“You don’t want to buy one of those of things,” said the electronics store assistant, “they don’t have much memory and the CPUs in the notebooks and ultra books are better.”
I was shopping for a cheap netbook for the kids, each of which had been saving up to buy one as they are sick of me yelling at them for playing Minecraft on my work system, and the consensus from the store staff was to do everything to steer folk away from the cheap systems.
This is understandable as most electronic store staff are on commissions, and these are lean on cheap computers. It’s much better to sell a thousand dollar unit – with upgraded warranties and accessories – than a low margin, one off unit.
For manufacturers, similar problems exists; these cheap unit cannibilised their higher priced products with better margins. Dell recently announced they are getting out the netbook market and others are following.
Netbooks themselves are in trouble as the market they addressed for cheap, portable, Internet connected devices is now largely covered by smart phones and tablets which offer better battery life and usability.
Interestingly, the battery life argument was even used by the computer store salesfolk who pointed out – correctly – that the newer laptops have better power management than their cheaper netbook cousins.
While the netbook as a category is dead; the concept itself isn’t. As the uptake of tablet computers like the iPad show, Internet connected portable devices are becoming the computer of choice for many people and the advantages of a laptop form factor; a proper tactile keyboard, USB ports and other external connectors are still attractive.
Probably the worse thing for the manufacturers and retailers is the price points are now established in customers’ minds – $400 is what people want to pay for laptops, which doesn’t bode well for those higher priced systems.
Those manufacturers can’t even get into the tablet computer market as Apple now own that sector that the PC vendors and Microsoft squandered a decade’s lead with substandard equipment and badly designed software.
Despite the best efforts of the electronic store’s salesfolk, my kids ended up buying cheap, low specced netbooks out of their savings and those systems run Minecraft quite nicely. Which is another problem for shops and manufacturers stuck with a 1990s business model.
Netbooks still have a place in the market based on their price-point.
Sure, tablets are fun and the “in” thing at the moment but sometimes you need to do certain things that a tablet can’t do as quickly or easily.
You mentioned usb ports in your article. That’s a very strong point in favour of netbooks. The issue I have with my ipad is the transfer of files and photos. To do this I use Dropbox but I need to rely on a wifi network to enable this.
When my wife’s mini notebook had its hard drive replaced, I installed Ubuntu Linux on it as I couldn’t source a version of Windows Starter. Linux made the performance of the netbook seem superior to Windows and made the use of the mini notebook more enjoyable and practical as a primary computing device. The Linux installation also came with pre-installed software such as Libre Office, making editing of email attachments a cinch compared to a tablet.
Officeworks sells notebooks for as little as $260. That’s less than half the price of the cheapest iPad. If i was still a university student, I wouldn’t hesitate in purchasing a netbook and using it as my main computer. With 250GB of storage, the sluggishness of the netbook is a small price to pay for the functionality that it offers. Although I’d be inclined to dual boot with a version of Linux and then using the operating system that performs the best.
When considering paying $1100 and above for an ultrabook, I just don’t see the return on investment. In two years, the laptop will be outdated, the storage filled and the RAM slower than bearable for the price paid. I could spend $400 on a netbook and if after a year I need more power, I could purchase a PC (or a tablet) for $800. That would be about the same cost of the ultrabook but a better use of my financial resources.