
The netbook isn’t dead — it’s just resting - technologizer
http://techland.time.com/2012/12/31/the-netbook-isnt-dead-its-just-resting/
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jmillikin
The article touches on it lightly, but the real reason you can't say netbooks
are dead is that the entire concept of a "netbook" was bullshit from the very
beginning. Manufacturers wanted to put some pressure on their suppliers to
lower prices, so they invented a category of low-price and low-quality
laptops. Consumers never really paid that much attention, because anyone who
actually picked up a netbook could tell that they were garbage.

Turns out that selling low-quality computers for cheap and making up the
difference on volume is a difficult business model to make profit in. Now the
manufacturers want to chase Apple by building "ultrabooks", which is
marketing-speak for "laptops that aren't complete shit". But Apple is years
ahead because they didn't waste time on netbooks, and they've got their
logistics so optimized that they can make a fat profit on prices that would
leave other manufacturers taking a loss on each sale.

You'll know that PC manufacturers have figured out how to correctly apply the
Apple model when they:

* Stop plastering their products with advertising stickers.

* Trim their product lines back to the core (How many laptop models does Dell sell? How long did it take you to figure out?)

* Invest in build quality and reliability, potentially at the cost of end-user repairability.

~~~
anigbrowl
Netbooks don't strike me as garbage at all. I have a desktop (well, more of a
desk-holder-up since it's a tower) and that's what I use for any kind of
processor-intensive work. When I'm mobile, I don't want to do anything more
complex than editing a document, and I don't need an expensive high-powered
laptop for that.

Come to that, a typical netbook configuration of some atom-style processor and
2gb of memory is not that bad - that would have been a high-powered machine 8
or 10 years ago and with an SSD it's pretty nippy.

 _Invest in build quality and reliability, potentially at the cost of end-user
repairability._

Thanks, but no thanks.

~~~
QuantumGood
I sold my iPad 1 four weeks after getting it and bought a netbook. Still using
it today. It's a real computer, does real work, and was a great bargain—none
of which was true of the iPad, then or now.

~~~
sarvinc
I can't help but notice you don't mention what "real computer", "real work"
and "great bargain" mean to you.

~~~
QuantumGood
I type fairly fast, so a keyboard is a big time-saver for me. I work in many
popular file formats, Office, etc, that I can't do much very easily with on a
tablet.

So "real" means a keyboard and software that fully handles common work files.

It was less than half the cost of the iPad, a great bargain by comparison.

------
armored_mammal
I got a netbook with an atom for $250-ish dollars just about 4 years ago and
still can't find anything under $400 dollars that's enough of an improvement
to make it worth replacing.

The crap SSD long ago died so my machine now runs LXDE off of a USB key, but
it's still chugging. Still even gets 4 or 5ish hours of battery life which is
pretty damn amazing after sitting around that long.

I keep thinking at some point someone will make a 12" cheap device with a
day's worth of battery and maybe keep it completely fanless.

But no. The only thing remotely close any more are chromebooks, which lack the
hard Linux features that make my netbook so useful. Unfortunately everyone
else just price gouges you for something with an i3 that mysteriously costs
$600.

As for Ultrabooks... they are HEAVY. Every time I see one I think they look
great until I pick one up and it weighs ~ 2.5 times what my netbook does. Go
figure... One of the things I love about my netbook is that I can hold it up
with hand all day.

In any case, I don't think they're dead. Marketers just figured out how to
label them ultrabooks and get an extra few hundred dollars.

------
arocks
I believe Netbooks will be seen as a very important development in the
evolution of computing devices. The early Netbooks focused on a small,
portable form factor which also had an extremely long battery life. Hardware
was mostly from the previous generation and the default OS was an open source
Linux variant. Yet, it was _good enough_ for most people.

Certainly, Microsoft and Intel would hate the creation of such a category
which would hurt their margins significantly. In fact, Asus was forced to sell
Windows only netbooks after a point in time.

But at least now the customers know that such a long running, ultra portable
and cheap device is possible. This, I believe, was a big achievement.

------
primitur
I'm experiencing a small personal 'netbook revival' myself, with the recent
hacking of a Motorola Lapdock to accomodate small miniPC's like the MK802 and
so on .. you can see a picture of it here:

<http://seclorum.minus.com/mGeislSULuCVd>

The cable mess is ugly as hell, but after the New Years break I'll get a bit
more time to design and build a better solution for the mess using a local 3d
printer and laser cutter.

My hope is that I can modify the device so that it will be possible to just
simply plug in any one of the hundreds of new miniPC devices that are being
released, it seems, almost daily.

Of course, I'm also avidly waiting for Motorola (or someone) to just make a
lapdock that makes my hardware hacking redundant - but I don't predict that
this will catch on for another 3 to 4 months, yet. And in the meantime, 5 hour
battery life on the Lapdock+MK802 combo that I'm currently running is _really_
nice.

