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Netbook gravy train starts to slow as euphoria fades(what's your opinion?)
China Daily ^ | 10/27/09 | Wang Xing

Posted on 10/27/2009 9:53:03 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

Netbook gravy train starts to slow as euphoria fades

Netbook shipments have started cooling after witnessing an explosive surge since late last year as customers started realizing its limits and looking for portable and affordable alternatives for full-size laptops.

According to Xia Li, vice-president of Lenovo Group, growth in netbook sales during the second half of this year has slowed as consumers have started becoming more rational in their purchases.

"Netbook sales surged in the past as consumers bought the product as gifts or as first laptops," he said. But with consumers starting to realize the limits of the products, the growth has started to slow, Xia said.

He expected the growth would decline back to the industry average of accounting for 20 percent of the overall PC market in China.

Designed to perform basic tasks like word processing, netbooks have received a good response from consumers all over the world. Ever since Taiwanese firm Asus launched its first netbook Eee PC in 2007, the product has became the market engine of the world's PC industry that was severely impacted by the economic slowdown.

(Excerpt) Read more at chinadaily.com.cn ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: laptop; market; netbook; performance
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Is is a good machine to send your college student off with so they were bought before school started and now simply slowed.

They are nice machines for the price.


21 posted on 10/27/2009 10:16:18 AM PDT by edcoil (If I had 1 cent for every dollar the government saved, Bill Gates and I would be friends.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Netbooks are wonderful to use to take it on the road for email or websurfing. Even nice around the house to lounge on the couch with while watching TV. Most laptops feel more like desktops. Certainly for gaming or some application where a bigger screen size is desirable, use something else. But for most people, 90% of their activity is websurfing.


22 posted on 10/27/2009 10:18:58 AM PDT by Always Right
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To: TigerLikesRooster

The net book stuff was nothing more than a sells gimmick, many of those that bought them did so to keep up with the Jones. Lots of the hardly used turn up on ebay.


23 posted on 10/27/2009 10:22:09 AM PDT by org.whodat (Vote: Chuck De Vore in 2012.)
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To: org.whodat
They're great platform to test Linux. I run LXDE on one and Kubuntu Netbook Edition on a second. A third has Windows XP - soon Windows 7.

24 posted on 10/27/2009 10:26:23 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: TalonDJ

My husband got one on a whim at the same time he bought a cheap laptop to replace a 5 year old one that was crashing on him. He liked the little one so well, especially for traveling, that it was a couple of months before he opened the box of the full size lap top. Months later he discovered that there was a 9 hour battery model, gave the old one to me, and got the 9 hour one. When we have traveled places where we will be on the go, these little computers are great. For example, we were in England last spring. The intercity trains had free wifi available. We could hop on the train and Freep as we traveled! We were also able to Skype with my daughter instead of paying expensive cell phone rates. Two fit easily in the space of one laptop in my husband’s computer case. I can also carry it around in my purse if I need to. The screen is smaller, so that can be an issue at times. We bought an external CD drive for software installations.


25 posted on 10/27/2009 10:28:39 AM PDT by stayathomemom (Beware of cat attacks while typing!)
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To: steve-b

A netbook is a good second computer for taking on the road, but the small screen and keyboard would be a pain (literally) if it was your main machine.


Add a $200 monitor and $20 keyboard, and you have a very usable machine for most people’s needs, and one that is eminently portable.

I tend to think that my choice to have a powerful laptop for the main computer is needless, since the netbook is the only one that goes anywhere.


26 posted on 10/27/2009 10:29:58 AM PDT by Atlas Sneezed (Why not "interpret" your tax returns like the Supreme Court "interprets" the Constitution?)
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To: Beelzebubba
For most people, the laptop has become a desktop replacement machine. Its the netbook they take with them out on the road.

27 posted on 10/27/2009 10:33:13 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

thanks, bfl


28 posted on 10/27/2009 10:45:11 AM PDT by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

I’m thinking about getting a netbook. I’ve downloaded a lot of public domain pdfs to my desk top, then transferred them to my lap top for “lying on the sofa” reading. The big keyboard makes the laptop a bit of a pain, but the page up/page down loading is so much faster than what I’ve seen on e readers, plus the largest e reader screen I’ve seen is still an inch smaller than the net book screen(kindle DX, and it’s more expensive than a netbook too). I’d need a kindle or nook for downloading purchased books, but my preferred reading at the moment is 18th and 19th century mythology and folklore-there are hundreds of free pdfs available online from various sites. Kindle and Nook *can* handle pdfs, but it takes downloading a program for kindle, looks like Nook is set up already via B&N’s free titles. Anyhoo, getting a netbook just for pdfs seemed a good alternative to an e reader, and less of a PITA than a full sized laptop. Has anyone else used a netbook this way, and how’s it working out?


29 posted on 10/27/2009 10:55:50 AM PDT by kaylar
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To: goldstategop

Yep.

I use my HP DV6000 with Ubuntu at home, but take the Acer when I go out the door.

