Is Intel Killing 12-Inch Displays On Netbooks? 297
HangingChad writes "Dell has retired their 12-inch Intel Atom-powered netbooks, they said today. The official reason — 'It really boils down to this: for a lot of customers, 10-inch displays are the sweet spot for netbooksLarger notebooks require a little more horsepower to be really useful.' Or is the real reason that 12-inch displays on netbooks cut into Intel's more profitable dual-core market and Dell's profit margins on higher-end machines?"
12" = normal machine (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when I had a 12" iBook. Back then it was considered a normal laptop. OK, it wasn't wide-screen, but isn't 12" just too big for a netbook?
It doesn't matter to the average consumer. (Score:2)
I'm eyeing the 11.6 notebooks, with ~1300x768 resolution, because they are the first workable machines for me (1024x600 res of the 10" just isn't enough although I would buy a smaller one if the resolution was up to par).
Anyway, at these sizes, it's not much cheaper than the cheapest full size notebooks - but it's still a lot easier than lugging around the average 15", has much better battery life than the cheapest notebooks, and with the typical browsing/email most people do, having max processing power is
Re:It doesn't matter to the average consumer. (Score:5, Interesting)
For me, my 14" HP is the sweet spot. I got good resolution and great battery life.
A 12" seems to be right in the middle of two distinct classes - the netbook and the laptop.
At 12", its too big to have the convenience of a netbook, but its too small to serve as a fully functional laptop. I'm not sure how well the 12" was selling, but for myself at least I would never buy a 12" because it wouldn't be ideal for anything I want to do.
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A 12" netbook is definitely a netbook. Samsung makes some awesome 1280x800 display netbooks with Nano processors that are imho, the best netbooks on the market.
Dell's decision is a little hilarious, in that all they will accomplish is helping their competition.
I'm sure Samsung will welcome all those disappointed Dell shoppers with open arms...
Re:It doesn't matter to the average consumer. (Score:4, Funny)
Yahoo need to pull their asses out of the Stone Age and join the 21st century and learn to build websites. Two years probation or risk being put in a padded room with the rest of them "mistake HTML for a screen publishing language" reject DTPers with only the W3C compendium on the history and purpose of HTML as a medium-independent markup language for company. Periodical flogging with a 300px x 200px flyswat should be part of daily routine.
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I'm eyeing the 11.6 notebooks, with ~1300x768 resolution, because they are the first workable machines for me (1024x600 res of the 10" just isn't enough although I would buy a smaller one if the resolution was up to par).
10 inch machines with that screen resoloution do exist at what I would consider a tollerable price ( £500). They have been availible in the US for a while and it looks like they will soon be appearing here in the uk as well (there are a couple of models here in the UK availible
Re:It doesn't matter to the average consumer. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, with average use and Auto Power mode, my Asus EEEPC 901 HA goes for a day and a half easily. It really does get over 6 hours as claimed, which for a netbook is almost 2 days of use in my experience.
And I play my daughter's 720p gymnastics videos all the time with no stuttering, but I have to put it in "High Power" mode to do that. Of course, I need to install the KLite Codec Pack first, but it works. YouTube is no problem at all, even HD clips.
Re:It doesn't matter to the average consumer. (Score:5, Insightful)
"YouTube is no problem at all, even HD clips."
Bullshit. Unless, of course, a slideshow is what you call "no problem at all"... ;)
Maybe you mean the HQ mode - that's NOT HD.
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Actually, netbooks have pretty impressive battery life compared to regular laptops. My old EeePC 1000H, for instance, ran for about 6 hours (minimal screen brightness, WiFi on, regular office/note-taking type use) with the stock 6-cell battery - no protruding huge battery or anything. The newer models are even better (1000HE, for instance)...
Sure, you're gonna get some manufacturers who cheap out and go for a 2- or 3-cell battery, but these systems use 12W at full tilt including the screen, which is pretty
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Actually, netbooks have pretty impressive battery life compared to regular laptops. My old EeePC 1000H, for instance, ran for about 6 hours (minimal screen brightness, WiFi on, regular office/note-taking type use) with the stock 6-cell battery - no protruding huge battery or anything. The newer models are even better (1000HE, for instance)...
