All over the web are warnings that netbooks are doomed.
Uploading and editing still or moving pictures and handling audio all require far more power than the basic netbook offers
Ha! Another “essential app” for which few have any use. What is the difference whether one uses a 1 gHz processor or a 3 gHz processor? Three times longer. This is not a killer. This is a dandelion. 90% of what we do is text and still images. Netbooks can play audio just fine. The bottleneck to the Internet is a bigger problem. Lots of people wish they had something faster than dial-up. There is and will continue to be a market for netbooks, particularly in the emerging markets where a netbook makes a great first machine. In established markets, a netbook is likely to be a second machine or a thin client where a powerful CPU is not needed because we have powerful CPUs on our desktops and servers.
No. This is about wishful thinking by the monopolists who need high retail prices to hide the price of their part of the PC, CPUs and licences for software. If prices for netbooks rise, fewer will be sold. Fortunately entrepreneurs all over the world continue to make less expensive netbooks. ARM will dominate netbooks in 2010. You can trade a lot of day-long battery-life for some hair-drying CPUs anytime. The world needs long batter-life more than it needs more powerful netbooks. People love the light weight of these wonderful machines. People love their low cost. About 5% of new production units are netbooks and that will grow with the continued move to mobility. The small things without keyboards have a role but a netbook is so much easier to use they will always fill the gap between gadget and PC.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Microsoft can buy a boatload of “journalists” but it can’t buy a clue. Suddenly there are all these stories about the netbook dying. Sniff, sniff. Yep, that’s Microsoft. Their hands and their buddy’s (Intel) hands are all over this “new revelation”.
I honestly don’t know why they bother unless they believe they can shape the market and point it in any direction they want. I often wondered why Microsoft, with all their money, would lay people off. I’m beginning to think they are using that freed-up cash to create a Zombie Army of journalists.
It’s all a part of their “technological evangelism”. They may convince the OEMs that they need to sell higher-priced goods to stay afloat but meanwhile M$ makes tens of billions annually while the OEMs are lucky to make one billion. The consumer/business/customer will have their say eventually. It’s happening now. Thin clients and netbooks are making a big move. We don’t need that other OS.
Let’s hope that ARM based netbooks actually materialize. If they do, they will probably be from relatively unknown OEMs that are not under Microsoft influence, or not in the PC market at all. Most important, MS will be an utterly insignificant player in that “new” netbook market.
Currently using an Eee 701 Debian Sid KDE 4 as my main workhorse
I attached a 19″ LCD, keyboard, mouse and a bunch of peripherals via a 13-port USB hub. Everything runs fine, including watching DVDs at 1680×1050 resolution and occasional video editing. Nevertheless I know x86 is a quite inefficient architecture, so I can’t wait to lay my hands on a device with a Cortex A9 CPU inside (preferably multicore).
Even with their strong-arm tactics M$ has been unable to dominate the netbook market except perhaps in the US retail market. There are reports that 30% of netbooks ship with GNU/Linux. There are several reasons why M$ cannot dominate netbooks:
So, ARM may well be the straw that breaks the back of monopoly. It is too effective to control, too small to swat, and too inexpensive to pay the world not to use it.
ARM has interesting consequences for AMD/Intel/Via. By about 2012 or so, ARM will be kicking butt with multicore/22 nm stuff on clients and servers. AMD totally ignored this space. Via depends on small. Intel is in the game with Atom but is still handicapped with M$ and x86ness.
I would bet that M$ will take years to respond reasonably and they cannot do much more than they are now to screw with the competition without massive intervention by governments and courts. It’s almost unthinkable, but we may see competition arrive/return on the desktop. I doubt we have seen much of that since the early 1980s.
I too have no ARM. This year I bought an AMD64 X4 hair-drier. It is best used as a server. It certainly does not belong on my desktop. Neither does that other OS. I expect within a year, I will have several ARM thin and thick clients. It’s time.
Excellent analysis about the coming ARM wave (or tsunami maybe).
One point is mentioned here but not highlighted very much, is the fact that ARM also precluded a price race to the bottom. This is not exclusive for ARM, because it is happening everywhere, but ARM could be a front runner.
In the price race, there’s no room for highly priced software licenses. Image a hardware appliance of $ 50,-: nobody could possibly think of putting hundreds of dollars of software on that thing. In your words: “wishful thinking by the monopolists who need high retail prices to hide the price of their part of the PC, CPUs and licences for software. ”
Just take a look at the new OLPC prototype: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8428147.stm
Supercheap ($ 100,-), very innovative, large battery life. It’s probably no coincidence this thing is running on ARM?
Cheap hardware is a friend for free (as in beer AND as in speech) software and will be the enemy of closed software.