2009: Netbook or notebook?
2009 may be the year of the Netbook. But there's a big if.
Here's the choice: Will consumers buy a thin, light, relatively fast $1,800 MacBook Air or a thin, light, ultrasmall, not-as-fast $450 Hewlett-Packard Mini 1000 Netbook? (Correction: the HP Mini 1000 configuration cited here was originally stated incorrectly as $700.)
A $400-$700 Netbook or a $1,800-$2,500 notebook?
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard, Apple)If many people, fully aware of this choice, opt for a Netbook then we have the foundation of, at the very least, a rethinking of the pricey ultraportable.
At most, we have many more consumers buying into the Netbook concept--particularly if 3G broadband wireless comes as a standard option.
Here's the dilemma in more detail: Do you want an ultralight subnotebook replete with a Core 2 Duo processor, 64GB solid-state drive, and 12-inch (or 13-inch) LED screen that will set you back at least $1,800?
Or do you want a Netbook with an Atom processor, 16GB solid-state drive (or 60GB or 120GB hard disk drive), and a 10-inch screen for $450 to $500? (Clarification: Netbooks are generally thought of as sub-$400 designs; but for comparison's sake, upscale Netbooks with 10.2-inch screens are cited here.)
The dimensions and weight are the key to both the Netbook and the ultraportable, and differentiate them from standard laptops. Both are small and light. But here's where Netbooks become disruptive. To date (that is, for at least the last 10 years), consumers have had to pay a big premium for smallness and thinness (and still do with the Air, Dell Latitude E4200, and Toshiba Portege, for example). With the Netbook, they don't. (The one obvious downside to Netbooks, however, is that they're too small--cramped screens and keyboards.)
(See CNET review of the HP Mini 1000.)
Of course, the design and internals are different, but are they different enough? To rephrase the question posed above: Is a $2,500 13-inch MacBook Air with a 128GB solid-state drive (and no 3G) different enough from (or that much better than) a high-end $600 or $700 11-inch Netbook with a 32GB (or 64GB) solid-state drive and 3G? I would expect that most consumers (even ones that must have an ultraportable laptop) won't be able to justify paying an extra $1000-$2,000 for a MacBook Air- or Toshiba Portege-style design in the face of a compelling array of Netbook offerings. Especially if Netbooks (or a facsimile of the Netbook) start sporting larger screens.
Consumers will ultimately decide the fate of the Netbook of course--though it remains problematic whether PC suppliers will really push Netbooks in front of consumers that aggressively if Netbooks are eating into their laptop sales. Advanced Micro Devices or Via Technologies, however, could change this by aggressively promoting their newest silicon (AMD's Yukon and Via's Nano) for slick, upscale Netbook-like designs.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
If the person wants to be stylish along with getting the options that come with a Mac, then they'll go with the AIR.
Price too plays a big factor in today's economy. It is no easy for anyone to just go out there and buy a Mac especially at these prices. On the other hand the individual also has a lot to think about in terms of portability and size when it comes down to netbooks. It's just that some netbooks are priced as high as a pc notebook.
IMO in terms of appearance, it's as good(if no better) than MacBooks, and for half the price.
I won't argue with you about the Vaio. My list is far from a comprehensive list of stylish netbooks, it was just the first two that came to mind without looking or thinking too much. But some people need to be reminded that looks and style are subjective traits.
Of course, I could assume that you mean a Flash drive for data storage. If you need that much storage, then a netbook isn't for you anyway.
As for the $1800 Macbook - no thanks. Macs are great, but about $500 of that price is for name and "hip" status alone.
Because many of us NetBook owners want a very small, light-weight computer that fits in small places. I paid $599 for a 15.4" which is much more powerful and larger than my Hp2123 NetBook. But my HP2133 cost me $729 plus I added a 250 GB HD to it raising it's cost a little more than that.
But the 15.4" is slightly over 6 pounds and it's large, as in it has a large foot print. The HP2133 is an 8.9" 1280 x 768 based NetBook with a 92% full size keyboard. It weighs just 2.6 pounds. It will fit on any tray table in any section of a plane. It will easily fit on the size of a small 2 person table in a restaurant. It has more features than the MacBook Air. The only thing it lacks is a Core2Duo processor. Instead it uses a Via C7M Ultra low power processor.
