Today's Netbook Market: Current Trends and Our Take Discussion

The market for netbook computers (you know, those miniature laptops) has exploded since their inception in late 2007. Today we take a look at current and future netbook market trends, netbooks themselves, and the pros/cons of netbook ownership.

Read the full content of this Article: Today's Netbook Market: Current Trends and Our Take

 

Nice overview. Im still hoping that someone puts Core i or next gen CULV into 10" form factor just like Panasonic did with their R8 (Core 2 Duo SUxxxx)/R9 (Core i7 LV) laptops.
I wonder why no one else released netbook sized laptop with real CPU and couple hundreds $ more price tag than netbook?
I would be willing to get something like Panasonic R9 but with sub 1000$ price tag squeezed into 10" form factor, shouldnt be that hard nor much more expensive to produce than netbook, i think profits can be made in this category as well but probably not so many consumers will want to look at tiny 10" screen.
Now there are rumors about dual core N series Atoms coming, but im not sure those will meet my and many other potential user requirements :/

 

Interesting read, though I can honestly say I would never buy a netbook. You might as well just get a smartphone. Email is a breeze on any modern smartphone, web browsing... well that's getting there, depending on what phone and network you use. Though if you're on wifi it shouldn't be much different from a netbook.

I would never want to suffer a 3 hour lecture with a cramped netbook keyboard. The bigger chassis of an ultra thin is a huge plus in the comfort factor - screen and keyboard size - and doesn't seriously detract from a netbook's other main benefits, size/weight and battery life. In short, I can't wait for the death of the netbook. I'm also glad this website has stopped reviewing them constantly, and are getting back to some more real laptops

 

Might want to fix that.

 

Just over a year ago I really wanted a netbook, but I have other computers and I had no real justification for buying one. In the year since I decided that a single core processor wouldn't do it for me and ideally I would like to have a screen slightly larger than 10". Well by this past Christmas there was a good selection of 13" CULV dual core notebooks out so I couldn't wait any longer and bought one of those. It is still relatively small and light, but it came with Win7 Premium and the dual core processor adds a good performance increase, and it has good battery life.

However for veer or anybody else interested, there are a few models of CULV machines available with screens in the 11" range.

 

I still think netbooks are a bit of a fad. selling well-yes. but a fad none the less. all of my friends that own them wish they had gotten the 13inch eg HP DM3.

 

I'll admit it. For a long time, I was considering a netbook purchase soon as netbooks were first released 3 years back. But after reading reviews and listening to owners' experiences, I'm glad I held back.

I'm sure netbooks have their functions and I'm sure there are satisfied owners out there. But if there's one thing I learned to dread back in my Pentium 1 and 3 days, it's slow application load times. Call me impatient all you want. But I decided long ago that if I'm going to spend hard-earned money on an internet-capable device, the least it should be able to do is open winamp, Firefox/Chrome, and Office in short time. The problem I have with netbooks is even with the Nvidia Ion GPUs now available, I'm not so sure I could seriously use a netbook for more than 30 minutes before getting myself into bouts of impatience.

That's why I've decided to ditch the netbook and go with an ultraportable for school for a few hundred more. A bigger screen with a dual/quad-core processor, ok battery life, solid construction fits the bill.

 

Netbooks are great solely as companion PCs for when you're on a trip or for when you have a desktop at home.

If you're a student who doesn't play games, I agree ultraportables trump netbooks. I have only one computer and thus as netbook wouldn't due for me, a 13" ultraportable is what I require. Long battery life, light weight, a full keyboard, and a large enough screen to view and work on for hours.

 

Well yes, i know there is plenty of 11.6" CULV notebooks out there, but im curious about something even smaller, not Sony's 11.1", rather Panasonic's 10.4"
As for netbooks as a whole - i dont know how powerful and user-upgradeable software wise smartbooks will be, but i believe that they will co-exist for quite some time, because what smartbooks cant is running WinXP/W7 and thus limiting its use as web browsing tool ONLY for vast majority of users, some actually do want to install some productivity software on their netbooks and use them just like they do with desktops/full sized laptops.
And yes, i do agree that netbook is only good as complementary laptop, especially for those who travel alot and dont want to risk with expensive computer being stolen.

