
Intel says get ready for $99 tablets, $299 Haswell notebooks, $349 hybrids - TheLegace
http://www.zdnet.com/intel-says-get-ready-for-99-tablets-299-haswell-notebooks-349-2-in-1-hybrids-7000022020/?s_cid=e539&ttag=e539
======
dangrossman
The high end of the PC laptop spectrum has been neglected for years. I guess
the market is just too small to care about. I have no idea where they're
taking their profits if they're pushing down on the low-end prices too.

I've been looking for a new laptop for over 2 years, and nobody's been selling
anything worthy of replacing what I'm already using, which was built in 2010.
For a few brief months that year, HP made a wonderful MBP clone (magnesium
alloy case, 1600x900 14" screen with edge-to-edge glass, SSD, etc). Soon
after, that product line turned into the same plastic 1366x768 crap everyone
else was selling, and that's been what's filled store shelves ever since.
Meanwhile, my 2010 laptop is starting to fall apart, with dead pixels, an
overheating GPU and lost battery capacity.

I am looking forward to buying an ASUS UX301 this November to replace it.
That's the first and only Ultrabook-class laptop I've seen since 2010 that'll
actually be an "upgrade" without buying some thick "gaming" monstrosity. It'll
have a Haswell i7-4558U, which comes with the Intel HD 5100 graphics, the
first Intel integrated graphics chip to outmatch the 3-year-old Radeon in my
current laptop. Plus 8GB RAM, 512GB of RAID-0 SSD, an all metal and glass case
and up to 9 hours of battery life. Assuming this PC in that configuration
actually makes it to market.

What's amazing to me is that this many months after Haswell parts started
showing up in stores, that one ASUS laptop is still the only announced product
by any name-brand manufacturer with the i7-4558U/HD 5100 parts. Every other
new/"refreshed" laptop that'll be in stores this holiday season will either
have an integrated GPU incapable of playing games well on the higher
resolution screens they ship with, or give up its thickness and battery life
for a discrete GPU.

~~~
chubot
The whole PC market has been a disaster. It's been like 6 years and PC makers
still can't come up with a decent Mac Mini clone! When they do, it's more
expensive, and then is discontinued in 18 months.

I think all those years of churning out bland clones made them lose their
expertise. They can't execute on something like a Mac Mini or a high end
laptop. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it appears that these are
difficult problems that take competence.

~~~
yareally
[http://www.asus.com/Eee_Box_PCs/](http://www.asus.com/Eee_Box_PCs/)

Don't own one, but just linking to give an example that there is a pretty
decent looking PC Mac Mini clone out there.

~~~
veemjeem
Those boxes are small, but not exactly good looking. There's a plethora of
companies releasing these compact form factor PCs. They also all look
practically identical.

Newegg has a category specifically for these form factor machines:
[http://www.newegg.com/Mini-Booksize-Barebone-
PCs/SubCategory...](http://www.newegg.com/Mini-Booksize-Barebone-
PCs/SubCategory/ID-309)

All of these "mac mini" style machines target the low end market. They all
have low end processors & video cards. I have yet to see a premium machine
like the mac mini that is available in a small form factor.

------
programminggeek
This is a bad thing for the industry. Every time someone buys a junky $300
laptop filled with bloatware from HP, Dell, eMachines, etc. they are going to
have a mediocre experience at best. Then they buy a $200 tablet from Amazon or
Google, a $300 iPad Mini or a $500 iPad that while all of those devices should
be less powerful, they deliver a MUCH BETTER end user experience.

HP, Dell, Lenovo need to stop selling the bottom of the barrel hardware with
bottom of the barrel Windows experiences. The end business result is they are
working really hard to sell a zero margin product only to watch Intel and
Microsoft turn a tidy profit.

If HP, Dell, and Lenovo want to stay in the game long term, they need to stop
catering to the low end.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Who says it needs to run Windows and bloatware?

The HP Chromebook 14 (14" 1080p) is $299, and the Acer C270 Chromebook (11.6"
720p) is $249; both of them are Haswell-based.

~~~
dnissley
Not 1080p, unfortunately. And only 2gb ram on the WiFi only versions.

~~~
adventured
Today. That won't be true next year.

I never cease to be amazed at how people judge things by what's out right now,
rather than where the puck will be tomorrow.

~~~
tluyben2
Will it be? Screens in low end laptops are not changing so far. It's the same
abysmal resolution for quite a while now. The higher end (> $800) are getting
better now finally.

------
devx
I said this here a while ago. Intel had only 2 options, and they are _both_
bad for them:

1) keep going up market, and be disrupted in the most classical way possible

2) compete with ARM on price, which is unsustainable for a company like Intel

Not only is Intel used to high margins on its chips, but it's also a very
small player in the mobile world, and the PC world is shrinking continuously,
so "making it up" in the PC market won't cut it.

Also, if they're promoting "$300 Haswell notebooks", virtually nobody will buy
$700-$1000 notebooks in the future, and Intel will _never_ be able to raise
prices, and their profits, again.

Whether Intel will die like Blackberry and Nokia (yes, I consider the
acquisition as dying, since it was a move out of bankruptcy desperation) or
will survive as a tiny shadow of what they used to be, I'm unsure.

I suppose it's possible for them to survive as a company that is 1/10 of what
they used to be, if they really compete on price, and make radical changes
within the company (end all unprofitable/low volume divisions and fire execs
or engineers that are too expensive). But that really depends on how willing
they are to make those hard decisions.

~~~
kryptiskt
> Not only is Intel used to high margins on its chips, but it's also a very
> small player in the mobile world, and the PC world is shrinking
> continuously, so "making it up" in the PC market won't cut it.

Your world seems to be missing servers.

------
moistgorilla
Plan on buying the Dell venue 8 pro the day it comes out.

-x86? check

-bay trail? check

-long battery? check

-stylus support? check

-high ppi? check

-under $300? check

Perfect notebook replacement. Not a laptop replacement but as a companion
device it is perfect.

