

Tablets will finish off netbooks in 2011 - strandev
http://poste.posterous.com/tablets-will-finish-off-netbooks-in-2011-10-r

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eftpotrm
Oh, how I wish Netbooks hadn't become 'the next big thing'....

I _love_ having computing available everywhere I go. Really useful. I type up
notes live in meetings / presentations and never have to worry about
transcribing them. I take my email, my photos, my documents wherever I go.
I've been known to develop code on it, in an idle period far away form home or
desk.

So I started with a Palm III - cheap toy, screen far too small and the data
entry far too slow. Upgraded to a Psion 5 - great, but by then the market had
become a bubble and burst, and Psion quickly vanished with the remaining
issues with the platform sadly unsolved. Too many people had realised that a
GBP400 handheld with slow data entry wasn't all that useful, there was a glut
of inventory and the devices died.

Along came netbooks - brilliant! Battery life and portability not as good as
before but software compatibility better. Then they became The Next Big Thing
and everyone started making them, most people discovered that a 9" laptop with
no CD drive isn't very useful for them, and we've got a glut of inventory and
a rapidly collapsing market.

Now we have tablets. For twice the cost of my netbook I can get an iPad which
trades marginally greater portability and battery life for enormously worse
data entry and more limited software. Or a range of imitators that largely
serve to show that Smartphones are overpriced by having the same basic
features behind a bigger screen for a lower cost. Again, I'm expecting to see
a year or two's bubble where we all have to have them and everyone starts
making them, followed by a market collapse and new products becoming rarer
than hen's teeth.

For those of us who want real, proper mobile computing, not the latest
overpriced fad gadget, can we please have less hype? That way hopefully we can
end up with a long-term market for machines we can actually use and get real
work done on, not just this year's shiny tech bauble.

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TomOfTTB
The article's basic point: Tablets will kill netbooks because netbooks aren't
tablets.

Look at some of his reasons...

\- "The Major Issue with netbooks is that they lack touch screens"

\- "Netbooks are boring...Tablets feature touch screens, they have mobile apps
and they offer more aesthetically"

\- "Apple is a major preesence in the tablet industry...[netbooks] don't have
the same "innovation factor" that Apple delivers"

\- "Consumers and enterprise are finding that there is value to be had in
using mobile third-party apps. They might not deliver the same power that
Windows Programs can but netbooks are underpowered" (I paraphrased this one
for length)

In the end he never really makes the case for tablets he simply treats tablet
features as inherently superior and then dings the netbook for not having them

(personally I do think netbooks are going to die but at the hands of super-
thin notebooks)

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tygorius
Fundamentally silly. Based on the fallacy of the excluded middle, with _zero_
quantitative data to back up assertions. At least the dot-com hockey-stick
graphs started with points of established data.

Particularly dubious is extrapolating Apple's iPad success to success for that
form factor when other companies have barely started shipping product.

Netbooks, like notebooks before them, may no longer be generating buzz, but
that doesn't mean they're "finished off", whatever that means. The last time I
checked, Apple hadn't shut down its laptop operations.

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adamtj
I'm waiting for a tablet that has a physical keyboard with a hinge so I can
type fast, with two hands, and with an uptilted screen for readability. As
soon as tablets can do that, goodbye netbook!

~~~
protomyth
Isn't a tablet with a keyboard a notebook / netbook? We had a couple of
ViewSonic notebooks that could be folded into a tablet type arrangement.

~~~
middlegeek
Friend, I think if you look up, you may see the point of his comment going
over your head.

~~~
protomyth
I confess to having no coffee this morning, dealing with new students, and
having a co-worker tell me they wouldn't buy an iPad until it had a pop-down
keyboard like their phone. Plus, I think I have driver issues with the new
sarcasm detector on my laptop.

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Isamu
No. I have high hopes for Chrome netbooks. A very simple, very fast, cheap
laptop? The main thing is a real keyboard for doing heavy typing. Lots of
potential for this form factor.

Well, as long as the manufacturers don't crap it up as much as the telecom
carriers crap up cell phones. Android is doing well anyway.

Besides, the Year of the Tablet is only beginning, and it may not be so rosy
in the long run for anybody but Apple. Remember the Tablet PC was going to
take off too. And then it was the Origami device (I have one of these. And
then there was something "revolutionary" coming after that ... I think that
next platform vanished like a mist over the moors.)

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Pewpewarrows
The linchpin of tablets replacing netbooks, for me and the people I talk to at
least, will be the USB port (or lack thereof). Being able to connect my
existing media and peripherals, the most important of which being a hardware
keyboard for long typing sessions (like programming), is ultimately my
deciding factor. With that and a terminal I could completely replace my
netbook with a tablet.

Google's already taken that initiative with the devices we saw at CES.
Hopefully Apple follows suit with the iPad 2.

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motters
I only recently got an opportunity to try using a netbook, and I like this
form factor more than I would have expected. The size makes it more ergonomic
than a full sized laptop, yet the keyboard is still usable.

I've never tried using a tablet computer, but I think these will suffer from
ergonomic difficulties. For situations such as reading books/text or maybe
browsing the web from a sofa they would probably be ok, but most web content
isn't designed in such a way as to make the links/buttons large enough for a
finger. On a touch screen the UI design needs to be quite different from those
which are intended to be mouse-driven.

Also take a look around the various exhibitions and see how many visitors are
carrying tablets with them as opposed to laptops or netbooks. That's probably
a fair indication of how useful tablets actually are.

~~~
quanticle
_I only recently got an opportunity to try using a netbook, and I like this
form factor more than I would have expected. The size makes it more ergonomic
than a full sized laptop, yet the keyboard is still usable._

Really? I find netbooks to be less usable than traditional laptops and
desktops precisely because of the keyboard. Granted, the only netbooks I've
tried are 9-inch Eee PCs made by Acer. Are the keyboards on 10-inch machines
that much better?

~~~
eftpotrm
I should stress that I'm probably an unusual data point in that I could touch-
type tolerably well and quickly on a Psion 5, but....

From having owned both 9 and 10 inch Eees (still got the 10, lovely machine) -
the 9 was perfectly manageable for me but the 10 I'm as fast as I am anywhere.
I regularly use it to take sermon notes at church and have before been able to
keep up fast enough to produce a readable (if a little abbreviated) version of
the presenters' material, because a friend used it for exactly that.

Now, I'm probably a bit unusual there and I could've sold tickets to some from
their expressions watching me concentrating on the speaker as my fingers flew
across the keyboard, but I don't see typing on a 10" netbook as any hardship
at all.

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quanticle
Is it just me or does the entire slide show read like the same point,
"Netbooks will lose because Apple made tablets cool," twelve times over?

