Tag Archives | Netbooks

Toshiba’s Mini NB205 Netbook: The Technologizer Review

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 31, 2009 at 4:13 pm

Toshiba Mini NB205When Toshiba announced its first netbooks last month, it said that it had waited to start selling inexpensive little notebooks in the U.S. until it felt like it could do them justice. I’ve just spent time using the Mini NB205–which Toshiba likes to call a mini-notebook rather than a netbook–and found that it’s indeed one of the most highly-evolved netbooks to appear to date. There’s nothing spectacularly new or different about its design or specs, but it’s a pleasing machine that doesn’t feel compromised 0r chintzy, and there are multiple areas in which Toshiba erred on the side of doing things right rather than doing them cheap.

The Mini NB205-N312BL I reviewed lists for $399.99 and sports the components and features you’d expect to find in a current $400 netbook: a 10.1-inch screen with 1024-by-600 resolution and LED backlighting, a 166-MHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 5400rpm 160GB hard drive, 802.11G Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, three USB ports, an SD slot, VGA output, a Webcam, and a six-cell battery. And oh yeah, it runs Windows XP Home SP3.

The $399.99 version of the Mini is available in blue, brown, pink and white; all versions have two-tone cases and a bit of texture to the plastic on the lid. They’re among the slickest-looking netbooks at their price point. (There’s also a $349.99 version with a black case, a more basic keyboard, and no Bluetooth; I’d spring for the extra $50 for the top-of-the-line version.)

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Microsoft’s Netbook Problem

Posted by David Worthington on July 24, 2009 at 2:15 pm

The persisting popularity of netbooks has been a major drain on Microsoft’s Windows client licensing revenue. The worldwide economic downturn has driven many people to purchase cheaper machines, but I believe that the netbook’s ascension also reflects changing consumer tastes.

Windows client licensing revenue fell $1 billion from last year, and Microsoft’s unearned revenue from multi-year license agreements has flatlined.

Unless Windows 7 proves wildly popular, the company’s prospects for restoring its Windows business to its past luster appear to be grim. I expect that the company will experience a cyclical earnings bump that will crest near where previous Windows releases have in the past, but growth will be less substantial.

That is because there are simply too many alternatives, with the Web acting as the great equalizer. I access Gmail just as quickly on a netbook running Linux as I would on a higher end laptop powered by Windows. And even though netbook hardware is wimpy by current standards, netbooks are as powerful as high-end machines were on the not-too-distant past

Not everyone is a developer or a gamer. I believe that the netbook meets the “good enough’ threshold for most people, and there is a decent assortment to choose from on the market.

Many of those people may have been compelled to purchase a netbook by financial reasons, but it is highly possible that many will be satisfied enough  to purchase another netbook in the future. It could mean a permanent change in consumer buying behavior.

Microsoft seems to understand that, because it is downplaying netbooks at every chance it can get, and is attempting to direct customers toward more expensive alternatives. But the industry has failed to create really compelling products that would “wow’ me into paying more–so far.

I am reminded of my late grandmother, who was a child of the Great Depression. She wouldn’t spend money needlessly, and would reuse what she had (including tinfoil). People are experiencing varying degrees of hardship during this recession, and it is not unreasonable to expect that their spending habits will be permanently altered.

Consequently, if Microsoft does not see its market share slide, it will see its revenues fall. It cannot charge as much for a copy of Windows on a $400 machine than it would have traditionally done on more expensive systems. The Windows cash cow is slowly beginning to dry up.

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The Windows Cash Cow Takes a Beating

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 23, 2009 at 2:52 pm

Windows LogoMicrosoft has announced its fourth quarter financial results, and for those of us who are Microsoft customers rather than shareholders, the most striking factoid may be this: The company’s revenue from Windows took a hit of more than a billion dollars compared to what it reaped a year ago. How come? Well, the crummy state of the worldwide economy didn’t help, but another factor was the ongoing popularity of netbooks. They typically sell for less than a $400, and usually ship with a copy of Windows XP that Microsoft can’t charge as much money for as it’s used to getting for Windows. No wonder we haven’t heard Microsoft (or much of anyone else in the PC industry, including netbook manufacturers) wax enthusiastic about netbooks.