~~~
DASD
HDMI? Nope. Also missing from the Lenovo Miix 8 but will be present on the
Toshiba Encore 8. Miracast is not an equivalent.

~~~
mtinkerhess
The active stylus on the Venue might be the selling feature for me, which it
looks like the Encore doesn't have.

------
twotwotwo
The cheapie Bay Trail convertibles seem like, potentially, the much more
awesome--lighter, more touch-tastic and fun--revenge of the netbook. The
'problem,' such as it is, is that lots of the target audience already has
tablets or faster small laptops, sort of squeezing the convertibles from
either side. That and that Win8 can't seem to catch a break.

~~~
ekianjo
It's time for Linux on the Bay Trail :) Seriously, this could be a good
alternative to Windows 8, especially with the increasing amount of games with
Steam for Linux.

~~~
eterm
In my experience battery life is half in Linux (ubuntu to be fair) what I get
in Windows. I don't know why this is but I don't tend to recommend Linux to
laptop users because of this.

~~~
ekianjo
Have you tried recently ? In the latest kernels the situation is not as bad as
it used to be. I am not sure, however, how well the Bay Trail will be
supported in that regard.

------
vidarh
$99 tablets have been a reality for a long time at various sizes, or up to
quad core CPUs for 7" tablets. In fact, ~$49 tablets (mostly 7") have been
around for a while.

Just not with Intel CPUs.

Expect prices to drop again and specs to be revised up in the run up to
christmas, which means Intel is still on the trailing edge in the low end of
the tablet market.

~~~
hershel
At the $99 price point, price differences matter less , and if Intel can some
how offer a more compelling product (maybe by using windows) , it could be
interesting.

------
yoodenvranx
I really really miss my 5 year old old Lenovo T61p! 1400*1050 is the perfect
screensize for me and the Core 2 Duo would still be fast enough for most
applications. Perhaps I will buy one on ebay for 220 Euro...

------
andrewflnr
A small, light notebook with a good battery for $300 is pushing into impulse
buy territory for me, with the condition that it's not an enormous pain to
install linux on. I will be watching closely.

~~~
vinkelhake
Like the $249 Haswell-based new Chromebook from Acer? The only problem there
is the paltry 16GB SSD.

~~~
fingerprinter
I'd buy that if I could put Ubuntu on it. Haven't seen that as of yet.

~~~
recuter
Very doable:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_C7_Chromebook](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_C7_Chromebook)

What's even more intriguing is that you can now flush the firmware on the 2012
model and it becomes just a regular PC that you can install windows/osx/linux
in the regular way with no faffing about. Hopefully the same will be done for
these new models.

Arch on an HP Chromebook 14" sounds for $299 sounds awesome to me.

[http://johnlewis.ie/pre-built-coreboot-firmware-for-
chromebo...](http://johnlewis.ie/pre-built-coreboot-firmware-for-chromebooks/)

~~~
6ren
Is there a performance problem with losing proprietary GPU drivers?

Keeping them seems one benefit to dual OS (reusing the Chrome kernel). It's
nice to be able to watch HD video without hiccups.

------
ChuckMcM
This would not be an unheard of tactic for Intel (go for cheap) but it seems
ill advised against ARM. I get the 'Quark' but I don't get trying to sell a
Haswell CPU at Cortex A9 prices. That seems like it would be jumping the gun.
Of course the issues at 14nm may be worse than we thought and Intel needs this
for cashflow but still, I'm guessing ZDNet hype.

------
eliben
... and I'm just sitting here, finding it horrible that even ZDnet articles
make the its --> it's mistake these days :-/

~~~
varjag
It's not really a mistake, possessive forms of pronouns are irregular with
often several valid manifestations.

~~~
Joeboy
I'd say it's a mistake that's common enough to be forgivable when made by the
general public, but I doubt you'll find any grammatically reputable source
that says it's not a mistake. The article gets it right elsewhere.

(We're talking about "it could be bad timing for Amazon and it's new Kindle
Fire HDX tablet", right?)

~~~
varjag
You would certainly find possessive it's in Jane Ausen novels (and other
contemporaries).

------
eliben
Any hope for some of these to be running Ubuntu pre-loaded? Potentially they
can be cheaper due to lack of Windows licensing. The only alternative today is
Chrome OS (and there are quite a few new ones released already) and Windows 8
(oh the horror)

~~~
brdrak
A bought a Dell with Ubuntu once. I recall calling tech support asking how
does one update the firmware. If memory serves, support wasn't sure how to
deal with it not being Windows. Since then, I'd just bought Dell laptops with
Windows and either dual boot Ubuntu or replace Windows entirely. The Ubuntu
Dell was lousy spec wise. It's easy to update firmware with a FreeDOS boot
disk.

For my next laptop, might get a System76.

Slightly OT, but had money to burn for a work desktop and went with a
Supermicro workstation. Very nice hardware. More expensive but much better
than Dell/HP/Lenovo workstations. Ironically, still cheaper than a Mac Pro
desktop. Also better -- Mac Pro RAID was a poorly thought through overpriced
garbage, last time I worked with it up a couple of years ago.

------
dxbydt
I guess I wasn't the only one who parsed that as a $299 Haskell notebook ?

------
ge0rg
I wish they stopped forcing touchscreens on their users. I would so buy a
Haswell-based follow-up to the Asus Zenbook UX51VZ as a developer machine, but
having fingerprints on a glossy display is a showstopper for me.

~~~
Tichy
Do you have to use the touchscreen?