In fact, I'm grandfathering my Macbook Pro as a result of this work, and will
turn it into a desktop build server only for the task of running xcodebuild ..

------
programminggeek
Netbook is still here. Samsung and Acer still make them. They're called
Chromebooks. They only run the internet. They are small. They are cheap. They
have the word book in the title.

The netbook is dead, long live the netbook!

------
venomsnake
Tablet + keyboard cover docking station is just an overpriced netbook. And
this combo is on the rise - people want to be able to do real stuff on their
devices, when you have so much computing power always with you. And for that
you need screen space and keyboard.

~~~
lucian303
Yup. I have not found a better input device than a keyboard for general
computing. Touch screen is nice, but when you have to do real work, it's
worthless. I don't even want to imagine the repetitive stress syndrome
injuries that are going to come from tablets and touch screens.

People think this industry is easy and simple, but they fail to see the
injuries even an 8 hour a day computer job causes. And you can't put it on
worker's comp either.

Fucked and fucked. That's why I prefer to move my fingers as little as
possible (glued to keyboard) and when necessary use a trackball like the
Logitech M570 and precursors. Without that, I'd be a garbageman with a bad
arm.

------
apendleton
The tradeoff netbooks promised was lower price in exchange for more limited
performance, and the Atoms at the time were the right fit for that niche.
Eventually, though, as more mainstream processors got cheaper, it started to
make less and less sense to keep those lines going...

But lots of mobile chips now occupy this exact same price/performance space:
very cheap, and not especially performant, but good enough to surf the web.
We've already seen some ARM laptops, and I expect to see more in the next
year, occupying the former-netbook market position. So far it's just been
Chromebooks, and I have some skepticism of the viability of the ChromeOS
platform in the long term, but the hardware can continue in that direction
regardless of the software (my money would be on either WinRT or a slightly
desktop-ified Android).

~~~
lucian303
"I have some skepticism of the viability of the ChromeOS"

Lol. Ya think? I give it a couple more years at best. Some things just can't
be done as web apps. Well, at least until someone figures out not only how to
make fiberoptic cables perform at the full speed of light, but beyond. Think
audio/video latency, etc.

------
motters
I quite like netbooks, having been initially sceptical about them. As a note
taking device they're hard to beat. Tablets just aren't as convenient because
you have to faff about with external keyboards and trying to get the screen at
the right viewing angle. Also netbooks have the edge over tablets in terms of
being able to install a wider variety of linux based operating systems.

------
hypr_geek
I've am currently using a 11" HP dm1 3016 (just a grade above netbook), and I
refuse to believe people do not find value in netbooks. Yeah, they may be
underpowered, but are usable for most tasks that an average user needs to do,
mostly web browsing and facebook, watching 720p movies, using MS Office, and a
long backup (~7-8 hrs after 1 yr).

Heck, I've been developing for Android on Eclipse, working on Spring MVC app,
Play 2.0 projects and doing graphics work on Adobe Photoshop on this laptop
since I bought it in Dec., 2011. Attached a 24" display to the HDMI port when
needed. Planning to upgrade to SSD, and it will last me a few more years. What
it cost me, around INR 20k (~$400).

I guess what netbooks need is an upgrade to a minimum 1366x768 display (which
is why I bought the dm1 and not a 10" netbook) and an AMD E series Fusion
grade processor.

------
netcan
Android is leaking all over the place. Into consoles, TVs, Cameras. I may be
naive, but it seems to be just a few small tweaks and a few dozen good apps
from being a better-than-chromeOS netbook OS.

Android (or some other tablet/mobile OS) might eat the netbook market.

------
truncate
With Microsoft Surface kind of design, where you have keyboards "only when you
want"; netbook's are dead.

~~~
lucian303
And for real work, they are necessary.

------
lucian303
11" MB Air. Nowhere close to $500, but you shouldn't expect that. No, it's not
dead, and it's not resting.

------
nacker
The best use of a netbook is as a _bedbook_ \- it's the laziest way of surfing
the web, just balance it on a thin pillow on your chest, attach a trackball
mouse, and you can burn almost no calories for hours on end!

------
jpxxx
So if we redefine the term "netbook" from 'small, shitty, cheap laptop' to
'small, cheap laptop' then "netbook" sales were really always super healthy.

Congratulations on achieving your word count, please stop.

~~~
hayksaakian
Replace cheap with expensive and you have the modern craze: ultrabooks.

~~~
lucian303
Yup. Might as well get a Mac, though these days the hardware only looks tough
but is quite flimsy. Still better than the plastic shit everyone else puts
out, but if I can mess up a fan by simply picking up the laptop ... damn
consumer devices.