And the MacBook Pros get 7-8 hours, with significantly increased system specs. This is my point. People go on about how impressive netbook's battery lives are, but I just can't get excited given the performance of even the best performing (battery-wise) netbooks (which are not the norm).
This is also with a 6 cell battery (which I'm not knocking, so long as it doesn't bulk up the netbook or increase the cost to above $400). Most netbooks I've seen come with much smaller batteries.
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Once again, you're forgetting that MBPs cost 5x as much as a netbook. If you don't need the processing power that the MacBook offers, why not save a thousand bucks or so?
Yes, there are regular laptops that can keep up with or beat netbooks in terms of battery life - but they're in a completely different market segment, just like good old ultraportables/subnotebooks.
Re:It doesn't matter to the average consumer. (Score:5, Insightful)
In what other realm of life is it normal to tell people to buy a crappy product because it's "good enough" for their simple needs?
Lots of them, so long as you're willing to replace "crappy" with "low performance". You tell someone to buy a cheap commuter car instead of a Ford GT if they're just going to commute back and forth from work.
You tell people to buy a cheaper cell phone and phone plan instead of the huge awesome everything setup when they only talk on the phone a small amount.
You tell people to get a modest apartment instead of a huge luxury suite when they don't have a lot of stuff and the suite isn't free.
People compromise on quality ALL THE TIME because we don't need to and can't all afford to have all the best stuff all the time.
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Yes, you do tell people these things. No, they don't have to take your advice and no, you shouldn't rub it in. Their life, their choices.
I personally told a young newlywed couple I am friends with that they shouldn't buy a house just before the collapse, because it was inevitably coming soon, and that they should rent for a year or two. They ignored me and are down 20% so far. They wanted to "own" a house.
I don't ever mention it because it's pointless and petty, but NOT giving friends and family good adv
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Best computer for the person != best computing experience for the person
Some people really do want to just email, write documents, IM, and use Facebook. If the video stutters during Youtube, that's annoying but acceptable. What's best for them may be to spend as little as possible to get something workable, and to use that extra money in other aspects of their lives.
Spe
Re:It doesn't matter to the average consumer. (Score:5, Informative)
"... all of Apple's MacBook Pros ... get 7 or 8 hours (verified as accurate by various third party reviews, so not the standard industry "under imaginary conditions" you see with most notebooks). Most netbooks would be hard-pressed to get half that."
Wow, that is massively not true. Under real use the new MBP barely get half that as well. My 17 gets 5.5 hours when doing essentially nothing.
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No, no it isn't.
What we have discovered is that 10" is actually too small.
This is due to the fact that you look like a squinting hunched over idiot while using
it, especially if you are over six feet tall. Petite women, and very small men, netbook away!
Ya'll are so cute with those lil' 'puters!
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I know what you mean. I have a very small lady friend who has a nice 10" Samsung. She is very happy with it.
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No, no it isn't.
What we have discovered is that 10" is actually too small.
This is due to the fact that you look like a squinting hunched over idiot while using
it, especially if you are over six feet tall.
That's, to an extent, what makes a netbook a netbook.
The way I look at it is, if its a perfectly usable, "just right" size computer for every day use without any severe complaints regarding size, hard drive speed, keyboard, etc, then it's not a netbook, it's just a notebook (regardless of the size). What makes a netbook a distinct category is that you're giving up on some (really, usually just about every) aspect of the computer in order to gain something that is extremely portable, and significantly cheape
Re:12" = normal machine (Score:5, Informative)
Re:12" = normal machine (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] but isn't 12" just too big for a netbook?
I find that the most important dimension when it comes to whether or not a computer is comfortable or is awkward and annoying when I'm carrying it loose is thickness, not length or width.
Same when it is in a backpack, as I use a backpack that has a padded divider to separate the computer from the other items in the backpack. The thickness of the computer is the only dimension that determines how much space the computer takes up in the backpack.
Re:12" = normal machine (Score:5, Funny)
I find that the most important dimension when it comes to whether or not a computer is comfortable or is awkward and annoying when I'm carrying it loose is thickness, not length or width.
Oh-ho! A computer, you say? Is that what the kids are calling it these days? I can read between the lines, mister.
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Funny. I've come to the opposite conclusion. Flying in coach, the taller the laptop is off the table, the more likely you are to break the screen when the guy in front of you leans back. Thickness doesn't mean much because it is in a bag anyway.
