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Sub-notebooks are the hottest PC category right now, but when the novelty wears off will people keep buying them?
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Sub-notebooks are the hottest PC category right now, but when the novelty wears off will people keep buying them?
I dont think these things will vanish from the market, they offer too much to people who travel a lot like students and businessmen who genuinely don't need the speed and storage of their full sized laptop at all times. The prices need to cme down quite a bit.. 170-300 max i reckon but im sure that will happen with time.
I think the article gets straight to the heart of the matter, at £200 these are a gimmicky impulse spend, at £400 they're sub-par notebooks.
Ultimately for the money, what you really want is something akin to what you'd get from the iPhone or other MDA. Play music, watch some videos, surf websites and read eBooks. If the manufacturers focussed on bringing those features rather than trying to make a PC as small as possible, then they'd really see the sales roll in.
Doubt it, as for 2 of those tasks an iPhone or MDA is better suited, smaller and has better battery life. And at the moment cheaper.
Fad? No. They have their space, but it'll turn into a niche one in my opinion.
As a secondary laptop I think they're superb, but I definitely wouldn't spend over £250 on one. I just bought an Acer One (Atom 1.6GHz / 1GB RAM / 120GB HDD) for just under £220, take it almost everywhere with me :p
You may be right about the niche... i think it will be a fairly large niche as far as they go though.Quote:
Originally Posted by this_is_gav
I doubt the Iphone competes with them, browser is slightly limited, screen is pretty damn small and typing on one is a pain IMO. Iphones are for those who like nice looking reasonably fuctional devices, they are not versitile business or study friendly things in the long run.
MDA is a similar story to the iphoen however they are slightly more versitile with regards to typing and taking notes etc.
U say they are cheaper... not really tbh, they generally have to be bought on a contract and the overall cost is about the same maybe a bit less for quite a bit less speed. Yeah you get the calls and stuff but if you hunt around and bargain enough you can get contracts which cover hundreds of mins and texts for next to nothing nowerdays.
IMO what these sub notebooks are ideal for is having the functionality of a normal kyboard. Iphones PDAs MDAs etc DO NOT have the same typing capabilities. Yeah ok typing on those daft little shrunken Eee keyboards is a nightmare at first but once you get used to it you could touch type unlike a phone-computer. And im not speculating here... i have a HTC TYTN II yes its top for typing but i cant touch type, double the speed of a numpad but half the speed of a keyboard.
They won't disappear, but I think it's a niche market that is quickly becoming oversaturated.
ASUS should really ensure their Eee PC range is associated with these sub notebooks above everything else to keep themselves as a force in the sector, rather than suddenly stamping the brand onto half their laptop range.
That might be what you want at £200, but it isn't what I want. I wouldn't give thankyou for an iPhone (etc), and I'm not in the slightest bit interested in watching movies, playing games or listening to music on these devices. I am interested in something as small and light as possible while still having a usable, typeable full keyboard. I want basic data entry, i.e. primarily WP, with a decent email capability, and just maybe a bit of web-browsing. In other words, a decent alternative to carrying a full-sized notebook.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucio
Are they a fad? No.
Is the current sales level because of novelty ... or fashion? Quite possibly.
Are they a niche product? Very likely.
I agree with Biscuit's analysis.
I think we as consumers should pick the product that fits our needs-there is no way an atom chip can compere with a desktop cpu-pick the system to your needs.
I also think the category is here to stay. Some format (screen size/spec vs cost) may be more successful than others, and in the long run we may see manufacturers focussing on the most successful ones, but I am sure that the market of the category is big enough.
I did a study tour last summer, and that would've been the perfect place to use one of those sub-notebooks: I was on the road a lot so it needed to be portable, sometime stayed in a hostel where the storage box too small for a full sized laptop, not too expensive in case anything happens. And while it may not be very comfortable to type reports, I only needed to do a series of relatively small reports at a time. A PDA/Smartphone, even with a keyboard would probably be less efficient.
Even at £400, it's still cheaper than many 10.4" to 12.1" 'Ultra portable' laptop of the past. I do favour cheaper models (toward £200) because they are no substitute for a main PC for me. But there may be people (e.g. those frequently write reports on the road) who use them often enough to justify a beefed up model.
I'd be astonished if this sector didn't grow to be massive - and quickly, too.
For most people, a PC means having access to email and the net - and to do a bit of word-processing.
