The vast majority of people buy solely or mostly on price. On that basis, it's "good enough". Never mind the weird issues they'll have, "all of them do that anyway".
Yes... crappy Windows laptops are good enough for the price... for some people.
For other people... like MacRumors user gpat and myself... we'd like a little more refinement.
And that's what he said... a wishlist of things Windows laptops could improve on.
I'm thinking "commercial channel" basically means third-party resellers - e.g Best Buy, Office Depot. That seems to be who the NPD Group is trying to sell their services to, at least looking at their website.
It would certainly make more sense, given the relative numbers.
As a side note - a quarter or so of our faculty really like the Surface. iPads and Android tablets are neck in neck, but both are definitely in second place.
You're describing a lot of people.Chromebooks have their target, people that only needs mail, browsing and no much else.
When her White Macbook died, my wife started to use the Chromebook Google gave in Google I/O and she has been delaying buying a new laptop because she don't need much else.
Chromebook is not a real laptop. It's an overpriced toy that is essentially useless in the real world. Macbooks continue to dominate in the real laptop market segment with the world's most advanced operating system OS X.
It is really sad that there isn't a single PC OEM that can figure out the 5-6 simple rules used by Apple to build a good computer, and scale that down to $300-$800 territory. It is easily doable, but nobody is doing it.
No nonsensical touchscreen, just a good trackpad, good keyboard, decent screen, generous battery and pure SSD. It should be easy to build a $400 laptop with these rules, less powerful hardware than the Macbook Air but still plenty powerful for the common user.
But no, nobody understands it. So the PC industry deserves this.
As a side note - a quarter or so of our faculty really like the Surface. iPads and Android tablets are neck in neck, but both are definitely in second place.
That's mathematically impossible!
I think that tablets - including the iPad - are also overpriced and useless toys. And I don't see where OS X is more advanced than the competition. I like OS X, but it's not in any regard more advanced or better than Linux, FreeBSD or Windows. That's just marketing nonsense.
What's funny is how many laugh off chromebooks as being possible competitors. There is a market for them, and as time goes on I think we'll begin to see it more and more.
I like OS X, but it's not in any regard more advanced or better than Linux, FreeBSD or Windows. That's just marketing nonsense.