
Smaller PCs Cause Worry for Industry - echair
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/technology/21pc.html?ex=1374292800&en=2f05e98ebcb10095&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
======
marvin
This story could be picked straight out of Clayton M. Christensen's "The
Innovator's Dilemma".

As of today, these small, cheap computers are in most ways that matter
inferior to their monolithic laptop and desktop counterparts. But many large
players fear that they will grow in market share and hence start eating their
margins. Fujitsu even goes as far as to deliberately stay out of the market.

However, the only reason that these smaller machines are less capable is that
most processing today happens on the local machine. If web applications grow
in the direction that Hacker News hopes, there will only be games and
specialty applications (research and industry, plus maybe a few consumer
applications) that require the horsepower of a traditional computer. Today,
you could (rightly) state that lightweight machines are unergonomic and
troublesome, but history dictates that with this much demand for a niche
product, these problems will evaporate in a jiffy.

Even if the future still has a huge demand for desktop processing (say, if
lots of data-transfer intensive things like video editing and processing
become much more popular), lightweight machines still have huge competitive
benefits: light weight, small size, low price and long battery life. One can
even imagine the 'low price' requirement waivered, which would give
manufacturers headroom to innovate further in form factor. I'm thinking
something in the direction of what the OLPC team is experimenting with:
multiple touchscreens, enabling new areas of computer use. No doubt there is
lots of territory to be explored here.

Fujitsu (and maybe even Dell) is making a huge mistake in not embracing this
nascent market. It's a good thing for their investors that they are
diversified. Give it five years, and computers resembling these will be
everywhere. Fujitsu will be unable to catch up. These machines will easily
gobble up the part of the market which uses laptops as portable word-
processors and email-readers, and will probably expand into uses for which
which today's laptops are completely unsuitable.

~~~
iigs
Agreed. In (some fraction, likely of) 30-35 years time, the companies that are
staying away because there's no money or the market is ill defined are going
to look as silly as the ones who thought the market for desktop personal
computers had no margin or was just going to ruin the business computer
market.

If you're in the business of selling desktops and laptops you are going to get
steamrolled. If you're in the business of selling people technology they want
and can use, congratulations on your good fortune. I believe the innovation
these machines bring is going to be _awesome_, and if the market for ugly
shoebox sized boxes with noisy fans and 10+ attached cables dissolves, good
riddance.

------
tx
Why would that industry be worried? These machines aren't replacing more
powerful laptops nor desktops: I bet people are buying them _as an addition_
to a regular computer.

I was shopping for EeePC and reading reviews of it, and lots of people were
saying just that - a cheap travel companion, not a laptop replacement. Hey, I
myself was going to get it precisely for that reason.

Price isn't as important, you can get "real" laptops for cheap. I paid $299
for Acer laptop for my parents: 1.7Gz Core Duo 2, 1GB ram, 15" LCD, 120GB HDD,
big&usable keyboard. The whole thing is big, that's why it's cheap.

The point here is size: these machines are painful to type on and screens are
tiny for most kinds of work (be it documents, programming, image editing,
etc). They're decent "time wasters" - youtube, reddit, etc.

~~~
aardvarkious
They're also great for carrying around to meetings where you just want to jot
down notes and not do any serious work on your computer.

------
edw519
We hackers also need to pay close attention to this trend and how it will
affect our work.

Between net books and smart phones, one wonders how much longer we can be lazy
and get away with things like flash, video, and huge javascript modules.

~~~
Retric
In 10-12 years a 200$ cellphone is probably going to have a faster faster CPU,
more memory, and more disk space than the desktop / laptop your using right
now.

PS: A PC in 1998 ~= Pentium 2 @ 266MHz, 8gig Hard disk, 128 meg of ram.

Most cellphones are faster than a P2 and an 8gb Micro SD card = $31.50.

~~~
orib
Or alternatively, they will have similar amounts of computing power, but will
be much smaller, lighter, cheaper, and have a better battery life.

If we're more careful programming, we can easily do all sorts of interesting
stuff on the limited, massively low power, and ultracheap hardware I'd like to
see.

~~~
omouse
You only need to look to the past to see what sorts of tricks were and are
possible.

As someone once said, "what's old is new again".

~~~
Retric
A PII uses 7.5 million transistors @ ~233 MHz. A Intel Core 2 Quad has 582
million transistors @ ~2400 MHz.

I don't think there is a point to using anything much less than a PII on most
consumer cell phone / PDA devices. And 10 years from now when 20 billion
transistor CPU's are normal for home PC's I don't think using something less
than a Core 2 Quad is going to have much of a point to it. (Note: I am talking
about devices that show websites and take pictures.)

PS: Granted if your building a toaster then an 8080 is probably overkill.

~~~
noonespecial
_PS: Granted if your building a toaster then an 8080 is probably overkill._

No, but using a $.95 7 million transistor cpu to simply emulate a more
expensive mechanical timer might not be. And then you get internet and an LCD
and all sorts of stuff basically for free. You could even emulate that 8080 if
you wanted.

~~~
Retric
If your starting with an internet connection and an LCD then there is a lot of
value in an ok (.95c plus) CPU . (Kindle, Cellphone, PDA, Laptop).

But, if your starting with a cheep (.05c or less) CPU then adding an ok CPU,
LCD, and an internet connection probably overkill. (Watch, Toster, Fridge,
dish washer etc).

------
iamdave
One would think the Macbook Air would have been mentioned in this article. If
the lack of a CD-ROM/DVD drive isn't evident of web application focus instead
of hard data, nothing is.

~~~
halo
Because the concern is low-price and spec, not size.

~~~
jimbokun
Yes, but the MacBook Air addresses the main problem with the "netbook"
computers. It has a large screen and keyboard, while still being ridiculously
light and thin.

So, if you can make netbooks thin and light but still wide (for keyboard and
screen), and still cheap, you pretty much eliminate the only remaining
argument for more "full featured" laptops. For now, it seems thin, light, and
wide is enough of an engineering challenge that it's only possible for
expensive notebooks. But it will be interesting to see if that will change.

------
skmurphy
It's the other half of Moore's Law, you get the same functionality at half the
price. If you don't need more performance then the price drops, for example
look at DRAM price curves.