Assuming that the makers sort out the keyboards a little better and that prices fall, rather than rise, my expectation is that - perhaps even as soon as next autumn - people will regard such PCs in the same way that they today regard mobiles.
What do I mean?
Well, unlike PCs to to date, I think that they will genuinely be PERSONAL computers, where, just like mobiles, everyone has - or wants to have - their own.
So a family with ma, pa and two kids would own four of them.
Bob C
you could well be right Bob. And if that is the case these things will become disposable just like mobiles too. Instead of having a PC that is replaced every few years, these netbooks could be replaced every year or so. And in that year I would expect the spec to increase quite a lot, just like the difference in performance between mobiles of the same ages.
I've just read on another site that Orange are to start including Eee's in some of their data plans.
http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news4160.html
Interesting perspectives Bob and Funkstar. And I guess with SD cards storing all the data you could just use them in way we use SIM cards in phones and make migrating from one machine to another easy.
I still reckon any price with a 3 or more at the beginning positions the product quite differently though.
But not all of them are £300+, just like not all mobiles are £400+.
Or there is always the "Free with a data contract" options
One factor that often get over looked, includeing here is that a large part of Asus's original target market for the eee pc was children.
Small light weight, perfect for a child
Low cost, perfect for a parent/school
Schools is also one area that Asus moved fast on, pushed and secured. I can tel you now that RM the UKs largest school computer supplier/specialist has a contract for EEE pc's, so there's a nice chunk of govenrment funding that should keep sales up for a while.
I don't think these are a fad as there is a definate neiche for them, even with the higher prices. As the artical said before the eee pc, small laptops where standard laptops cramed into smaller cases with higher price tags (generally around £1000 mark)
I do for see sales slopeing off and prices dropping slightly, as the higher demand will push the price of these small LCD pannels down. But they will be here to stay.
Unless someone comes up with a workable low cost replacement for a keyboard.
What I'm kind of expecting is for the price-point to stabilise somewhere below £250 initially and then, as volume grows, move below £200.
Once these machines drop below £200, buying one becomes close to being a no-brainer - though, admittedly, not so much of one as if you're given a PC free with your mobile contract or as standard like everyone else in your class at school.
Bob
I certainly wouldn't want to use one as my main computer, but I won't pretend to know much about them.
Desktop, Laptop, Blackberry... all have a place, and will continue to do so (I assume).
You can't say no to a 20+ inch screen, 5.1 speakers and external mouse and keyboard... As well as far superior processing power.
If they were gimmicky or allowed you to do lots and lots of new EXCITING things, maybe I'd think they were merely a fad.
However, the reason they're popular isn't because they're loud and shiny and come with all sorts of "fun" things... the reason they're popular is because they're incredibly practical.
They may not have as much power as a dual core 15" laptop or whatever, but (apologies for saying this time and time and time again but a lot of people don't seem to grab the concept) THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT OF THEM. They're a low power device which are far lighter and smaller than a "normal" laptop, which have more than enough power for the people that just want to type/email/web browse, but they have a proper screen and keyboard. I don't care that you can get a "proper" laptop for £50 more or whatever, it will be heavier and bulkier. Some people prefer beefier specs in a laptop, others prefer a "proper" computer at home and something they can just sling in a normal bag for when they're travelling.
The demand will probably slow down after everybody's tried to buy one at once, but it will remain a healthy market.
That is exactly right Mike. Every time I see the Eee in the likes of PCWorld, I am amazed at how small it is. I kind of forget inbetween and think "nah, i won't bother with one, my existing laptops aren't that bad". Then I see one and go "wow" :)
I'd echo Mike's thoughts too - exactly why i bought one.
So many of us are agreed here that, Sod's Law being all-powerful, we've probably destroyed any chance this sector might have!
:rolleyes:
Well my EEE 901 cost £300 in the shop, and I have upgraded it with 2GB of RAM and have an 80GB 1.8" drive on the way.... still under £400.
Find me another laptop that's around 1Kg in weight, has 2GB RAM and 80GB of storage and a battery that will last me 4-5hrs or more for under £400... you will find it very difficult.
I don't need power in such a tiny device, I need the basics, and that's what I have... I can throw this in my bag and go to work without getting back ache and a sweat before I even hit the station!