I have converted the netbook to an ultraportable by putting Ubuntu on it. It can do just about anything that my HP can do, except burn DVDs.

Performance is a tick slower, but being able to carry a laptop without anyone knowing you’re carrying a laptop is nice.


30 posted on 10/27/2009 10:56:36 AM PDT by FLAMING DEATH (Are you better off than you were $4 trillion ago?)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

The first Netbooks were built on the theory that everything you needed was in the internet “cloud” so all you needed was taday’s version of a portable dumb terminal. So they had solid state storage and often used same flavor of Linux as OS.

Then people wanted a mini notebook so we saw XP, hard drives etc appear.

I bought a refurb Acer Aspire-1 for under $200 and it’s great on the road, full XP and 120GB hard drive; with a nine cell battery it’ll go seven hours or so, and it’s small and light weight, only 9” screen but it’s very sharp and bright.


31 posted on 10/27/2009 11:06:42 AM PDT by 1066AD
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To: TigerLikesRooster

bump


32 posted on 10/27/2009 11:10:17 AM PDT by dangerdoc
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To: goldstategop
True, but the question was, do you think they have run their course, answer, yes, they are a niche market item, just like MAC and other apple products.
33 posted on 10/27/2009 11:12:50 AM PDT by org.whodat (Vote: Chuck De Vore in 2012.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
I hauled an Acer Aspire One with Windows XP, 120 GB disk, 1 GB RAM, 1.6 GHz Atom processor to San Diego as my "on the road" computer. I use it daily, but ended up purchasing a 22" LCD monitor, wireless keyboard/mouse, powered multi-port USB, external USB CD/DVD R/RW drive, external USB hard disk (1 TB) for backup, power strip. After added all that extra stuff to make it "useful", I still have a device that is horribly starved for disk bandwidth. The Verizon Wireless USB720 provides my internet connectivity. It's enough for e-mail, browsing, software updates and downloads. It's not a true broadband connection capable of supporting real time video streams.

I miss my high bandwidth desktop machines with fast data buses, fast video and large memory. A netbook will get support my needs in a meager fashion, but wastes much time with the device totally saturated with CPU and disk traffic. There is simply insufficient processing margin for doing real work.

34 posted on 10/27/2009 11:26:49 AM PDT by Myrddin
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To: TheVitaminPress; TigerLikesRooster
I think the standard smart phone renders the netbook pretty pointless.

Not until data plans come down. I wanted a smart phone to stream internet radio and FR all day without touching our corporate network. Data plans were $50+ a month with limits. I bought a refurb Acer One for <$200 and local wireless unlimited broadband for $19.95 a month. Works great and is smaller than my Franklin planner.
35 posted on 10/27/2009 12:37:17 PM PDT by philled (A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.-- GB Shaw)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

They’re kind of neat for surfing on the road; getting web mail, things like that. You won’t be editing videos or running CAD software.

My biggest complaint was lack of a DVD or CD reader so you have to hook it up to your network and share a drive to install apps. Still, pretty cool for what it is now that I’m stuck supporting my wife’s.


36 posted on 10/27/2009 1:42:28 PM PDT by Lx (Do you like it, do you like it. Scott? I call it Mr. and Mrs. Tennerman chili.)
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To: philled

My service runs about $70. a month. That includes a limited voice, unlimited data and no particular plan for sms or mms. With unlimited data sms and mms are not that important at all. I figured that was pretty cheap to have a cell phone and just about any of the capabilities I’d want from a netbook (writing stories for my website, listening to music and podcasts, streaming audio, youtube, keeping up with Free Republic, Sirius, email, web browsing etc). Its a good fit for me . . . of course I shouldn’t paint with such a broad brush and say it is a good fit for everyone.

PS- Can you run voip over your netbook? Now that could be a real game changer.


37 posted on 10/27/2009 5:02:13 PM PDT by TheVitaminPress
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To: TheVitaminPress

I don’t know about voip- I’m not sure how well it would handle it. Your plan doesn’t sound bad at all. Something comparable here would have been $15 to $25 more. A couple months after I went with the local provider my company started paying my mobile plan so I was suddenly down to $20 a month total. One of the drawbacks is that it is only 1Mbps so video is not good. I’d still like to small form factor of a phone for audio streaming but I think I’d tend to do more surfing and iTunes with my netbook.


38 posted on 10/28/2009 8:34:03 AM PDT by philled (A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.-- GB Shaw)
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To: martin_fierro; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Swordmaker

Keyboards are too small, otherwise I’d have had one a couple of years ago when you first pointed out that Asus EEE or whatever it was called. :’)


39 posted on 10/28/2009 8:54:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/__Since Jan 3, 2004__Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: TigerLikesRooster; SunkenCiv; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Swordmaker

The EEE PC 700 (7" screen -- unnngh) is crazy small, with a keyboard to match, but I found that it travels well.

Just don't try to compose the next Great American Novel on it.

For such a tiny laptop, this thing really latches onto an 802.11x wireless signal.

40 posted on 10/29/2009 1:37:14 AM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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