What is Digg?224 Comments
- xtal3, on 12/16/2008, -14/+156I wonder what it smells like to be so far up Apple's *****.
- sjbdallas, on 12/16/2008, -6/+140I think the writer is missing the point. People who buy netbooks are buying them as a secondary device that is more portable. I'm considering one for short trips where I might want to check email, search for directions, etc. I prefer a more pc-like experience for doing many things than trying to do it with a handheld so don't bother telling me to get a smartphone. I don't think many people are buying these as their only computer. They're not "uninformed" as the pretentious Apple fanboy might lead you to believe.
- Ellipsys, on 12/16/2008, -9/+90More Apple sycophantic drivel. Can you believe this ***** - "while it’s possible to imagine someone thinking a netbook is “as good” as a cheap laptop, I don’t imagine any user thinking the same when comparing a netbook and a low-end white MacBook. No way. They’re worlds apart. I believe any user allegedly buying a netbook instead of a MacBook was never getting the Mac anyway. Apple knows this."
What can I do on a netbook? Check email, message, light media viewing,use the webcam, not do anything graphically demanding - basic computing tasks.
What can I do on a MacBook? Check email, message, use the webcam, light media viewing, not do anything graphically demanding -basic computing tasks.
However, I do these tasks with something much cheaper and just as effective. I have an Asus N10j sitting right next to me now with a discrete graphics card (granted, the N10j is somewhat of a baby "executoy" as opposed to a netbook), and it STILL costs less than any macbook imaginable. It even has HDMI out and thanks to its graphics card outputs 1080p video without trouble. I couldn't use a MacBook as my primary computer - I'm a power user. So when I'm selecting a "light" laptop for "light" tasks, why would I pay more and get less? Aside from a larger size/screen and a bigger pricetag, there's nothing the Macbook has over a netbook for basic usage. Unless of course you're one of those who considers the premium for OSX to be worth your left testicle. - mikeophile, on 12/16/2008, -4/+68It's got to hurt Macbook users a little, when for the price of a spare battery, I can get a spare notebook.
- Nightstorm37, on 12/16/2008, -3/+45Not so much missing the point as much as shamelessly creating propaganda for apple.
- INTERNETMASTER, on 12/16/2008, -1/+36lower prices!? say it aint so. I'm so sick of affordable technology. technology should be prohibitively expensive and massively overpowered. otherwise what's the point?
- JoelJ, on 12/16/2008, -2/+36that's pretty much all they're built for, no?
- eatasandwich, on 12/16/2008, -9/+39More propaganda.
This guy represents the new "white power" movement.
Soon, we'll have special iRazors, and it will be uncool to have hair on our heads. - jrm125, on 12/16/2008, -3/+31uh, no.
- deadbaby, on 12/16/2008, -7/+34This is Microsoft's worst nightmare. As it stands even today Windows now represents something like 30-40% of the cost of some of these net books. If prices keep going down that's going to goto 50% or more. At that point it just makes no sense for the OEM to ship Windows. They will, at least, offer a Linux version (as most do now) and given the price difference a lot of consumers will accept that Linux is good enough.
- ZPWeeks, on 12/16/2008, -0/+27I bought an Eee 900HA last week and intended to use it as a "secondary travel machine". My boss at work asked me about it as he's considering a bulk purchase. I told him that I wouldn't want to use it all day because of it being underpowered and having a small screen.
The next day my workstation's power supply crapped out and our stuff is out of warranty. Since I didn't want to relocate to a big lab, I just plugged the Eee into the VGA monitor and USB keyboard/mouse and proceeded to use it as a thin client / machine for basic web and communications use.