Sure some of the initial rush is novelty factor, but I think this was a glaringly uncatered for market, I had been crying out for an affordable ultra-portable for years - wish I'd had this available when I was at Uni!
RM are the UK distributor or Eee PCs, but it seems they aren't pushing them at schools - certainly not to any great degree. We've heard nothing from them regarding any of these 'VSLs'. Perhaps LEAs, but not (all) individual schools just yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pob255
Our LEA are looking into pushing them at schools, but are just playing around with them so far. We've bought 12 Eee PCs and will buy 20something Aspire Ones so all our Year 8s get one. They're seen as an incentive for getting kids to do some homework and getting the kids to look for stuff on the net during lessons. Other uses are very limited though... we're a bit stuck on what else they can be used for, but our superiors love the idea of showing off such gadgets... this is what your taxes are going towards guys and gals. :P
How is it? I'm thinking of getting one - what's battery life like?Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianS
I made this point back in May in my AMD blog on the same topic. There are pros and cons to the cheap, mini-notebook design. Looks like the cheap mini-notebook is morphing into the real notebook. I would put the blog link, but I need 5 posts on Hexus before it will let me.
Hi Pat and welcome.
I was going to find the link and post it myself, but the AMD blog site seems to be being a bit moody right now.
Anyway, only four more posts and you're home free :)
I've got it working now. Were you referring to: Thirty days with a small & inexpensive mini-notebook: The PLUSSES and Thirty days with a small & inexpensive mini-notebook: The MINUSES?
Its certainly and interesting time - with DSGi fulfilling the channel first through the Advent 4211 in PC world in the UK it had a bit of a shaky start.
I was in PC world picking mine up yesterday and I was amazed at the number of parents in there buying a laptop for thier child, they were everywhere, on the phone with someone in the know giving them advice - but no one was standing anywhere near a netbook.
Now this store in particular had quite a few in, namely the Acer Aspire One, a handful of 900 eePC's and the 4211 from Advent.
Now I had some teething issues with mine, it took a good hour to get up and running with drivers that worked, and DSGi really need to fix this pretty soon, it would see alot less of the high returns they have seen to to date.
For example, aside from the one on display mine was the only other retail product they had, but they were showing three in store as faulty, chances are they are perfectly fine, but the technology just isn't mature enough for the basic user which these devices are seemingly aimed at.
Now for the £260 after cashback that I paid yesterday I had to say I am really impressed with the 4211, sure its not a fully fledged laptop, but as someone who has lots of top level kit it's a compromise I am willing to make.
I have an HP laptop with more than enough power to cope with what I need when I am doing modest graphics or wanting to play games (Centrino C2D, 2GB Ram, GeForce7400, but the battery life is pretty poor, around 2 hours - strangely enough less than my netbook has returned off a single charge thus far.
It does what I need it to do and, now that its all stable, I am browsing the net with something light on my lap and more importantly cool.
If i use my HP laptop for extended periods of time it gets uncomfortably warm for my liking.
So as it goes, my girlfriend's playing Sims 2 on my HP and I surf the net on whatever site I like, in comfort and speed - although she did do a Clarkson style its 'shoooo schweeeeet' when she saw it for the first time...
Sometimes technology is more that the sum of its parts, its the way it fits into a personal lifestyle - for me its a great buy - especially as my HP cost me £900 about 18 months ago.
I'm happy with the compromise, it suits ME - and in technology nowadays thats the hardest sell of all.
Matt.
The 4211 looks interesting Matt, looks to be a nice £50 saving on the MSI Wind.
For £50 I can happily sort out my own drivers :)
Was the cashback in store? If they can do a £20 cashback now, hopefully they can reduce the price in a months time when I come to get one :P
The cashback won't be for a few months, its done through a web based site.
Will the price drop, possibly, but I actually suspect in the case of the 4211 it may rise - it comes in under the MSI wind and its very young, given a bit of time and maturity for basic users I actually suspect it may go up 20-30 quid or so.
Matt.
My Advent 4211 (which as we all know is a rebadged MSI Wind - even has MSI Wind written on the bottom of it!) arrived yesterday and it's even better than I hoped! It's got the largest keyboard and screen of all the subnotebooks AFAIK and I'm glad it has as anything smaller wouldn't work for me. I've been after a small light laptop for a long time but have blanched at the cost of the previous iterations pushed out by the big manufacturers. For carrying about on my lunchbreak to write my book, this is absolutely perfect. And as an aside, it's the right size for my five month old sproglet to watch cartoons on Youtube :D
I'd be gutted if i had spent nearly 2k on one of those carbon Sony's - the idea behind needing power on the move is just an opinion - the problem witht he tech market as far as computers is we all think that more pwer is better - when in 99% of cases its a complete waste of time, money and power.