The industry keeps predicting the imminent downfall of netbooks, which will supposedly be killed by more powerful thin-and-light notebooks which just happen to cost more. Starting in three months, those thin-and-lights will ship with versions of Windows 7 which Microsoft will be able to charge more for–and it seems like a safe bet that Windows 7 will help Microsoft’s financial statements look a little rosier in general once the OS ships. But I persist in believing that it’s also entirely possible that $400 (and $300) netbook-type computers are here to stay, and could make up a significant part of the laptop industry from here on out. If consumers buy ’em, there’s little or nothing that PC manufacturers and Microsoft can do to stop them. And if netbooks stick around, they’ll have a profound effect on Microsoft’s fortunes whose real impact is yet to be seen.

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Sorry, Consumers, You Still Mistakenly Like Netbooks

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 17, 2009 at 8:29 am

Erica Ogg of CNET has a good story up on upcoming notebooks based on ultra low-voltage chips. They’re thin and light, with good battery life, and will run between $600 and $1000. Sounds pretty appealing–I could see myself going for one as my next notebook. I remain amused, however, by the degree to which the industry keeps saying that the netbooks it’s selling by the million are lousy machines that it needs to rescue consumers from.

From another Cnet story:

“Now, if you want a thin and light notebook, you don’t have to just pick a Netbook. You can pick an affordable notebook that has more functionality,” [Intel CEO Paul] Otellini said.

[snip]

“When we first released our ultraportable (ultra-thin) a lot of people looked at it and said, ‘oh it’s Netbook,'” said Kelt Reeves, president of enthusiast PC maker Falcon Northwest. “No, it’s close to a Netbook in size but it’s much, much more capable,” Reeves said, addressing user misconceptions.

Windows 7 may not go very far in correcting all the confusion. “Windows 7 runs well even on a $199 Netbook,” said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Collins Stewart. Kumar said Intel may continue to have trouble managing consumer perceptions of Netbooks and ultra-thins.

Again and again, we’re told that consumers are buying netbooks because they’re confused, not because they make sense for some folks. And the fact that Windows 7 runs well on netbooks is apparently…a problem. Bad Microsoft. Bad, bad Microsoft.

The notebooks the PC industry wants to replace netbooks cost more and have higher profit margins. Coincidence?

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Sony Finally Does a Netbook

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 7, 2009 at 5:33 pm

Sony NetbookThe last major PC manufacturer who didn’t sell a netbook in the U.S. is jumping into the pool: Sony has announced that its VAIO W will arrive in August. The specs are standard stuff: a 1.6-GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 10.1-inch screen, a 160GB hard drive, Bluetooth, Draft-N Wi-FI, Ethernet, two USB ports, a Webcam, and slots for SD and Memory Sticks. It runs Windows XP. And while the price is a tad on the high side at around $500, the screen resolution is, too: It’s a relatively roomy 1366 by 768. Oh, and the W is available in three colors: berry pink, sugar white, and cocoa brown.

I’m a netbook fan, but most models are starting to blur together, since specs, features, and industrial design are usually similar. (One exception: HP’s upcoming metal-encased, feature-rich Mini 5101.) The industry still has a weird, uneasy relationship with the form factor, but now that everyone’s making ’em, I hope we’ll see a new generation of models with additional features and some creativity in the industrial-design department. (Sony’s VAIO P almost counts as a new approach to the netbook, even though it predates the W.)

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The War Against Netbooks Continues?