As for twelve inches being too big, that's only be ause a 12 inch laptop is really almost 14 inches corner to corner because of the wide screen margins. Dump the built-in camera; a netbook isn't fast enough to do much with it anyway. Then, cut it down to the nar
Re:12" = normal machine (Score:4, Interesting)
A businessperson has no business trying to use an ultraportable. That's not the target market at all, and they are completely unsuitable for them.
The ultraportable market targets mostly teenagers through college, mostly as a cheap way of carrying stuff back and forth to class or around the workplace, while leaving the bulk of their data at home or in the office. A webcam borders on useless for those people. If they want to video chat, 99.999% of the time, they'll be back in their rooms or offices and can use their main machines for that.
And built-in flash card readers only support a limited range of card formats. They also almost universally support only the low end consumer formats. Pro users with high end cameras generally have cameras that use Compact Flash cards, which is rarely, if ever supported in a built-in reader. This means that a significant percentage of your users end up carrying around an external reader anyway.
Besides, we're rapidly seeing cell phones converge on mini-USB connectors for charging. Because you will have to carry a USB to mini-USB cable to charge your cell phone anyway, you won't need any extra cables to connect your camera to your laptop. Unplug the cable from your phone and plug it into your camera, and suddenly that low-end card reader built into your laptop is just wasting space. Within five years or so, this will be moot.
Re:12" = normal machine (Score:5, Interesting)
I (still) have a 12" PowerBook.
IMHO, it's by far the best compromise I've seen between performance and portability. In fact, there wasn't much of a "compromise" at all -- it has the full array of ports that you'd expect (including FireWire), an optical drive, a decent battery, and surprisingly good speakers. At the time of its release, its CPU, memory, and hard drive were all on par with the top-of-the-line. Even today, it's still adequately fast for most tasks.
It's small enough to take anywhere, but not small enough that you have to squint in order to read what's on the screen. The new 13" MacBooks are actually quite a bit larger (albeit still very nice machines) -- I don't know of any machines today that offer the modern equivalent of performance and portability (even on the PC side of the fence, which I'd happily consider). There's also certainly something to be said for Apple's use of an all-metal chassis for its laptops.
My only complaints about it are the 1.25GB RAM limit, and 1024x768 display, although these are forgivable, given that it's a 5 year old machine.
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As someone pointed out: Thinkpad X series has delivered that consistently for quite a long time. Be prepared to pay through the nose though.
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I remember when I had a 5" portable C64 (in a 40 lb chassis) and back then it was considered a normal laptop. It wasn't wide screen either, but you damn kids these days (shakes fist) have no idea how good you've got it.
How big is too big probably depends on how you use it. In my line of work, XP on an atom processor with a 17 inch 1920x1200 display would be completely adequate. But because of screen size alone we are relegated to much more expensive hardware.
Alternate Sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I might believe this "it's cutting into cash cow" theory if Dell was a monopoly like Apple. But if HP, Asus et all are offering 12" Netbooks then wouldn't they just be losing customers to their competitors--gaining 0 profit instead of less profit?
Re:Alternate Sources (Score:4, Interesting)
What do Dell, Apple, HP, and Asus have in common? Their relationship to Intel. AMD is a non-competitor in the netbook space right now, and Intel has enough clout to throw their weight around and get what they want.
Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
What are Microsoft's licensing terms and costs for 10" netbooks, 12" netbooks and >12" notebooks?
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Re:Alternate Sources (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Alternate Sources (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Alternate Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
"if Dell was a monopoly like Apple"
How exactly is Apple a "monopoly"? Because the have 100% market-share in Macs? I guess Nintendo is a monopoly as well, since they have 100% market-share in the Wii-market....
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm.... Let's see where your logic leads. Apple has a 100% share of the market for Apple computers. Wow. That's so incisive. Read below to see where your logic takes you.
Dell has a 100% share of the Dell computer market. Ergo, Dell is now a monopoly. AMD has a 100% share of the AMD cpu market. Ergo, AMD is now a monopoly.
Your logic is so flawed, so "strawmanish", that it's not funny. Every company now qualifies as a monopoly because they hold a 100% share of their own sales, and no one else can manufacture and sell their brand.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
A Dell PC is trivially replaceable with a PC from a number of other manufacturers. Everything else will be more or less the same.
