freak'n point? This is why netbooks failed and it has nothing to do with Macbook Airs.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by thehustleman

Netbooks suck,I always hated them.

Didn't take jobs to know they would eventually die off, they were terrible.

They aren't dying off, the form factor will keep going. The name and price point won't

[Eidorian]

Originally Posted by G51989

They aren't dying off, the form factor will keep going. The name and price point won't

I have mixed feelings on the price point. You might drop the keyboard and the mechanical hard drive but then you get a tablet right? But it is x86 based and priced like a netbook. Acer comes close with their W510 but I do not have much clout when that bugger is $549.

[G51989]

Originally Posted by Eidorian

I have mixed feelings on the price point. You might drop the keyboard and the mechanical hard drive but then you get a tablet right? But it is x86 based and priced like a netbook. Acer comes close with their W510 but I do not have much clout when that bugger is $549.

I think there will always be a market for real keyboards built in, and I think lots of people still want tons of storage, so I still think we'll see tiny laptops with mechanical HDDs and a decent celeron or Atom CPU for under 400 dollars.