 

I've always thought their use was too limited to be taken seriously, but people like having a portable secondary laptop.

 

I bought the original netbook while I was still in school back in 2007! I remember people would just come up to me asking about it constantly... I graduated and not many people had netbooks at that time. Just recently I went back to do some research in the school library and holy crap I think 80% of the notebooks on the desks were netbooks.

The only issue I had with the eeePC 701 was the 800x480 screen resolution and the poor flash playback which seems to be getting fixed with broadcom and ion chips. For most people that just chat/surf/email it's perfect for them.

 

In Australia now you could get fully featured 11.6 inch Netbooks for as little as $299 dollars. This is cheaper than most new desktops with screen.

The low price of Netbook have really lowered the barrier of entry for young kids (this is similar price to those fake laptops that people use to buy for their kids from Target and Kmart toy section).... and most low income families could afford a netbook.

I guess this a generation step forward as much as the availability of cheap cellulosic paper in Europe during the Renaissance.

 

I go back and forth on this one. On one hand, I'd like a cheap netbook for the rare times I travel. On the other hand, my iPhone is "good enough" most of the time -- and it fits in my pocket so it's with me whenever I need it.

I might be best off with something like a Sony Z and an external monitor... but those Zs are just so expensive.

 

I can't wait until we see some more ARM-based netbooks, specifically Tegra 2, thinner than regular netbooks, lighter with less heavy batteries, with 10.1" Pixel Qi displays, running a lightweight Linux distro, nice and snappy with long battery life and always-on suspend mode.

Do want.

I know. I want one bad, but I think I'll have to settle for an Alienware M11x to get my overpowered-tiny-computer mojo on.

 

Makes me miss ultraportable laptops. I had an acer aspire one for a few months and it was great at first then it ended up being OK. I just miss the days of low voltage Pentium ultra portables in the 7in - 11in form factor. My mom bought a sony P-M 1.2GHz that was awesome!

 

So the netbook revolution had its day:

1. It made internet access cheap for lower-income people.

2. It most definitely put more internet access and document typing into the hands of young students. I can see where more grade schools will find applications for this for its students

3. The brief skyrocketing we saw in netbooks since 2007 can partially be attributable to impulse buys. Too many people I've seen bought them without actually needing them. My sister doesn't use hers anymore since her cheap $600 Acer does the job just fine.

4. It also whetted consumers' chops for CULV notebooks. There's no doubt 2010 will be the year of 3D displays and Android. But a smaller trend that will be less spoken of is CULV notebooks, most notably, the CULV i3/i5/i7 notebooks that combine battery life with processing power.

 

I actually think netbooks are great... and I'm a pretty hardcore geek. I wouldn't like it as a primary machine, but as a secondary machine it's fantastic. I have a 1005HA with the 10 hour battery and 2 GB ram... it actually runs great, pretty zippy... and I've got some great old games like Baldur's gate Trilogy and starcraft on it. It also plays 720p mkvs no problem. I'm running a quad boot with XP, Windows 7 Ultimate, OS X and Ubuntu netbook remix.

When I'm running over to my buddies place or my in-laws I can just throw it in the neoprene sleve and cruise.. .I don't need to bring the power adapter or anything.

Really as a secondary machine a netbook is awesome... the battery life is superb and having something that's super portable and cheap is pretty handy for me

 

Is there Editor's Choice netbook? I just went through a few reviews and none had the stamp of approval. :/ Acer aspire one, MSI wind, or Asus 1201N? hmmm.

 

I personally like what the Asus 1201N and MSI U230-040US offer in the netbook market. At least in Canada, those 2 netbooks compare very favourably against laptops in the $500 price range.

 

I have said it elsewhere, but the main prob I had with netbooks were twofold:

1. Their screen res of 600x1024 (or whatever the common size is). It was just too small for me to browse the web, to read/edit word processing files or even to read .pdf's.