An Apple PC is not trivially replaceable. Changing to any competitor will require changing go a completely different OS, which behaves in a noticeably different way and requires different software. If you want an Apple computer with a configuration not available from Apple, you don't have a lot of options. You have to pick the closest Apple product. If you want a Windows PC with a configuration not available from Dell, you find a manufacturer that does make a PC with that configuration.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Informative)
The case is Microsoft holds 90% of the entire PC market. Apple holds 10%. Hence why Microsoft is a Monopoly, and Apple isn't on the OS side. Apple also competes in the hardware business with Dell, HP and other OEMs. They don't have even near a controlling interest.
As for your other comment, the MacOS market, MacOS isn't a market, it's a product. PCs are the market and Apple doesn't even come close to having a monopoly on it. You'd have to be retarded to think otherwise.
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They have a 100% share of MacOS computers, they are a monopoly in that market.
Um, everyone has a monopoly of their own products, genius.
What you're saying is that Apple doesn't license Mac OS X to other computer makers. That's not the definition of a monopoly. Monopoly isn't about specific products, but about product categories. "Macs" isn't a product category (as regards monopolies), it's a brand and a product line.
Or, if you say that's not the case, that their computers are just PCs and compete with all the others, well then you are hard pressed to call MS a monopoly at that point.
MS wasn't a monopoly because they were the only source of MS Windows. They were a monopoly (and still are in many regards) because they sold the overwhelming majority of
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Well ok, but back to the first point: monopolies aren't about products, they're about how much you can charge for them.
Not true. MS got in trouble for giving IE away for free.
It had nothing to do with the price, and in spite of what you keep saying, it had everything to do with the products. Specifically, the tying of IE to Windows.
Intel is not a company I see as a monopoly, but as something very close to one.
Actual courts of law have ruled otherwise.
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Actually OS X is just a pretty version of Unix, much like Linux (though in most cases a -hell- of a lot more polished). It is actually based on freebsd; you can access a terminal and run normal unix commands on it. It is highly customized, but so is Ubuntu or Fedora.
They have about 90% of the desktop Unix "market", maybe a little less, and almost none of the Unix server market. Even paring down the market like that, they have nowhere near the market share Microsoft has in the broader OS market.
Finally, w
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I haven't looked at laptops for a while, but about 18 months ago a Chinese friend asked me for help choosing a laptop. She wanted something with a 12" screen so it could be comfortably used on a flight. I was amazed to discover that the MacBook was significantly (by 20-40%) cheaper than anything comparable from other manufacturers - even the very cheap ones that I'd typically avoid. If you went up to a 14" screen, the prices for machines with the same (or, often, better) specs from the same manufacturer
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I call bullshit.
Apple doesn't currently have a 12" laptop, but their 13" laptop is about double the price of Dell's offering. I can double the hard drive and RAM of the mac and still not hit $750, where you only get a $999 option for the MAC. Hell the Dell business class 12-13" offering is only about $800, and that was two years ago. Now, if you buy all the goodies for it you'll hit $1500 easy, but the laptop itself was pretty cheap.
I have never, in all my years, seen a Mac on the market cheaper than any
No need for a conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
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"If you don't need super portability, you might as well get a more powerful machine"
You are forgetting several other variables, like battery life, heat, and cost. I personally don't need anything more than an underclocked Atom in my notebook, no matter what the size of the screen is. I imagine most people out there don't either.
I prefer a 12 inch screen and corresponding full-size keyboard to today's netbooks.
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Because 12'' screens are counterproductive (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems a bit weird to choose to make a twelve inch screen on a netbook, since the entire point of picking a netboo over a beefier laptop is that you highly value lightness and compactness.
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But a 12" netbook has a really nice resolution on it, and is magnitudes cheaper than most other 12" notebooks.
The niche is 12" in $400-500
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Not everybody chooses netbooks for their size. I picked mine mainly for the price and battery life. If 12" netbooks were available I would have prefered that to my 10".
conspiracy theories (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a trade-off between convenience and power, and once you get over a certain size, you might as well have something with a really workable screen.
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LoB
12" too large? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm actually on a 12" laptop right now, and love it very much.