Many NetBook uses do not use the NetBook as their sole computer. It is used to carry around with you. I carry mine almost every single day. Which is why small and light mean everything.
I have a duel screen desktop at my office, and at home a 15.4". But for travel, neither one is ideal. The NetBook concept is.
Alex Alexzander
Because size matters. I bought a 10" netbook, but would have preferred an even smaller one if my eyes would have allowed it. What makes netbooks disruptive is not the price but the size. They need to be small enough that the user doesn't think about taking one with him. It's automatic. For me, 10" is borderline. Smaller would be better.
The netbook is between small laptops (12" and larger) and iPhone/PDA devices. Build in 3G capabilities and telephony for a $600 or less price and you have hit a sweet spot for people who want a real keyboard in a device that is bigger than a iPhone that can go everywhere with you.
Furthermore, I don't know where you have been looking, but most of the $550 notebook aren't that much better than some of the higher end netbooks. I can't remember ever seeing a $550 notebook with discrete graphics nor one with a mobile CPU that wasn't a minimum of one generation behind what is typical on desktop replacements. Sure a T3200 is better than an Atom, but you still won't be able to play most modern games on the machine. Quite honestly, I find tha $550 laptop in a no man's land of shorts. They aren't powerful enough for gaming or various other demanding applications, but they are clearly more expensive than the netbook category. Except for being a really expensive portable DVD player that can also surf the internet I don't see it caters to a clear audience. In another year when Penryn quality processors enter into this price category I could see some decent budget gaming laptops come to the market, but right now virtually anything with even basic dedicated graphics will be >$850. Laptops that will have dedicated graphics comparable to those on a decent desktop will easily be >$1100 if not much higher.
I will agree that there is a large spectrum of the population that are perspective netbook users, but there are millions of people who would find such a device useful.
I think all these devices arel going to collide. The phones with the PDA's, PDA's with the netbooks, netbooks with the ultraportables, ultraportables with the laptops and so on. And by are going to collide, they already clearly are. In many ways we're all going to be owning in the very near future probably 2-3 of these things each. Which ones we chose are going to be up to what we want to do with them and how many we can afford.
That being said even if we ignore the fact that Intel doesn't make laptops there is still the issue that a $600 isn't that much more powerful. While a $600 will outperform a netbook it won't have discrete graphics and the processor is likely at best to be a T5800, which gets outperformed by ~2 year mobile processors nevermind desktop processors. You aren't going to play any modern games on a $600 laptop nor are you going to be editing video or any other high end application. Beyond a DVD drive and a slightly higher resolution screen I don't find much that a $600 laptop is going to offer users because the processors are still so anemic that you aren't going to be doing much else that couldn't be done on a netbook.
I don't see netbooks eliminating the traditional notebook category, but I think that interest in the $500-600 will fade as a lot of consumers that in the past would have purchased one of these machines will buy a netbook instead.
A netbook does not interest me at all, I'd rather have an iPod Touch for keeping up with email and remote surfing.
I chose to go with the HP Mini 1000 with the 3G option included; now I have the freedom of activating the service or not; I'm going to experiment for a while without the 3G option and just use WiFi hotspots at the airport and in the Starbucks (and elsewhere) to see how I can do without it.
Think quick - Name one single person who owns an ultraportable (AKA ultraunaffordable).
They do everything that an ultraportable would for the cost of an iPod.
I love this thing. It never really gets hot, the keyboard is nearly regular size. I don't intend to edit films on this thing but It even has a one touch overclocking feature that allows me to boost the Intel Atom chip from 1.6 to nearly 2.0.
I got all this along with nice little netbook travel bag and I still haven't spent $400.
I'm a college student. I picked up an Acer Aspire One netbook for a little under $300 after rebates (the Windows XP version). I take it to every class that requires extensive note taking. It works great, boots up quick, is tiny and extremely light and the keyboard is surprising easy to use (which is the main reason I went with the Acer instead of the similarly sized and priced Asus).