Sure, it felt a tiny bit slow. But it passed muster for a couple of work days. I imagine that casual consumer users who check their e-mail and surf some YouTube/Facebook whatever could get away with having a netbook be their *only* computer. And for cheap! That's what I see as the most exciting thing about netbooks now. - Aitese, on 12/16/2008, -0/+20Exactly. Most people already have a mouse, keyboard and monitor...and contrary to popular Digg opinion MOST people don't spend the day on Photoshop or playing Crysis. My Dad visits ONE website...he refuses to look at anything else, so I bought him the cheapest, crappiest piece of ***** desktop in the world, stuck Xubuntu on it, set Firefox's homepage to his favourite site and made it the only icon on the desk top, 5 times it's original size. I once saw him on the BBC website, so I guess he's learning.
- sockpuppets, on 12/16/2008, -1/+20A little like apple pie.
- elfuego, on 12/16/2008, -4/+22What's the point in the race to the bottom?
I get an extremely light and portable machine that handles basic web surfing and email tasks, which is exactly what I need on the go, and at a low cost.
I'd never give up my MacBook Pro for stuff like video/sound/photo editing, but simply put, that's not functionality I need on the road. It's great for going to and from the office and in that regard better than a desktop equivalent. If I'm heading out of town for a weekend and want something quick and light, I have my netbook. - drjones78, on 12/16/2008, -0/+17I use mine for taking notes at school, works very well. These are true portables... not like most laptops which can double as desktop replacements. Can get through a day of classes without having to recharge it though, and its not noticeable in my bag...
The only stupid thing is that most seem to be shipping with wimpy batteries... kinda defeats the purpose... at least for me. - synapz, on 12/16/2008, -3/+20This guy's economic analysis is phenomenally weak. Products people want at low prices is the whole (utilitarian) point of the free market. If the companies didn't think they could make a profit, they wouldn't make the product.
- Fingel, on 12/16/2008, -1/+16A technology blog complaining about price cuts? MUST be an apple user.
- HonoredMule, on 12/16/2008, -2/+17On top of that, the bases of his anti-netbook-selling argument were:
1) that the netbook market was too "fair"--both in terms of market balance and fair dealing with the consumer--to be worth Apple's effort (in short, can't price gouge enough).
2) that the number of people voting with their dollars for netbooks was irrelevant, meaning economies of scale don't apply to Apple--they could only turn a profit if the margins were larger.
3) that since Apple couldn't make a profit selling netbooks, there's no way anyone else selling netbooks could affect Apple's product sales or market share. - mikeophile, on 12/16/2008, -3/+17"What’s the point in this race to the bottom anyway?"
The point is making notebooks cheap enough that nearly anyone can afford them, not just the smug over-priced cappuccino sipping douchebags at Starbucks.
/disclaimer: I am often one of said douchebags, just not at Starbucks. - mapin0518, on 12/16/2008, -6/+19Apple will create a "complete product" ?? LOL Only if you think the Air is complete with no 3G and 1 usb port, the macbook is complete with no firewire port, or the mbp is complete with no hdmi or blu ray.
- mikeophile, on 12/16/2008, -0/+13I'm guessing applesauce.
- inactive, on 12/16/2008, -0/+11As a person who daily uses a Athlon XP 1600+ and 1 GB of RAM(~280 Mhz). I have this to say: These netbooks are still overkill. Disable XP's visual styles, or install Linux and you have a highly usable workstation(save graphics/gaming).
Around 6 months ago I put together a modest gaming system for around $250-300: P4 2.4 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, and a GF7600GT Super-clocked(AGP).
Under (CPU/MEMORY) benchmarks it's a mere ~24%/49%(at best) faster. Half of what THEY ought to be! (If you compare Hz alone and forget about IPC and memory controllers, it does get a lot of help from the 533 Mhz bus) My AMD system was actually was negligibly faster at ray tracing.
The point is I don't use the Intel system daily(gaming/HTPC). I use my 7 year old AMD system and have zero complaints. Compared with a Mac Mini w/OS X.5... both of my systems are more responsive.