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I am not even sure battery is a concern (Score:2)
Smaller netbooks impossible to use (resol. and kb) (Score:4, Interesting)
I used a friend's 10" netbook for a few minutes and immediately knew I couldn't buy one with a screen that small. 600 pixels is not nearly enough for vertical resolution.
I researched all of the netbooks and just purchased (2 days ago) an Acer AO751h. It has an 11.6" display (1366x768), a full sized keyboard and a 6 cell battery that lasts ~7-8h depending on drivers [aspireoneuser.com].
FYI, if you decide to get one as well, be sure to update the GMA500 drivers to the versions this guy is talking about [aspireoneuser.com] because other versions will cause it to lock up, and also have terrible performance.
weight, too (Score:2)
Oh, and it only weighs 3lbs, too, with the 6-cell battery.
I used to have a full 6-7lb laptop, it was fine at first but I soon got sick of having to carry it around. This thing being only 3lbs, I can just throw into my bag and go. And, because of the 7-8h battery life, I don't have to worry about bringing the charger with me (before this brought the laptop up to 7-8lbs)
Re:Smaller netbooks impossible to use (resol. and (Score:3, Insightful)
I used a friend's 10" netbook for a few minutes and immediately knew I couldn't buy one with a screen that small. 600 pixels is not nearly enough for vertical resolution.
What happened to GUIs? For years, my primary machine was a 386sx laptop with a 640x480 display in 16 shades of blue. I did word processing, programming, and image editing on it quite happily and never found the screen resolution particularly limiting. I'm not disputing your point, I'm just wondering what changed. Part of it is that back then I used to use one application maximised, while now I run several and they all take a bit of screen space (running more than one app on a 386sx with 5MB of RAM - one
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App developers optimise arround the minimum screen size they think a significant proportion of thier userbase will have. For a number of years that was 1024x768 then suddenly netbooks started appearing with lower resoloutions. With some apps it's not a problem, others either plain won't fit or will leave so little useful screen area that you won't want to use them.
Also I suspect our expectations have increased, if living with a very cramped screen is all you've ever known you won't wish too hard for anythin
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Netbooks seem heavy compared to high end (=expensive) lightweight laptops. The Dell Latitude E4200 [dell.com] has a 12" diagonal screen, a faster GPU, and a dual core CPU, and yet it weighs 2.2 lbs - as much
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Unfortunately, it's 5-8x as expensive.
Which means unless you are very rich or have taken out some expensive loss/breakage insurance you will be forever worrying about losing/breaking it.
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I've carried expensive laptops for years and haven't lost or broken one yet. Perhaps not everyone is as careless as you?
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The keyboard should be the first thing that people look at on netbooks. I don't care what anyone says, but the Gateway LT3103u keyboard is 1000x more comfortable than anything smaller than the 11.6 screen at 1366 x 768. Its just a low-power 1.2ghz athlon with 2 gigs of ram, a 250gb hdd, a radeon x1270, and a 3.5 to 5hr battery life, and at 350$ shipped its worth every penny. Being able to watch 720p on the go once in a blue moon is all i need, and if i wanted more features i would spend more money. Plus wit
Unlikely (Score:2)
The Dell Mini 12 had a horrible graphics chipset and 1 GB memory soldered onto the motherboard, which couldn't be upgraded. It wasn't cutting into profits *anywhere*.
At some point... (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point of a netbook is that it's small, compact, light, low-battery...but that's harder and harder to do when your netbook gets to be the size of your laptop. You can call a dog's tail a leg, but that doesn't make it a leg. Just because you call a device that's 5 lbs and has a 12" screen a netbook doesn't make it a netbook.
So where do you draw the line? I have a netbook and a laptop and a desktop. They serve three distinct purposes (though I rarely use my laptop anymore because my netbook, with the 10" screen, does just fine for most of those tasks).
Perhaps the reason more people are moving to netbooks instead of laptops is that most people have realized that an Atom processor is just fine for their tasks. That spending more to have a dual-core processor that spends 99% of its time idle and sucking up battery life was wasteful.
Re:At some point... (Score:5, Insightful)
> The whole point of a netbook is that it's small, compact, light
That used to be true of a laptop.
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Did it?
