And netbooks have destroyed the ultra-low-end laptop market

Post #319,088 by drook 12/24/09 10:16:39 AM Reply	And netbooks have destroyed the ultra-low-end laptop market Two Christmases ago, when I got my current laptop -- yes, the dead one -- it was one of a couple right around the $300 price point. All had 14-inch screens. (Well, 14.1 in this case, but I suspect that had more to do with marketing than reality. Call me a cynic.) Mine even had a built-in combo DVD player/CD burner. I had hoped that by this year I could find the same thing, but with two years of declining prices, maybe a built-in camera and DVD burner. Instead, there are plenty of $300, 10-inch netbooks with relatively tiny hard drives, not much RAM (some not even expandable) and mostly no optical drives. But some do have the camera. Cheapest thing with a 14-inch screen and full-size keyboard? $450, unless you're talking limited-supply doorbuster specials. -- Drew
Post #319,097 by Another Scott 12/24/09 11:44:50 AM Reply	Maybe the suit against Intel will fix that. I think it's Intel's marketing requirements that have destroyed the low-end laptop market. I'm using a Lenovo S12 to type this. I got it for about ~$325 (a refurb, direct from Lenovo - http://outlet.lenovo.com They don't seem to have any more.). It's sort of a hybrid - an Atom box, 2 GB max, no optical drive, but a quasi-full-size keyboard and a 1280x800 screen. (They keyboard and screen and price were my main requirements.) It's got ~ 4+ hours real-world battery life. At the moment, Lenovo has a 15" 1280x800 and optical drive notebook for $429 (dunno how expandable the RAM is), but they are short on machines for less than $500 unless you can tolerate a 1024x600 screen. I've got an old, similarly-sized (slightly smaller) Fujitsu 7120p with a optical drive, but I never use it. I don't think optical drives are very useful anymore, myself. Thumb drives have killed them, mostly. And if you have to have it, you can get a USB optical drive for very little money. J still uses her Hackintosh (Dell Mini 9). It works pretty well - we haven't noticed any major speed issues, but she mainly uses it for web stuff and the occasional PPT presentation. If it weren't for Intel's marketing requirements, I think you'd see a lot more variety in the netbook/laptop space. I think that Intel's not going to be able to hold back the tide too much longer, with the ARMs coming, the FTC after them, and so forth. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #319,100 by drook 12/24/09 12:36:47 PM Reply	I haven't been following that Do you have a sense for when things might be changing? If it's a typical big-corp lawsuit, I know it could be another year or more before anything changes. But if it's already into the later stages, or if availability of other chips is mooting the point, then maybe there's light on the horizon. -- Drew
Post #319,118 by Another Scott 12/24/09 4:20:40 PM Reply	The lawsuit will probably be on the trailing edge... I don't have any special insight on this - just stuff I pick up on Fudzilla and the like. I think the FTC probably has an open-and-shut case against Intel, but I assume it'll probably be settled. Unfortunately, it's in its very early stages. http://www.fudzilla....nt/view/16926/35/ http://www.nytimes.c.../17chip.html?_r=1 Of course, there are rumors that Intel may buy nVidia, so who knows. It seems obvious to me that the netbook/laptop market would evolve very quickly if Intel and MS weren't putting restrictions on what could be used. Every netbook shouldn't have a 160GB max hard drive, or a max 2GB RAM or be without an optical drive or ... There's clearly a restraint of trade issue going on. It shouldn't be legal - whether it is, I guess a court will have to decide. Whether the FTC or Apple or ARM-based boxes or smartphones or Ubuntu or whatever causes Intel and MS to reduce the restrictions first, I can't say. But I think them trying to "protect" the $1000+ laptop market is ultimately a losing strategy. Cheers, Scott.
Post #319,120 by pwhysall 12/24/09 4:28:40 PM Reply	They could, of course... ...always try not making $1000+ laptops be "not shit". My work laptop is a Latitude D630; C2D 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM, full wireless doodads. With Vista Business and docking station, it will have run well into $1500, not counting the software that's on it. And the admittedly solid magnesium chassis aside, it's a bit cack, to be honest. The screen has a frankly pathetic viewing angle, it's only got one speaker, the ports are distributed around the machine seemingly at random, it's got a bizarre wireless on-off switch that kindasorta controls the Bluetooth and the Wifi, the keyboard feels like it's made from the cheapest plastic ever, and so on and so on. Sure, it's plenty quick, and the graphics (Nvidia Quadro summat-or-other) give Aero a decent amount of pep, but as a package? Less pleasant to have on your lap and actually use than my wife's aging MacBook (1.83GHz C2D, 1.5GB RAM, El Crappio Grafico), and with much worse battery life to boot. I can reel of a list of similar but different gripes about the fancy-pants shiny gold Vaio my sister bought a while back. Superficially nice, not-at-all-superficially expensive, but the build quality just isn't there. So, yeah. Make expensive laptops look and feel expensive, would be a good start.

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