You really ought to rethink how you use a computer if you fail to grasp that software is only artificially increasing hardware demands(see: OS X or Vista.. or the crap 'average Joes' install on their computers, JRE anyone?). With proper software choices a P3 800 Mhz with 256 MB of RAM is more than sufficient(about 4x more than what I REALLY use in the following example).
I'm running 26 processes(271 threads, 5602 handles). Using 320 MB of memory system-wide. My PC has 644 MB of available RAM. Running about 12 applications(typing this in FF with 3 tabs open). Has a current up time of 5 days 9 hours and 40 minutes. And my CPU has idled for 4 days 16 hours and 49 minutes and counting.
That's about 13% of the time that my computer is actually doing work! Roughly meaning a ~208 Mhz processor would be under full load during that entire time.. and would have performed the same work. Most Netbooks are equipped with a processor 8 times that speed(Intel Atom N270) and a modest(generous for a netbook) 10" screen for ~$350 currently(NewEgg). - locojones, on 12/16/2008, -2/+13The mere fact that you think OEMs are paying $175 a copy for the windows loaded onto these netbooks is enough to discredit your entire post. -1 for you.
- GeeksSpeakFont, on 12/15/2008, -4/+14well it's always great seeing price cuts for consumers! especially in a recession! however, they need a reasonable profit margin to continue developing new technologies.
- Beatmiser, on 12/16/2008, -4/+14I use a Macbook Air and an iMac which puts me in the 'MacFag' Digg category... but even I think that comparing one of the newer Macbook Whites to a netbook is a stupid thing to do. They are not the same, they are not for the same users. MBA's are closer to Netbooks in functionality, but still with the amazingly bright LED and full size keyboard, you are paying for a totally different experiences, and your miles may vary on that based on what you want.
That said, I'd be much more inclined to get a netbook for people in my company if they could just sort out a way to keep the same sort of style, but hit something like 11" for the construction formen I buy for who have giant sausage fingers. - phantom_mullet, on 12/16/2008, -0/+9The funny part is the fact that the author says that netbooks have cheap-o hardware that (based on his tone) is far inferior to Apple's (which could be true, but the author is pretty clear that netbooks have crap hardware). The MSI Wind actually has a customized version of OS X on the Bay...and from what I've heard it runs pretty damn well.
- avaugha4, on 12/16/2008, -1/+10I think you hit the nail on the head here. People look at specs and blab out of their asses about that stuff, when the reality is about 95% of people don't use their notebook for anything other than basic computing tasks.
If you have a specific need, then shop around like you would have in the past, but if you are just buying for basic computing, be it desktop, notebook or netbook there is no conceivable reason to buy anything other than the cheapest available. - pikelet, on 12/16/2008, -0/+9I dunno. I had a netbook last year and upgraded to the MacBook. It wasn't a case of pure specs. It was that I already had a desktop Mac, and while I tried several flavours of Linux and in the end, WinXP, on the netbook, it wasn't as seamless as running OS X.
Things like sharing music over the network, wireless internet sharing, being able to mount Mac filesystems (although yes I love how Ubuntu supported that out of the box!), those damn .DS_Store files everywhere (I realize you can stop them being created, but then OS X doesn't save your view settings) and more than one incident with a flash drive when I forgot to empty the trash on OS X after deleting the files, which makes them look like they're gone in OS X but leaves the 'deleted' files visible in other OS environments (very embarrassing, don't store porn on flashdrives) I thought about trying to get OS X on the netbook, but it wasn't viable.
In the end I paid that much more to not spend hours wrangling with the thing (although messing with things in Linux is fun, not so much when it is my school laptop and I need it for class in an hour but I just nuked X and had to take notes in nano..) - freefm, on 12/16/2008, -0/+8I guess the point is that they might make less profit on netbooks than traditional cheap notebooks. Still a weak argument considering if people really do want netbooks over cheap notebooks (like the article implies) you're ***** if you don't sell netbooks.