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 6, 2009 at 7:28 am

No NetbooksAccording to DigiTimes–a Taiwanese publication that’s always interesting, if not always completely reliable–Samsung is planning to release a netbook with an 11.6-inch screen and an Intel Atom CPU. Sounds cool–it’s a popular form factor with a roomier-than-usual display. But DigiTimes also says that Intel has responded by canceling Samsung’s deal for discount pricing on Atom chips, and similarly punished Lenovo when it introduced a 12.1-inch netbook. Samsung may also run into trouble with Microsoft, whose Windows 7 licensing agreements reportedly discourage netbooks with screens that are larger than 10.1 inches.

Netbooks make Intel and Microsoft nervous, since their low prices and high popularity threaten the market for costlier laptops that preserve a more generous profit margin for processors and operating systems. If I worked for either company, I’d be nervous, too. But trying to stifle netbook growth by making it tough for PC manufacturers to release appealing new models puts the companies on a collision course with consumers.

It’s a lousy development for anyone who’d like to buy a netbook with a sizable screen. I think it’s also self-defeating for the companies playing the pricing games, since the history of the PC business shows that consumers nearly always get what they want, even when pricing pressure makes it miserable for companies that make computers, components, and software.

Bottom line: If people want big-screen netbooks–and many surely do–they’re going to happen. I’d love to see the industry admit that and embrace it. Wouldn’t it be a more efficient way to do business than trying to prevent the inevitable?

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PC Pitstop’s “Top Loved Netbooks”

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 3, 2009 at 10:55 am

PC PitstopPeople are buying scads of the pint-sized laptops known as netbooks these days, but there’s some controversy over whether they’re happy with the machines they get. Here’s some pro-netbook fodder: My friends at PC Pitstop scan millions of Windows PCs as part of their OverDrive online diagnostic and tune-up service, and as they do they ask those PC’s owners some questions about their satisfaction with their machines. And netbooks owners report that they’re quite satisfied with their systems.

Here are new rankings of the top nine netbooks for user satisfaction, as reported in this blog post over at the Pitstop site. The Overall rating is on a scale of one to four stars. Pitstop also asks users whether their PC is slow, and whether it freezes or requires frequent reboots.

Netbook Overall (out of 4) % freezing % slow
1. MSI Wind U-100 3.49 4 10
2. Asus Eee PC 1000HE 3.44 3 15
3. Samsung NC10 3.43 3 16
4. Asus Eee PC 1000H 3.38 6 22
5. Acer Aspire One 3.37 4 17
6. HP Mini 3.36 7 28
7. Dell Inspiron 910 3.35 10 30
8. Acer One AOA150 3.35 9 27
9. Acer Eee PC 900 3.03 11 49

(Note: #5 and #6 are lines of netbooks; the rest are specific models.)

Overall satisfaction for most of these models is close to indistinguishable. There does seems to be a pretty close correlation between overall happiness as a netbook owner and whether you find your netbook to be acceptably fast, though–90 percent of MSI Wind U-100 owners who gave feedback didn’t think their laptops were slow, and it got the highest overall ranking. Some of the machines further down the list show more discontent over performance. Virtually half of Eee PC 900 owners say it’s sluggish, for example. But PC Pitstop’s satisfaction ratings for the top 25 notebooks of all types show that it’s common for about 20 percent of owners of a particular model to say it’s slow.

Of course, netbooks are slow compared to standard laptops with beefier CPUs and graphics and more RAM. I think Pitstop’s results show that PC users are smart about calibrating their expectations and applications to the machine they’re using. They know that a netbook isn’t going to handle video editing or 3D gaming with panache, and take that into account when they decide what to run and come to conclusions about how satisfied they are.

(Although truth to tell, I think some people underestimate netbooks’ ability to run demanding applications. I have an Eee PC1000HE that I upgraded to 2GB, and just for laughs, I installed Photoshop CS4 on it. Photoshop is more than adequately fast on it. But it has a user interface that’s too tall to work on the 1000HE’s 600 pixels of vertical resolution–there are OK buttons I can’t click because they run off the screen.)