Matt.
Until now, laptop makers have largely offered to consumers what the makers themselves want people to buy.Quote:
Originally Posted by MD
Now, though, they've started offering consumers what they actually want - and that, I believe, is why this new generation of PCs is going to be such a massive hit.
Let's be honest, you don't need a lot of PC grunt to do the things that most people want to do most of the time - email, web browsing and word processing.
Bottom line? Yes, Matt, I believe you are 100 per cent correct.
Bob
One of the bigger challenges if it indeed becomes a niche market is the ability for the market to sustain it. In other words, some product categories have a real hard time staying alive if they arent shipped in the 10's of millions range. The entire value chain from component suppliers to OEMs to manufacturers to distribution channels to the end consumer all need to make some kind of profit or make a profit in a related, leveragable segment.Quote:
Originally Posted by TooNice
Patrick,
You are right, of course, but this is a product category I believe will grow to be very big, so the issue shouldn't arise.
I really do reckon that they'll be akin to mobiles, with every IT-aware family having one per family member.
Bob
Since this blog, I have tried the Asus 901, HP 2133, and the MSI Wind. I was personally expecting a lot from the Wind given it has a hard drive and Bluetooth, serious shortcomnings IMO of many of the other models. The challenge I personally had with the Wind was battery life...... I only got 1 hour, 30 minutes. Maybe this is the tradeoff for the hard drive, maybe because of the 3 cell (less expensive/smaller/lighter) battery. But..... that level of battery life didnt even cut it for even inside my home. Forget about outside the home. On the SSD front, I personally experienced many challenges with them...... can't fit 1/100th of my media content on it, so taking it outside of the home becomes a big challenge. I could stream some of the media with the XP versions inside the home. Also, with XP SP3 and those mini-notebooks with SSD that partition, let's say 5GB/5GB, after installing SP3, I continually got the "warning balloon" saying I was out of hard drive space. To uninstall SP3, I needed 143MB, which I didn't have. So I had to go out and buy an external $120 external USB DVD drive and re-image the entire system then "block" SP3 in MS "Automatic Updates" from loading. Sheesh.... how will non-technical users deal with that kind of stuff?
I think Pat's expeciences and concerns are all legitimate and a mate of mine who was researching the market said that storage was the most painful trade-off for him.
I suspect the finishing line might be when cloud computing becomes more widespread. Then there'll be no need for much internal storage as everything will be accessed online.
Of course Wi-Fi/mobile broadband/WiMax, etc will need to step up to make this an acceptable alternative.
If you want longer battery life you need to wait for the 6 cell batterys to come out, having said that I get a fair bit longer than you do on my wind, did you use the power save mode? Another way to get better battery life is to use vista, many report and extra 20mins.
On a side note: here's a new one (well I'd not seen it before)
The other night I was waiting for the night bus and there was a maplins there, so I looked in the window and saw this
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?...25532&doy=11m8
Yes the spec's look pritty pants, but it was very small, with a price tag to match and it looks like we have another "cheap" brand mini-laptop on the market and that to me is a big sign of there popularity and staying power.
Being a fad or here to stay is going to be by sales numbers and while "us" performance chasers who demand the most from our specs and our cash, we only make up a small part of the larger market. (heck if we were then pc world would of gone under by now :P )
Blimey - WTF were you doing? I agree that the battery life could be better but I happily get around 3 to 3.5 hours from my battery. That's with light internet browsing and typing.Quote:
Originally Posted by PatrickMoorhead
You can "tap" only 4 (2x2) times as slow as you can write?Quote:
Originally Posted by Biscuit
I'm at least 10 times slower using a key-pad (w/ or w/out T9) than my sub-par touch-typing.
Better start typing then... ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by PatrickMoorhead
& which is best? (I like the look of the HP, in case you couldn't guess from the above.) This seems to be the only decent thread on Hexus mentioning the 2133. It would be good to see more discussion on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by PatrickMoorhead
(Made this thread: http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-tv-tur...ml#post1501671)