Have you seen some of the laptops of yesteryear? Ten pounds? That's only small, compact, and light when compared to the old mainframes of the same era..
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That used to be true of a desktop.
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Should I pull out that Professor Frink quote? What? I took so long reading other comments and scrolling here someone might already have done it? Okay :(
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So where do you draw the line?
Why should there BE a line? I'd much rather there was a range of devices and I could chose the point in that range that best suited me.
12 inch while big by netbook standards is still quite a bit smaller than most other cheap laptops on the market and for some people it may be the best compromise (personally I'd rather pay a bit more to have the functionality of the 12 inch models crammed into a 10 inch).
All depends on what's there for the $'s, really... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people I know buying netbooks are doing so because they already own 1 or more computers (often already own a notebook, even), and they just like the idea of having something cheap that could really be brought around anywhere they go without many concerns.
(EG. I have a custom configured Macbook Pro I bought new, last year. Great machine, and I maxxed out the RAM in it, upgraded the hard drive to a 500GB, and got a great carrying bag for it and its accessories. I take it to work regularly and on vacation trips, etc. But with a value of close to $3000 for all of that, possible theft or loss is a big worry. I'm definitely not going to lug it all over the place without a care in the world.... So I got a $200 or so closeout model of eeePC, and that one is pretty disposable by comparison. It's less functional and the screen gives me eyestrain after a while - but it works in a pinch, in places I'd just do without a portable otherwise.)
I suspect a 12" screen netbook is approaching the size where it's a little less convenient to take everywhere. (I can throw my eeePC in my car's glovebox .. but don't think a 12" display netbook would fit.) It also has to carry a bit higher price-tag than a 9" or 10" screen model would carry.
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The real kicker with a netbook would be cheap 3G data. For something I take everywhere, it is useless on its own but makes a great citrix or X11 terminal, but it needs network! I just need a 3G card that works for Linux. The machine only has 7GB flash and 512 MB ram so is not suitable for Windows (this is what makes it a netbook to me, not just a small laptop)
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intel varies the charge based on destination (Score:5, Informative)
Re:intel varies the charge based on destination (Score:4, Interesting)
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my 10" netbook almost has enough plastic around the display to fit a 12" screen, I'd jump at a 12" netbook at/near 10" netbook prices. Until that happens, I won't upgrade my 10".
It was the chipset, stupid (Score:2)
I've been looking for a replacement for my 12" G4 Powerbook and looked at the Dell Mini 12. Good dimensions and screen resolution, but what killed it for me was the Intel GMA 500 chipset and Atom N530. Underpowered and overpriced, plus flaky compatibility and lousy battery life. Its like a TFT maker had leftover panels and Intel had the junk leftover from making "quality" GMA 9x0 and N2x0 parts and sold it to Dell real cheap.
Roll in a candy coating and sell it for $100+ more than the good Mini 10 serie
Market Research Failure (Score:4, Insightful)
I chalk this up to bad market research. Dell probably asked a focus group how they could improve on the 10" netbook. The focus group probably said a bigger screen and faster cpu. How much more will they pay for it? $150 bucks.
Now Dell goes and makes one at that price point and screen size. Except the 12" is heavier and eats into the already mediocure battery life, it's waaay more expensive than the the 7" models that are practically being given away. No wonder it doesn't sell well.
I think Dell market research here forgot that the real desirable factor in netbook is the low, low price, portability, and long battery life. Ignore the core features customers love, and they will ignore you. How shocking!
I Am Not Aware... (Score:2)
I am aware of how much I hate Dell for lying.
Price Differential? (Score:2)
is it really Intel or is it Microsoft? (Score:2)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/22/microsoft-publishes-maximum-windows-7-netbooks-specs/
This does lead into the question of how fearful of Microsoft are the hardware manufacturers who get hired to build ARM based netbooks with screens larger than 10.2"? I would not be surprised to see ARM products constantly bumped to the back of the production queue for 'mysterious' reasons this holiday manufacturin
Too bad... (Score:2)
My 10" netbook is wonderful. The only problem I really have with it is the 1024x600 screen. If a 12" screen would make for a 1280x750 screen I'd be all over it. I've been wanting to buy a few more of these computers for my kids and that size would be my sweet spot. As it is, since the 10" models are all that is available, I'm just going to wait for prices to bounce off the pavement before I pick up any more.