- mizike, on 12/16/2008, -2/+10I agree with flyingclutchman and locojones; ***** having nice things that you like, cost should be your only consideration in any purchase. That's why I do all my shopping at Wal*Mart and McDonald's, drive an '82 civic and live in an apartment above a crack house.
- u8myfoood, on 12/16/2008, -0/+7Currently they are just releasing even lower spec machines than the original models, and advertising them at the $300-$350 range, but it is clearly worth it to get the higher end model, like the MSI WIND, the lower spec only has a 120gb HDD, not bluetooth and 3 cell battery, I'd rather pay the extra $50 or so to get the extra 3 cells, bluetooth and extra 40gb. Come on, the 3 cell battery only provides 2 hours of REAL TIME usability, for an ultraportable low powered device it should at least get 3-5 hours!
- mrBitch, on 12/16/2008, -0/+7Agreed, I can't wait until the "other" market direction takes off :
The SkyNetBook : a portable / luggable 72" thighbook... - roxics, on 12/16/2008, -1/+8Um, I cut HD video in FCP on my white macbook. Along with a lot of professional compositing and photoshop work. I don't know what you're smoking but try doing that on a netbook. Sounds like you also drank the Apple kool aid which says you need a macbook pro for that kind of stuff.
- Samohtneas, on 12/16/2008, -5/+11They are? I'm pretty sure you don't have to pay a monthly fee to use it.
- DieselGrunge, on 12/16/2008, -1/+7Might as well just carry around a desktop.
- xRand0mx, on 12/16/2008, -0/+6Bought one for college. Enough room for microsoft office, a browser and maybe a few documents. That's about all it can fit. Sure the keyboard takes some getting used to (the HP has a nice screen) but overall it performs quite well. Plus it is super portable. Does exactly what I need it to do, take notes and troll digg during class.
- Beatmiser, on 12/16/2008, -0/+6I feel great about it. It does exactly what I wanted it to do, I love using it. As I travel between Islands 3-4 times a week (I am in Hawaii) it is nicely portable and above all IT DOES EXACTLY WHAT I WANT IT TO DO. Oh wait I said that.
That said, I didn't pay $1800. I payed $1300. I am totally pleased with my purchase. I'm sorry that you think a MBA is a Netbook, because it sure as hell doesn't feel like one. Unless you can run CS4 smoothly on an EEE now.
And for battery, if you keep your screen at full bright, watch movies, and surf the web yes, you are going to have 1.5 hours. For word processing and some photo editing, I get a constant 3:45 - 4:30. As for the RAM upgrade, I agree with you sadilak that is my one real complaint. The Ethernet Port? I realized after buying it, that I haven't plugged in in several years. No need to start now so I don't really miss it.
Really, I am more than happy with my purchase, I am sorry that opinion swings the other way, but since I spent the money, who cares as long as I am satisfied?
But I know it's more fun to spew ignorance about a product you've never likely used. - wasabioss, on 12/16/2008, -0/+6Just logged in to digg you up.
- sjbdallas, on 12/16/2008, -2/+8Like ass
- OrangeSoda31, on 12/16/2008, -0/+6I bought mine a while back, and it quickly became my favorite computer. Don't even think about it as a primary machine -- you get hung up on the small screen or keyboard (the Acer's keyboard is the perfect size -- I typed this quite comfortably on it). It was designed for limited functionality, but, nothing beats having an extremely light laptop with a 5 hour battery. Sure, it can't play crysis, but it holds my entire media collection and lets me do some basic tasks on the go like basic photo editing, web design tweaks or minor edits, etc.
- mrBitch, on 12/16/2008, -0/+6@ Samohtneas RE: " I'm pretty sure you don't have to pay a monthly fee to use it."
You don't have to pay a monthly fee to use a Touch. - mrBitch, on 12/16/2008, -0/+6@jrm125, spot on.
@ KennMac RE: " I smell a Macbook Air pricecut in your future. "
Did you even READ the damn article (RTFA) ?
