5 ms·

Out of curiosity, what's the use case for cheap win10 netbooks nowadays? When I think of something that has a web browser and a keyboard, the low end of the ma

Out of curiosity, what's the use case for cheap win10 netbooks nowadays? When I think of something that has a web browser and a keyboard, the low end of the market seems to be the current crop of Chromebooks, and schools seem to agree - they've been phenomenally popular in education. Typical Win10 netbooks don't have a lot of CPU+GPU grunt, so it doesn't seem to me (maybe you'll correct me) like they'd be very good for running most Windows apps. Is this a big market?

pjmlp 10y ago
People that want a computer with a real OS instead of a browser window juggler. I keep seeing references how the low end is using Chromebooks, but that seems to be an US phenomenon. Here in Europe on the area where I live, I only ever seen Chromebooks on sale on a specific chain, and they are seldom there. When they are, they always follow the pattern of being on sale with the usual Google price, people play with it, never being thrilled by it, the price slowly goes down every few weeks, it goes into shop "product of the day" offers, until eventually they get sold. The market is the one of anyone that wants to use a tablet with keyboard, with a desktop experience when they need to. Basically anyone that a few years ago would buy a netbook.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I wonder if the Chromebook issue in Europe is about trusting a foreign company with holding your data.
  - CountSessine 10y ago
    I know that this is definitely the case in Canada. In the US, I've been told that Chromebooks are everywhere in schools. From working with my local school board here (I'm in Canada), no one thinks deploying Chromebooks or using Google services in general is legally viable because we would be putting student data on US servers where it wouldn't be protected by Canadian privacy laws. We don't use Chromebooks, but we don't end up using win10 netbooks either - it ends up being a combination of ipads and windows desktop PCs in classrooms.
- detaro 10y ago
  Here in Germany I've never seen them particularly cheap. Which is too bad, since I was looking into throwing Linux on one and use it as a "lighter and a lot less expensive to loose" web machine.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    The specific chain I mentioned is Saturn. I only saw them there, until they eventually get sold out on those campaigns where they put products on the containers at very discounted prices. But I only saw this happening a couple of times.
    - detaro 10y ago
      Good to know, if I end up in one of their stores for some reason I'll keep an eye out just in case. At least with a Chromebook you know that there are drivers somehow, not so sure with ultra-cheap Win10 devices.
- CountSessine 10y ago
  The market is the one of anyone that wants to use a tablet with keyboard, with a desktop experience when they need to. I guess that makes sense, although I think we have a very different idea of what a "desktop experience" is. Basically anyone that a few years ago would buy a netbook. The conventional narrative is that tablets killed the eeepc/netbook. I didn't even know that this market still existed - I knew about Surface, but those start around the $900 mark.
camiller 10y ago
My wife works at a small bridal shop. They are currently using HP stream 10 netbooks* to take orders while setting at a table with the bride/groom and family. The orders are stored on a desktop PC's hard drive where they are aggregated and sent to the vendors. I think that there are a lot of edge cases where you don't need a lot of processing power that netbooks excel at. * I don't think they call the netbooks anymore, but effectively that is what I consider the HP stream devices. 32GB of non-upgradable solid state storage is all they have, and near half that is the OS install.
gurkendoktor 10y ago
Windows 10 is a superset of ChromeOS and that makes it a great conservative choice for casual users. They might need iTunes/Office/tax software/... in the future and Windows will have them covered, without buying another machine in the next 5-10 years. It's like a Swiss army knife for computing.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I just wish MS would either ease up on some of the restrictions on their UWP apps, or bring out a UWP adapted file explorer. Right now you need to drop back to the "old" desktop file explorer (though ribbon seems to take some pain out of it once you bump the font size a bit), complete with all its UX gotchas thanks to the mouse assumptions. This because UWP apps can only manipulate certain folders by default, and you have to authorize others (via the age old file picker dialog no less) manually. On top of that you can't launch a exe or similar from inside a UWP app.

pjmlp 10y ago

People that want a computer with a real OS instead of a browser window juggler. I keep seeing references how the low end is using Chromebooks, but that seems to be an US phenomenon. Here in Europe on the area where I live, I only ever seen Chromebooks on sale on a specific chain, and they are seldom there. When they are, they always follow the pattern of being on sale with the usual Google price, people play with it, never being thrilled by it, the price slowly goes down every few weeks, it goes into shop "product of the day" offers, until eventually they get sold. The market is the one of anyone that wants to use a tablet with keyboard, with a desktop experience when they need to. Basically anyone that a few years ago would buy a netbook.

digi_owl 10y ago
I wonder if the Chromebook issue in Europe is about trusting a foreign company with holding your data.
- CountSessine 10y ago
  I know that this is definitely the case in Canada. In the US, I've been told that Chromebooks are everywhere in schools. From working with my local school board here (I'm in Canada), no one thinks deploying Chromebooks or using Google services in general is legally viable because we would be putting student data on US servers where it wouldn't be protected by Canadian privacy laws. We don't use Chromebooks, but we don't end up using win10 netbooks either - it ends up being a combination of ipads and windows desktop PCs in classrooms.
detaro 10y ago
Here in Germany I've never seen them particularly cheap. Which is too bad, since I was looking into throwing Linux on one and use it as a "lighter and a lot less expensive to loose" web machine.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  The specific chain I mentioned is Saturn. I only saw them there, until they eventually get sold out on those campaigns where they put products on the containers at very discounted prices. But I only saw this happening a couple of times.
  - detaro 10y ago
    Good to know, if I end up in one of their stores for some reason I'll keep an eye out just in case. At least with a Chromebook you know that there are drivers somehow, not so sure with ultra-cheap Win10 devices.
CountSessine 10y ago
The market is the one of anyone that wants to use a tablet with keyboard, with a desktop experience when they need to. I guess that makes sense, although I think we have a very different idea of what a "desktop experience" is. Basically anyone that a few years ago would buy a netbook. The conventional narrative is that tablets killed the eeepc/netbook. I didn't even know that this market still existed - I knew about Surface, but those start around the $900 mark.

camiller 10y ago

My wife works at a small bridal shop. They are currently using HP stream 10 netbooks* to take orders while setting at a table with the bride/groom and family. The orders are stored on a desktop PC's hard drive where they are aggregated and sent to the vendors. I think that there are a lot of edge cases where you don't need a lot of processing power that netbooks excel at. * I don't think they call the netbooks anymore, but effectively that is what I consider the HP stream devices. 32GB of non-upgradable solid state storage is all they have, and near half that is the OS install.

gurkendoktor 10y ago

Windows 10 is a superset of ChromeOS and that makes it a great conservative choice for casual users. They might need iTunes/Office/tax software/... in the future and Windows will have them covered, without buying another machine in the next 5-10 years. It's like a Swiss army knife for computing.

digi_owl 10y ago
I just wish MS would either ease up on some of the restrictions on their UWP apps, or bring out a UWP adapted file explorer. Right now you need to drop back to the "old" desktop file explorer (though ribbon seems to take some pain out of it once you bump the font size a bit), complete with all its UX gotchas thanks to the mouse assumptions. This because UWP apps can only manipulate certain folders by default, and you have to authorize others (via the age old file picker dialog no less) manually. On top of that you can't launch a exe or similar from inside a UWP app.