When is a netbook not a Netbook? When a marketing buffoon decided that as this is a selling category another brand will be shoe-horned into the category to creat sales.
First issue idiot statements. With versions of the ultra-portable laptop pioneered by Asustek proving a disappointment (this is a report form another journal for that most certainly has not been the worldwide experience or, indeed, any experience that it is possible to track down) in spite of their general success,
PC makers are set to unleash hybrid models that combine the price of the low-cost machines with the performance of a notebook. This is PR gubbins at its worst. It is trying to invent a new category of computer and failing miserably.
The report continues that the Asus Eee PC and Apple’s more expensive wafer-thin Macbook Air notebook are proving to be the influences that are shaping manufacturers’ plans for this year.
This is a total nonsense.
No one considers the Apple MacBook as a Netbook. Nor is it any way affecting the design of other Netbooks.
The Consumer Electronics Association estimates notebooks — including netbooks — accounted for double that of their desktop counterparts in 2008, with 10.9% and 5.5% respectively. The CEA also expects the gap to widen considerably over the next four years.
Netbook sales have grown from about 350,000 units in 2007, when Taiwan’s Asus introduced its first models, to 10m in 2008. The CEA predicts unit sales will rise 80% to 18m in 2009, in spite of the global downturn.
Netbooks, an evolution of the notebook laptop computer, are a lightweight, low-cost, energy-efficient, highly portable laptop suitable for web browsing, e-mail and general purpose applications.
While they typically compromise on screen and keyboard sizes, storage and processing power in the current financial situation that is not seen as a major problems.
They generally lack the sophistication needed for the heavy-duty applications used for editing photographs and processing videos, but they suit users with less onerous processing requirements, such as students, and they make excellent second machines. They are also extremely inexpensive. Take US$500 as being the absolute maximum.
Bahr Mahoney, director of mobile marketing at Advanced Micro Devices, a PC processor maker, said, ‘When netbooks first came out, there was a high degree of returns at stores, because people were expecting the experience that they got on their traditional notebook or desktop and did not receive it.’
It is not sure from when he got these surprising views which are totally contrary to universal experience.
AMD has now teamed up with Hewlett-Packard, the world’s leading laptop maker, to unveil a product aimed at dissatisfied buyers. The DV2 is a fully-featured ‘thin and light’ laptop that will cost $700 when it goes on sale in March. That is not a Netbook. Not by any sort of definition.
It may well be that but it will not be a Netbook against which it inevitable be compared as the price is fast to high. For the record this is being written on a Netbook.
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