Michael Dell dings Netbooks
The Dell Mini apparently isn't Michael Dell's favorite product.
(Credit: CBS interactive)Netbooks aren't for everyone, Dell CEO Michael Dell said Tuesday night at a dinner in Silicon Valley hosted by the Churchill Club.
Give a 10-inch Netbook to someone who's been using a 15-inch notebook, and the user will say, "'Hey, this is fantastic....It's so light,'" Dell said, according to The Register. "But about 36 hours later, they're saying 'The screen's gonna have to go. Give me my 15-inch screen back.'" (Editors' note: Dell also spoke at Oracle OpenWorld on Tuesday, about how his company is delivering a more efficient enterprise with its services. See the ZDNet video on right.)
The fact that Dell would take Netbooks to task in such a way should be a surprise, considering his company sells a line of 10-inch Netbooks. But Tuesday night in Santa Clara, Calif., Dell apparently didn't care. He wanted to make it clear that his company realizes the limits of Netbooks and that it offers options.
"We see a fair amount of customers not really being that satisfied with the smaller screen and the lower performance, unless it's like a secondary machine or it's (a) very first machine and the expectations are low," Dell said, according to The Register. "But as a replacement machine for an experienced user, it's not what we'd recommend. It's not a good experience, and we don't see users very happy with those."
Although Dell obviously has issues with Netbooks, it seems that many consumers don't. A recent study from DisplaySearch found that as notebook sales fell 14 percent in the second quarter year over year, Netbook sales rose a whopping 264 percent. The research company expects the trend to continue.
With that in mind, was Dell's founder doing the right thing by taking shots at Netbooks? His company does sell them, after all. And if Netbook sales are booming, shouldn't this simply be area where Dell can capitalize.
What do you think?
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
If you purchased a Netbook purely based on price, you're going to be disappointed. There's a reason why the 11.1-in Vaio and the 13.1-in Sony Vaio laptops starts at nearly $1300 & $1800, respectively. They have the computing power that most 15 or 17 in laptops possess. A $250-$350 Netbook wasn't made to handle many tasks including the OS, web browser, and some simple word processing duties. And they're small. It takes a great adjustment to go from your 20in desktop monitor to the 10in screens found on many Netbooks.
These small, simple machines (Netbooks) do what they're supposed to do.
+1
Hey Mike! Why is your customer service so incompetent?
Plus, can you disagree with him?
For casual note taking, browsing the web, listening to music, network diagnosis, looking at pictures, and playing simple Flash games, netbooks work very well. For any heavy-duty use though, or for multitasking, netbooks won't cut it.
These things are for portable surfing- hardly anything more. Yeah, I'd like to have a netbook for those reasons, but I wouldn't give up my laptop or desktop for one.
I hate feature creep. People that asked for the 10 inch screen and bigger HD ruin things just the way people who ask for extra features in sportscars ruin them. You end up with fatass power leather seats and an automatic transmission as the car devolves. You cannot please everyone and shouldn't try. If you are sitting there with your netbook and wishing you had a 15 inch screen then why did you buy a netbook? Put some thought into what you want first before you buy. The customer is not always right sometimes the customer is a pinhead.
264% increase for netbooks, which means instead of selling a pittance, they are selling 2.5 pittances.
14% decrease in notebooks, because they are more expensive, and right now, everyone will buy the cheapest option. This isn't some revelation. People are cheap, and money's tight. It doesn't mean that netbooks are suddenly amazing, powerful, or even convenient.
If you have one grain of sand and add three more grains, you have a 300% increase in sand. However, it still amounts to just 4 grains of sand....
If Joe has 1 grain of sand and he increases it by 300 %, he has four. That's positive growth
If Bob has 10 grains of sand and he loses 20 %, he now has eight. That's negative growth.
Sure, Bob still has twice the AMOUNT that Joe has, but if you extrapolate, the indications are that Joe has more reason to celebrate than Bob. The article isn't trying to suggest that there are more netbooks in consumer hands than laptops, but that the market for one is growing while the market for the other is shrinking.
The bottom line is, if it's YOUR money, which wouold you invest in? A tiny company with 264% year-over-year growth, or a big company losing 14% year-over-year?
And second, netbooks are assuredly either loss leaders or, at best, break even propositions (look at the features and all netbooks are just about the same). It is a highly competitive market, and Michael is suggesting that some customers might be happier moving up to a more profitable, and more powerful, laptop... that would be "up-selling."
Michael is right in line for someone who is fitting the form and functionality to the needs of the customer... and the company. JHLundin
Netbooks don't even rate. Too small on all fronts. Underpowered is it's own problem and not specific to size.
Yet, most experienced users already have a "primary" system so the Netbook offers a portable means to access it, or it is good for newcomers or for people that genuinely want a small, light, long-battery life machine.
That's part of what holds me off from getting one, plus my 12" Dell D400, though not light, is adequate for most of my needs for portability.
Since Apple don't want to give us a netbook, don't blame us hackintosher for doing this. The atom chip is not a fast cpu but it's got SSE3 and hyperthreading - which makes it perfect for OSX.
OSX on a netbook makes perfect sense - it's great for browsing photos with coverflow, reading e-books with built-in pdf reader, listening to music and watching movies. It's so small I carry it everywhere and coupled with my 3G, I can surf the net and write emails anywhere. Much better than using iphones, it runs real Mac apps not applets.
No one in the right mind will use a netbook for doing serious work - the screen is too small and processor too slow for photoshop, 3d apps or video encoding. I have a better machine for that.
- by planblove October 14, 2009 9:32 AM PDT
- I like his honesty. Its really just a case of different stroke for different folks. Me personally will never own a netbook, I like my HP 17 inch widescreen laptop with 4gb of RAM. But my wife, who only checks emails and shops online, loves her netbook to DEATH. Its not for me but I would never knock their appeal to other users.
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