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> As it is, Intel has mandated a Meh experience for a long time and the tech press has let them get away with it What do you want to say with that? Did Intel f

by onli 8y ago

> As it is, Intel has mandated a Meh experience for a long time and the tech press has let them get away with it What do you want to say with that? Did Intel force OEMs to bundle i3s or netbooks with HDDs?

Spooky23 8y ago
They did either directly or via/in cooperation with Microsoft. Wintel is a thing, and Microsoft delivered a turd in Windows 8 that killed everyone. Netbooks were there to counter iPad and Chrone. Even today, Microsoft pays HP $70 or something like that to make those shitty “Stream” laptops.
- hakfoo 8y ago
  Netbooks were there first, though. The first wave of them is probably what spawned the Atom product line. (The very first of them had weird little Celerons that downclocked to like 660MHz for thermal reasons because there wasn't anything explicitly designed for purpose) The fact Microsoft is subsidizing them to ensure they run Windows doesn't mean that a netbook as we know it wouldn't exist today without them. They'd still be on the market, likely running some poorly skinned Linux distribution like those "computers for seniors" they advertise in Parade magazine; or maybe Android-x86 would have gotten more support from OEMs and evolved into something usable as a daily driver. The story has already been established for consumers: if you don't need games or performance, someone will sell you a portable device which will run an office suite and a web browser for USD200 or less. It's interesting to discuss how much "it runs Windows/uses an x86 CPU" is part of the narrative-- would a $150 ARM laptop running a nicely packaged Linux suite with LibreOffice sell? I suspect there's no way out of the crappy laptop sector though. Even after the Vista Basic fiasco, I can't see Microsoft outright antagonizing OEMs by saying "Windows Next won't run on anything below some minimum spec that would provide an actually good experience, so goodbye $79 tablets with a gig of memory and 16 of flash"
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Agreed, they definitely were. But those early devices like the eeePc were exploding the market segmentation of thin/light being a price premium. (Fujitsu and Toshiba were the players there) The customers were nerds and the OEMs were mostly bit players. The iPad and Chromebook is where the market was exploded. Companies like Comcast were buying 40k iPads to displace laptops. That’s when shit got real.
sireat 8y ago
Intel gutted their budget mobile Celeron/Pentium lines by replacing them with Atom based models. This strategy makes sense for smaller laptops/netbooks but it makes for horrible user experience at 15inches. It is like putting an engine meant for an European city car into F150. That is if a Acer/Asus/etc wants to build a budget laptop they have to choose the crappy atom based chip. It is a crime that a budget 15 inch laptop from 2012 can run circles around a budget 15 inch laptop from 2018.

by onli 8y ago

Spooky23 8y ago

They did either directly or via/in cooperation with Microsoft. Wintel is a thing, and Microsoft delivered a turd in Windows 8 that killed everyone. Netbooks were there to counter iPad and Chrone. Even today, Microsoft pays HP $70 or something like that to make those shitty “Stream” laptops.

hakfoo 8y ago
Netbooks were there first, though. The first wave of them is probably what spawned the Atom product line. (The very first of them had weird little Celerons that downclocked to like 660MHz for thermal reasons because there wasn't anything explicitly designed for purpose) The fact Microsoft is subsidizing them to ensure they run Windows doesn't mean that a netbook as we know it wouldn't exist today without them. They'd still be on the market, likely running some poorly skinned Linux distribution like those "computers for seniors" they advertise in Parade magazine; or maybe Android-x86 would have gotten more support from OEMs and evolved into something usable as a daily driver. The story has already been established for consumers: if you don't need games or performance, someone will sell you a portable device which will run an office suite and a web browser for USD200 or less. It's interesting to discuss how much "it runs Windows/uses an x86 CPU" is part of the narrative-- would a $150 ARM laptop running a nicely packaged Linux suite with LibreOffice sell? I suspect there's no way out of the crappy laptop sector though. Even after the Vista Basic fiasco, I can't see Microsoft outright antagonizing OEMs by saying "Windows Next won't run on anything below some minimum spec that would provide an actually good experience, so goodbye $79 tablets with a gig of memory and 16 of flash"
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Agreed, they definitely were. But those early devices like the eeePc were exploding the market segmentation of thin/light being a price premium. (Fujitsu and Toshiba were the players there) The customers were nerds and the OEMs were mostly bit players. The iPad and Chromebook is where the market was exploded. Companies like Comcast were buying 40k iPads to displace laptops. That’s when shit got real.

sireat 8y ago

Intel gutted their budget mobile Celeron/Pentium lines by replacing them with Atom based models. This strategy makes sense for smaller laptops/netbooks but it makes for horrible user experience at 15inches. It is like putting an engine meant for an European city car into F150. That is if a Acer/Asus/etc wants to build a budget laptop they have to choose the crappy atom based chip. It is a crime that a budget 15 inch laptop from 2012 can run circles around a budget 15 inch laptop from 2018.