It's NOT talking about Apple trying to get into the Netbook market. The article is about the problem that the Netbook market will cause for ALL PC laptop sales :
" With the netbook, the PC industry may very well be creating a new monster. It seems likely netbooks will take sales from the low-end laptop market. In other words, all these PC makers are cannibalizing their low-margin product with something just as low-margin, if not more so. " - Elranzer, on 12/16/2008, -0/+5He's probably the type of guy that puts "Made on a Mac" on all of his websites.
- Icetype, on 12/16/2008, -1/+6I got the Dell Mini9. I love it. The LED lit screen is wonderful, it runs ubuntu 8.10 and XP like a pro, and can go a good 4 hours on the battery. Keyboard is small, no doubt, but usable. Get it with bluetooth and you're set. It can drive my 24" Dell monitor at 1920x1200 just fine. I use it for all my hulu / web / email at home to save electricity. Why run a huge workstation at 130-200watts when a 20watt netbook can do it.
- statismisdead, on 12/16/2008, -0/+5I use a netbook as my only computer. Right now it is plugged into a 20 inch flat screen and dome speakers for the pc experience. It's not a high powered gaming machine but I play on consoles anyway. When I want to go portable I just unplug my netbook and I'm on my way. Eventually these things are going to be like 10 ghz and only cost $100, more than enough power/price performance for everyday use.
- Slackersrule, on 12/16/2008, -0/+5Well, first of all, I don't hate the wind, and I'm not trying to bash it. I'm just trying to outline what I found to be different.
I'd have to say my main compliant for the Wind is it's build quality, mainly the screen hinge. It didn't seem very stable, and the unit would tip over when nudged backwards on a flat surface. The hinge itself seemed a bit loose, too, and would wobble slightly when touched. The S10, however, feels very solid to use, and I haven't had any stability issues since I got it. The screen stays stiff where you leave it, and doesn't wobble. The screen hinge on the S10 is also set higher, allowing an extended battery to stick out the back, unlike in the Wind where any extended battery will have to stick completely out of the bottom and raise the whole unit a few inches. The S10 also has a nice matte finish to it, which doesn't pick up smudges and scratches as easily as the Wind.
For user upgrades, the Wind has absolutely none, forcing you to open the laptop and void the warranty just to upgrade the RAM or the HDD. The S10, however, has an access panel that will let you make those changes without voiding anything.
As for features, like jobney76 mentioned below, it trades off one of the conventional 3 USB ports for an expresscard slot, which gives it a bit extra functionality if needed. For the touchpad, the single-button click bar on the Wind got annoying after a while, and in the newer versions they decided to forgo the synaptics touchpad in favor of a worse one without scroll support. The S10 has two separate mouse buttons, plus a touchpad that supports scrolling and multitouch (although I have yet to see this implemented decently). The downside though, is that the buttons click fairly loudly in the S10, and the touchpad is a bit smaller. The speakers in the Wind were also abysmal, and while the S10's aren't that much better, there was a noticeable improvement in sound quality when I switched.
As for the battery life, with both using the 3-cell battery, I got around 1:30 with the Wind, which isn't acceptable imo, and would barely last me an entire class on a full charge. With the S10, I get around 2:30, with the help of Lenovo's power management app. It's still not bad on other operating systems that lack the feature, which give me around 2-2:15.
Otherwise, they're pretty much the same hardware, but the Wind has overclocking support and a more full-featured bios (as expected from MSI.) It's not necessarily a bad choice, but I just prefer the S10 over it for the build quality.
Wow, I can't believe I just typed that all out. Well, enjoy. - pinchduck, on 12/16/2008, -1/+6The author wonders what the point of a low cost computer is? Wow, that is one out-of-touch dude.
- Bkaufman, on 12/16/2008, -2/+7but can it display crysis screenshots?
- HonoredMule, on 12/16/2008, -1/+6By the author's logic, consumer demand is an irrelevant factor.
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