2. The single core Atom cpu was just too underpowered to do anything other than writing/editing word prcessing docs.

For me both of these solutions were solved with a minimal cpu upgrade and a 11.x inch screen that gave the 1366x768 res. I was able to get 9 hours of battery life with the present ultra-portable I have (a Toshiba T110-S115) as well, so for me all the needs of what I was looking for in a "netbook level offering" were met with this.

 

I think Chaz's opinion on netbooks is somewhat biased.

In 2008 I bought my first netbook, a HP 2133. Even back then, you could get netbooks with resolutions above 1024x600. Mine was 1280x800, but today with panels at 16:9 you would be looking at 1366x768. HP has offered high-resolution panels in most of it's netbooks since 2008, and they are not the only manufacturer. Do a little research online and you'll see that 1366x768 is becoming a popular option on many models. But don't say that 1024x600 is it for netbooks - that is wrong.

The keyboard on my 2133 was the best at the time, and has made it's way onto many other netbook designs since 2008. It was large, comfortable, had wear-resistant keys, showed no flex and was perfectly usable. I was able to work for hours on that keyboard and not experience any discomfort or ever wish I was using a larger keyboard. Dell and Toshiba have also produced netbooks with similar great keyboards, so it is highly unlikely that shoppers looking for a netbook today should have to suffer with an ergonomically poor typing experience. Again, do your research online, go to stores and "test drive" what's on display. The days of Fisher-Price keyboards are no-more.

As for performance, I'll say this - the VIA C7M on my 2133 was able to run 720p WMV-HD video at smooth frame rates with no stuttering, lag or jerkiness whatsoever. Uncompressed VOB files played off the 7200rpm hard drive flawlessly. I used the same system to run FF with multiple tabs open, and never had any slowdowns. I in fact used that netbook to run Office, Windows Media Encoder, Cool Edit Pro, Acrobat and several other software that I have with no problem. Again, this was a netbook purchased in 2008. Yet the latest Atom N470 is much, much better than the C7M. In fact, today's Pinetrail platform paired with a Broadcom Crystal HD hardware video accelerator makes for a very compelling alternative to a much larger/heavier CULV notebook. If you still think netbooks today are slow and skimp on features, then take a HP 5102 for a test drive - N470, SSD, 2GB RAM, Win 7 Pro, HD display, multi-touch, hardware video acceleration, full wireless, aluminum chassis, etc... Wait a few more months and ION2 will arrive on Pinetrail as well.

Considering what they were originally designed to do, netbooks being sold today are quite capable devices and fill a lot of uses that the original EEE model would have never been capable of. With feature-rich business models such as the HP 5102, you could go as far as saying that the netbook can now replace a notebook altogether.

While some folks want to think netbooks are only a style fad and would rather dismiss the segment as a goner in the next few years, their explosion in sales numbers and advancement over the last two years says exactly the opposite. Their size is attractive, their price is easy to swallow, and they make a perfect companion device. This is now 2010 - Pinetrail and Windows 7 are the norm, high-def is in, we have 10-hour batteries and no longer need to type on poor keyboards.

If netbooks lack your performance hunger or feature set, buy a M11x Chaz, but please don't knock netbooks off as a failure segment - millions of users around the world will disagree with you.

 

Nowhere in this article did I say netbooks were a failure. I'll quote myself:

I agree with you that netbooks are capable, but only for certain things.

 

But those "certain things" are pretty much what the majority of computer users need and use day to day (email, browsing, text input). Most can handle video (who cares about any video above 720p on those resolution screens?), older games, and light photo manipulation. They can easily be upgraded to being quite capable everyday machines if you put in 2 gigs of ram instead of the 1 they usually come with (or 4 gigs in the few that have 2 memory slots), put a full version of windows on it (not starter editions) and switch out the stock hdd to a 7200 rpm one or even a ssd. And this isn't even taking into consideration dual core atom netbooks with ion (or ion2 in the near future). The only problem I have with these is that they are getting more expensive than laptops. But that's the new dilemma as I see it. You can get a faster and more feature packed laptop or you can get a lesser machine but still capable (unlike the earliest netbooks), with a longer battery life and much smaller for a similar price.