Now for those of you saying "I'd never do my photo editing on my netbook":
One of the main reasons why I bought a netbook to begin with (other than it looking so cool) is because my motherboard on my main HP laptop fried and I had to send it into HP to get fixed. While my HP was in the shop, I tried installing Photoshop CS 4 onto my netbook. It ran without a problem and started up faster than it does on my $1500 HP. I did not see any performance related issues with the netbook. I plugged in my external 22 inch monitor into my netbook and plugged a USB keyboard and mouse in and everything worked great.
Now why would I, the college student, spend over $1500 for the macbook air? The Acer gets just as many compliments from trendy girls outside of Starbucks, mind you. I've even got 1 gig of ram and a 120 gig hard drive and built in wireless, not to mention a built in SD card slot and webcam.
The $1200+ I saved can buy me a lot of beer.
In my opinion, whether a person buys a netbook or a notebook all comes down to functions and features. I wanted something light weight (around 3 lbs or less), long battery life (5+ hours), and with a 1280 screen width. That brought my choices basically down to the Dell Mini 12 and the MacBook Air. While the MacBook air might have given me more status, the Dell Mini 12 is still impressive and with Macs so common these days...I bet I have more people looking under my shoulder and wanting to know what this "new" operating system is all about.
Ironically it was the same price as the iPod Touch 32GB that I bought in September. I discovered that I prefer watching the video podcasts on a plane using the Acer with iTunes versus the iPod. Enough room on the tray for the netbook and a drink.
Nice and portable, even with the 6-cell battery. I travel by air three weeks a month. My company doesn't provide an ultraportable option so I'll take 3lbs versus 6lbs any day.
I think one of the most intriguing things about netbooks, especially 3g, is what you can mod them for. Carputers, Marketing Kiosks, Marine GPS etc...all at an incredibly affordable price.
- by Norseman December 29, 2008 8:02 AM PST
- I think it makes more sense to ask--netbook or handheld? If all you do with a netbook is access the web (and that's about all it's good for), why not get something like an iPod touch for slightly more than $200? It does pretty much all a netbook would, plus you can put it in your pocket. And, for the capability it provides, the price is right.
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- by BigGuns149 December 29, 2008 3:13 PM PST
- This is one of the most common canards that people make to dismiss the netbook trend. While I certainly don't advocate people spending more than they need there are some real legit reasons why a netbook is a MUCH better choice for a lot of consumers.
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (59 Comments)The most obvious criticism of the ipod touch suggestion is that it isn't practical to type anything of any length. Furthermore, there are real full featured office suites that you can run on a netbook, which isn't so with the ipod touch. Furthermore, the resolution on 9-10" netbooks is considerably higher than the ipod, which makes browsing the web much better. Most websites simply aren't designed with 480x320 in mind. While there are some websites that will be hard to use with a 1024x600 resolution, there are FAR more websites that will difficult to use with 480x320.
Furthermore, since you are running a regular desktop OS you have your choice of web browser instead of being dependent upon Apple to bring you updates. You like Opera or Mozilla go for it. Furthermore, you can still run IE on Windows. While most websites support web standards there are still some sites that still have IE-only features.
Furthermore, you aren't dependent upon whether Apple is willing to allow such app. Sure you can't run most high end games on a netbook, but you aren't going to play anything fancy on an ipod either. You want to work on a spreadsheet just install OpenOffice or M$ Office. The only limitation on what you can run on your netbook is what the hardware allows. On an ipod touch Apple can nix any app from the app store just because they don't like the app or it competes with one of their apps.
I don't deny that there is a market for the ipod touch, but as the price of netbooks come down the only advantage I see in buying an ipod touch is the small size. For the same price as the 16GB ipod touch I can buy a netbook that can do FAR more things than the ipod touch will ever do. The markets for the two devices don't really overlap as much as the overlapping prices would imply. Most people aren't going to go buy an ipod touch instead of a netbook or vice versa. The people buying these things are looking for something very specific.