12" is no mans land (Score:2)
Owned 3",4",12",15" computers and DEFINATELY 12" is the technical tipping point at which the display supports desktop functionality. 12" was the perfect form factor in the embodiment of Apple's MacBook Pro 12.
BUT...the display drives retail pricing and Apple dumped the 12. It has been my thought that the margins didn't support all the same components necessary to drive the larger displays. Profit bought us the widescreen displays.
But i want an 11 Display" (Score:2)
:)
Seriously tho, i agree with intel. If you are going for that size, might as well step up the horsepower to run more apps locally and just call it a notebook.
Typical Artificial Marketing Junk (Score:2)
Re:No 12" LCD can fit cargo pocket (Score:4, Insightful)
why have a 12" screen when you can pack all those pixels into 10" or 8"?
That might be fine when you're 18, but when you're 40 and your eyesight is starting to go you'll be glad of the larger pixels; I'm not sure about today with larger LCD screens but most of the old farts I know used to run at 800x600 on their 17" CRT monitor so that they could actually read the text.
If you're using a cut-down 'social networking' interface that's designed to show one web site at a time then a 10" display at 1024x600 is probably OK, but the 1280x800 display on my 15" laptop is already too small for programming in an IDE. For web-browsing, email and document processing (i.e. things which don't need much processing power) I'd really want 1280x800 or similar on a 12" display for a netbook. I've been looking at buying one so I could carry it around in my gear bag but finding a good compromise between resolution, display size and price is not easy.
At the other end of the scale I've noticed a few small netbooks appearing at work plugged into racks or manufacturing gear for intelligent equipment monitoring, and an 8" display should work well for those applications.
Re:No 12" LCD can fit cargo pocket (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unless you're using some obsolete OS like Windows XP, screen DPI has nothing to do with text size.
The fact that I was talking about CRT monitors might have given you a hint that they weren't running Vista.
Personally I really, really hate GUIs that scale text with resolution, precisely because it eliminates the benefit of fitting lots of text on a big, high-resolution screen: if I wanted huge text I'd be running at 800x600. Why should I have to change all the font sizes just to get more text onto a 1920x1080 display than I would at 800x600?
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Because he said nothing about font sizes? Font sizes are absolute. They do not depend on the amount of pixels you have. More pixels means sharper fonts, that is all.
Font sizes depend on how the actual DPI of the screen relates to the assumed DPI of the screen.
On windows at least the interface in lots of apps breaks if you change the assumed DPI away from it's default value. So in reality the size of text on screen is a function of the screen resoloution.
Re:No 12" LCD can fit cargo pocket (Score:5, Insightful)
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That might be fine when you're 18, but when you're 40 and your eyesight is starting to go you'll be glad of the larger pixels;
And then there is the question of keyboard size. I cannot deal with the keyboards on 10" and 8" netbooks. My hands are just too big! At least with the 12" neties, I can type at about 15-20 WPM!!! Anything smaller and it's game over. =p
Re:Fail atom chipset (Score:4, Informative)
Most netbooks have the Intel chipset which sucks a lot more power than the NVidia one. That might be a reason to want smaller screens, seeing as that would save *some* power...
I think you're confusing the desktop Intel Atom chipsets (which suck major ass) with the mobile Intel chipsets. I believe the Ion chipset takes less power than the desktop Intel chipset for the Atom, but more than the mobile Intel chipset for the Atom.
If I remember correctly, it's something like 22W for the Intel desktop chipset vs 6W for the mobile, with the Ion somewhere in between (I've seen claimed idle consumption around 20-25W for Ion-based desktop systems).
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Most netbooks have the Intel chipset which sucks
You could have stopped there.
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Most netbooks have the Intel chipset which sucks a lot more power than the NVidia one.
yeah, I've got the eee 1000HE which has the newer Intel chipset - it was the first without the awful one, and new this year. It gets much better battery life than the old 7" eee we have, despite the larger screen.
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What they are doing is trying to better defne their product line. Big screen / processor = Laptop. Small screen / processor = Netbook. It's as simple as that.
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a little 7" netbook isn't expected to replace a regular computer and it's small enough to throw in a cargo pants pocket and to carry around while using it.