Saturday, December 17, 2011

Netbooks

Dell has ended their Netbook line.

That leaves Google's Chromebooks, which aren't exactly exciting.

I wasn't just a little wrong about Netbooks, I was incredibly, unbelievably, totally wrong. Again.

I mean, this is friggin' ridiculous.

What happened?

I suppose it was the pocket computer. People with iPhones and the Android equivalent are already paying for most of what a Netbook can do. It doesn't make sense to pay for an extra monthly data plan, and a Netbook without net access is kind of a bust.

That leaves Windows notebooks, which are cheap but crummy. And MacBook Airs, which are not cheap but very amazing.

There's still the grade school and perhaps junior high school marketplace, but the iPad and Android equivalents are squeezing there too.

The Netbook looks like an evolutionary dead end. Maybe we'd have taken that road, but the iPhone blew a hole in it by mid-2007. I was writing in 2009; the bloody 3G was out then!

Damnit Netbook, you made a fool of me.

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3 comments:

  1. Steven Popkes12/18/11, 9:44 AM

    God I hope not. I use an Asus eee for pretty much everything. While the android I have will do much on the consumption side of the net it does wicked little on the production side of the net. I do a lot of writing and trying to do that on a smartphone is an exercise in uselessness.

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  2. JGF12/18/11, 3:07 PM

    That's what I thought back when the iPhone was new. I was wrong though. Seems there just aren't enough people who:

    1. Produce things.
    2. Want Windows or Linux.
    3. Don't want a laptop.

    Maybe in other countries ...

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  3. Anonymous12/19/11, 12:07 PM

    I think it is more likely that the distinction between a 'netbook' and a 'laptop' is going away. When the netbook concept first appeared, there was a pretty big price difference between them and 'normal laptops'. Now it seems like the one just shades into the other. I guess the long term question is whether people will continue to buy laptops generally or whether our phones or tablets will take over...

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