7 ms·
> This shouldn't be a massive surprise Except for the "economics" "institutes" which extrapolated the first-year sales onto the next 20 years and were adamant
by creshal 11y ago
> This shouldn't be a massive surprise
Except for the "economics" "institutes" which extrapolated the first-year sales onto the next 20 years and were adamant that tablets would soon™ replace desktop, laptops, phones, cats, and, finally, hydrogen atoms in the sun, because somehow "infinite growth" and "crash" are the only possible business models.
Same crap as with the netbook "boom" that was supposed to revolutionize EVERYTHING!!1 for about a year.
- baldfat 11y agoThe netbook did change laptops to be smaller and (Windows) cheaper then they were before they came out. I bought my wife an EEE netbook and it was super cheap at $499.
- creshal 11y agoMeh. Subnotebooks were a thing before netbooks and after (until they were killed by cheap ultrabooks), and $250 notebooks faster than the eee crap existed before, if you bothered looking.
- icebraining 11y agoTo my recollection, you could buy a small laptop or a cheap one, but the combination was almost impossible to find until netbooks came out. Before them, it was the UMPC/Project Origami craze, and they cost $700+. Even in '09, the cheap subnetbook market was very badly served. I got a 12" HP DV2, but it cost me $500, and that because it was on sale, since it originally retailed for $730.
- jacquesm 11y agoToshiba Libretto, Compaq Aero. Ok, that's long ago but those were netbooks in just about every sense of the word.
- icebraining 11y agoI'm not sure what exact models you're referring to, but the one's I'm seeing were all $1500-3000 machines.
- jacquesm 11y agoThat's not what I paid for them. Even so, computers back then in general were more expensive than they are today and 'inexpensive' is a fairly relative term for something that you earn your living with. The last one in that formfactor that I bought was an acer aspire one, probably also not a netbook by some definition but extremely convenient (especially with the built in cellular modem).
- kbenson 11y agoSince when is $500 "super cheap" for a netbook? The original EEE was ~$250 (depending on Linux or Windows).
- anonbanker 11y agoChromebooks are $250 new, with a haswell proc.
- scholia 11y agoThough you can get real Windows laptops for less than that.... EDIT: for whoever downvotes simple statements of fact... Lenovo - Ideapad 100s 11.6" Laptop $199.99; HP - Stream 11.6" Laptop $199.99; New! Dell - Inspiron 11.6" Laptop $199.99. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?id=pcat17071&st=laptops%20under%20$200&cp=1&qp=currentprice_facet%3DPrice~%24150%20-%20%24199.99^operatingsystem_facet%3DOperating%20System~Windows%2010 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?id=pcat17071&st=l...
- creshal 11y agoThose "real" Windows laptops have smartphone CPUs (and less RAM than recent smartphones, to add insult to injury); and run in the same price spectrum as Chromebooks – there's $200 ARM Chromebooks, too. Actually useful versions cost around $250+ in both cases.
- sccxy 11y agoWhich laptop & smartphone CPUs are you talking about? I haven't kept up with news lately. Could you post some links
- Retric 11y agoSome smartphones surprisingly decent specs. 1440 x 2560 pixels Quad-core 2.1 GHz Cortex-A57 3 GB RAM 32/128 GB SSD And 2 cameras / other smartphone features. But, they cost 2-3x what a netbook does.
- 11y ago
- crdoconnor 11y agoThe netbook boom was nipped in the bud by Microsoft licensing. They gave away a free version of windows on it with heavy restrictions. Consequently hardware manufacturers brought out new models but stopped improving them (they topped out at a measly 1GB of RAM, upgradeable to 2). They quickly died out because of course they did. That's a ridiculous restriction. After my old one died I scoured for ages trying to find one that didn't adhere to those ridiculous restrictions to no avail. There were ~35 models available with a 2GB RAM restriction and zero without. The next year there were none.
- scholia 11y ago> They gave away a free version of windows on it... Not true. It was a low cost version of XP, for which OEMs paid $11 to $15. > ... with heavy restrictions. That's certainly true (as defined by Microsoft and Intel). However, it was arguably better for users to have machines with 2GB or 4GB of RAM and without letterbox screens, and there was no restriction on making those. Today there are dozens of "netbooks" with 10in screens that outperform the old netbooks, run full Windows 10, have touch screens, and cost a lot less than the old netbooks.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago> "it was arguably better for users to have machines with 2GB or 4GB of RAM" Microsoft intentionally restricted the RAM in netbooks during the main growth period for netbooks. This article shows that RAM was limited to 1GB for Windows 7, I'm pretty sure the same restrictions applied to Windows XP: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-windows-netbook-hardware-limits,7889.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-windows-netbook-h...
- scholia 11y agoYes, as I've already said, that was part of the deal. OEMs could choose to design whatever they liked, or choose to exploit a netbook/nettop design package that provided some discounts on Microsoft/Intel technologies. Netbooks were originally intended for school uses (see Intel's Classmate) not to replace consumer laptops. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/education-solutions/classmatepc-clamshell.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/education-solutions/c...
- icebraining 11y agoWhich economics institutes did so?
- creshal 11y agoGfk was the leading hype driver over here in Germany.
- anonbanker 11y agoI've been exclusively using netbooks for personal use since they came out. Now that I've switched to RK3288-based netbooks, all the problems I had with the Atoms are long-gone. I know I'm a minority, but some of us did jump on the revolution and stay.
- macspoofing 11y agoI thought tablets would replace a bigger chunk of the desktop market, but I also assumed that at some point they would get proper mouse/keyboard support and better multi-tasking, so you can actually get things done. Nope.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoAs much as people were hollering Post PC, you'd think, but alas, it didn't happen.
- dspillett 11y agoYeah, the only way to get desktop style multi-tasking and keyboard+mouse support is one of the many Windows 8/10 tablets that are floating around, but that isn't ideal for some tablet use IMO so you have to compromise one set of needs to cover the others. It works for me though (my table has for a while been a cheap Win8 machine for which I have a stand and bluetooth input devices for when I need to use it for something that needs a keyboard).
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoAh, yes, the "post PC era" where we would do all our computing on a tablet.