The MSI Wind U-100, Asus Eee PC 1000HE, and Samsung NC10, by the way, are all among Pitstop’s top 10 for notebooks of all types, suggesting that users don’t see them as unsatisfactory, secondary substitutes for a “real” laptop. They judge them on their own merits, and are happy with ’em, period.

If you’ve got a netbook, how happy are you with its speed? How happy are you overall?

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HP’s Mini 5101: Netbook Deluxe, With All the Trimmings

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 23, 2009 at 9:01 pm

HP LogoThe PC industry may continue to be a tad uneasy with the popularity of netbooks, but there’s no question that the little guys are selling well–and not just to folks on tight budgets. Enter HP’s latest and most lavish netbook, the Mini 5101, which the company just announced. Aimed at business types, the 5101’s pricetag starts at $449 and goes up from there–which is striking in a category where most models max out at $400 or less.

But this Mini is available with features that are anything but bare-bones. You can get it with a 7200-rpm 320GB hard drive with HP’s DriveGuard safety feature or an 80GB solid-state drive; you can it with multiple-carrier mobile broadband based on Qualcomm’s Gobi technology; you can get its 10.1-inch screen either with typical netbook resolution of 1024 by 768 or the unusually high resolution of 1366 by 768.(I’d spring for the latter option in a heartbeat if I were buying this machine–the low resolution of most netbook displays is at least as significant an obstacle to running powerful apps such as Photoshop as lack of CPU and graphics horsepower.)

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Resolved: There Are No Such Things as Netbooks

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 23, 2009 at 11:51 am

Toshiba Mini NotebookResearch firm NPD has released a study that says that not every netbook buyer is a happy camper. For instance, 70 percent of the folks who set out to buy a netbook ended up very satisfied. But only 58 percent of those who initially planned to buy a more traditional notebook but instead chose a netbook wound up very satisfied. The study also shows that only 18-to-24 year olds think the netbooks they bought perform better than they’d expected.

The results aren’t surprising–netbooks are only the right computers for some people, and you’re more likely to be happy with one if it’s the type of PC you want than if you’re buying it because it’s cheaper than a larger, more powerful notebook. But I find it interesting that NPD–and most of the people in the industry who I’ve talked to about netbooks–talk about them as a different type of computer than a notebook. (NPD’s release on its study begins “Netbook, notebook – they sound the same.”)

I think that treating netbooks as something other than notebooks is part of the problem here–and that consumers who consider netbooks to be notebooks are closer to getting it right than manufacturers who insist they’re something different.

Netbooks have small screens; they have basic CPUs and graphics that aren’t well-suited to high-end tasks; thanks in part to Microsoft licensing rules, they have skimpy amounts of RAM. But that doesn’t make them something other than notebooks. It makes them…small, relatively basic notebooks. To treat them as a fundamentally different sort of device is akin to Ford insisting that a Focus isn’t a car because it’s smaller, less powerful, and less luxurious than a Lincoln Continental.

When I chat about netbooks with PC manufacturers, I still get the sense that they make them very nervous. They sure make Microsoft nervous, since it can’t make the profit it’s used to getting for Windows on a $300 computer. It’s pretty common for industry types to cheerfully talk about netbooks being a fad that’ll go away real soon now.

Me, I don’t think they’re going anywhere. I think they’ll get more powerful, and the division between a netbook and a more traditional notebook will blur more and more. (Netbooks, for instance, do away with optical drives to cut costs–but even pricey notebooks are doing the same thing to shed weight, and because optical drives are no longer essential equipment.)

I’d love to see the industry do with netbooks what it’s usually done with new PC form factors–which is to work aggressively to make them more powerful and appealing. (The 1GB RAM cap is ludicrous–my Asus Eee PC 1000HE was wimpy and unsatisfactory until I popped in a 2GB memory chip.) But I still get the sense that the prevailing attitude in the industry–even among some companies that sell tons of netbooks–is that they’re an aberration that oughta fade away rather than a significant part of the future of notebooks. Can we start making them better by at least acknowledging that they are, in fact, notebooks?

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