 

I had problems with browsing on the single core atom cpu, but in general I agree with you.

Agreed - I personally like the latter option.

 

I have always been a 1 computer kind of guy (why not own just one fairly powerful computer that does everything?), but my XPS m1710 stopped functioning, and I had to wait a month for a replacement laptop from dell. My iPod touch was my only computer like device during this period! Never want to go through that again, haha.

Anyways, I decided to purchase a Lenovo S10 as a portable backup PC. I fell in love with this thing as soon as I took it out of the box. For now, I have it running 24/7 as a torrent PC, but it's so nice not having to put wear and tear on my new XPS m1730 just to do stuff like check my email. My XPS is now able to serve as mainly my multimedia and gaming PC, while my netbook serves as everything else (email, surfing web, itunes, etc.)

I do completely agree with most of what was said in the article btw, but I personally found that a netbook is a very useful addition to my computing needs.

 

I think the they should just get rid of netbook, once and for all.

Now people misunderstand between ultra portable laptop and netbook. They are two different things.

 

Netbooks are great. Some people just don't grasp their usefulness.

They make great slaves. I have 1 netbook setup as a router. I have 1 in my car as a GPS. I also have 1 in bed...

The prices make the concept of netbooks even better.

Netbooks do come in handy.

 

I think netbooks fill the sub-$300 pricing gap very nicely. The $350+ "netbooks" are the ones I don't understand...

 

It was nice before when the price was <$300, but that means you get some really slow ones with less features.
The ones that are above $350 or $400 with only an Atom CPU, (now maybe dual Atom), are way overpriced. Might as well get a laptop.

 

I think the usefulness of a netbook is subjective. It all comes down to if you can live with the small, low resolution screen, and slower load times. I personally could live with using mine as a primary computer if I had to (Which is always a possibility in my household and given my luck).

When I first got my netbook I was very skeptical about it. I initially didn't take them seriously at all and thought them pretty useless. I am ordinarily a resolution junky. But I found myself needing a secondary computer and I desired something that could be easily taken anywhere and stashed away easily. I didn't have the funds for a real ultraportable and actually in Bestbuy I observed a EeePc 1000 while thicker had a smaller footprint and was lighter than a Sony TZ also on display. I bought my EeePC 1008Ha because at the time I thought it was the thinnest and lightest netbook available. It pleasantly surprised me as a secondary computer to my Thinkpad. Still using the stock configuration except for upgrading it to XP Pro it handles just about anything I throw at it and I don't have a problem with mulitasking. Granted most of my day to day usage is very light stuff (IM, Web, Music, and Word) and its fast enough for that. The screen resolution is a hinder but for me its livable. Most websites render fine. My Thinkpad's 14.1 WXGA+ screen is always my first choice if I require it. I've even played Sims2, used Photoshop CS4, and done video editing in Sony Vegas Pro 9 with it when I was in a bind and though slow, it works. Best of all it fits in the glovebox and comes anywhere with me.

 

Reciting what I've said in ASUS forum;

I don't know why, but maybe the raise of netbooks in these recent years could be one of the factors. These days, it's really hard to find a notebook with WXGA+ resolution or higher, regardless of their form factor (especially in 13-16" range).

I own a ASUS A8Js which I purchased 3 years ago. One of the deal breaker was the screen resolution (1440x900), which I think is pretty good during that time. But why is it so hard to find a 14.1" notebook with that high screen resolution (or better, since we are 3 years over that time now)?

1366x768 is probably an acceptable for 13.1" size notebook, but a good 14.1" should provide at least a 1440x900 resolution and 1680x1050 minimum for 15.4-15.6".

I'm still holding back my notebook purchase due to this (extremely) limited option. I don't want to get a notebook with a downgrade in work space (resolution). There must be some middle ground between portability & quality with performance, Because gaming notebook is too heavy for me.