Overpriced netbooks useless, says AMD bloke

Yet again some no-marker from a major manufacturer spinning away.

When will these people get it through their thick crania, that those of us who travel extensively and are required to be connected, need lightweight high usability - not heavyweight/high-powered machines suitable for weight training?

I am sorry, I (and apparently millions of others) really do not give a FF how fast I can rip a DVD, the frame rate of the latest 3D game or the speed at which I can execute WORD mail merge when I am in remote locations. I need to be able to connect to my business services, my VPN into my business and clients, web and email access etc. etc. 

These functions are more than adequately handled by a Netbook type device, and always could have been had manufacturers bothered to ask real users instead of journalists and gamers obsessed by the technology, not the tasks at hand.

The market for Netbooks has exploded because the market has been waiting for products, and they have simply not previously been delivered.

I acquired an MSI Wind white label device quite recently, and am immensely happy with it - though I will be happier when the 7800mha battery arrives.

After 27 years in the IT industry, this is the FIRST laptop I have owned, and the FIRST laptop I am actually willing to carry with me more or less constantly.

Finally, we have products that people actually want, and all we hear is spin from the manufacturers not providing products, and at best begrudging acknowledgement from journalists suddenly seeing their carefully crafted punditry based on an obsession with technology, crumbling around them.

I can imagine plenty of businesses spending $500 to give employees onw of these devices, rather than shelling out 4-5 times as much for a boat anchor, most of the functions of which are unnecessary and rarely used.

A paradigm shift seems underway, and there is absolute certainty that at my location, the full sized laptops will never be replaced - they will die and be replaced by Netbooks with substantial saving.


Dr. Dweeb

You get the full picture, not half of it at his blog:
http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/archive/tags/Mini%20notebook/default.aspx

"He reckons you could spend the same money and get a full-sized laptop with a 15.4-inch screen, 160GB hard-drive with dual-core CPU and Vista. Which is handy because AMD might make a chip to fit such a device."

Which tells us he doesn't understand the product. Of course you can get something bigger for a similar price. However, we want something smaller. Strange to say, there is a vast market segment that WANTS a 7 to 9 inch screen and telling them they can get a 15" screen for a similar cost is just pointless.

While I do not consider them useless, it is true that unless small size and light weight are the primary goals, you can get the real thing for about the same price. So, when I bought, I did buy the real thing. I don't carry it more than twice a week.

But in an earlier life, when portability was the big deal, it was possible to do virtually anything a desktop would do on a 486-25 paperback book sized machine running Win 3.11. In fact as a consultant, I developed full quality assurance programs for two seperate companies entirely on that little Zeos, and only at times added an external monitor, and often a mouse.

If you know how to do the job, you can do most jobs on these little machines just dandy. Don't claim I prefer them to a desktop but for portability, they are the real goods.

Pat seems to be missing the one of the main points of netbooks... mobility. His suggested laptop weighs 3 times as much and doubles/triples the size. For a laptop for comparable mobility to a 10" LCD netbook, you need to pay $1000+.

I have a Eee PC 4G and the battery life sucks. You would think you could get allot better. I do use mine allot to stream Rush Limbaugh off the net and specialized Eee PC version of Ubuntu (Downloaded separately) with Firefox does it real nice.
Maybe in a few years with better processors and power handling for SSD and with a newer LED LCD display along with better batteries we could move them up to 10 -12 hours where they should be right now.

Yes and it's so "not worth the effort" that AMD is scrambling to produce netbook chips.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/03/amd-jumps-into-the-netbook-game-challenges-opponents-to-a-duel/

I guess "JUMPING IN" is Pat's "wait and see."

I had to reread Pat Moorhead's blog cos for a minute there I thought that he was trying to HD video encoding on an MSI wind with standard battery and using windows XP.

IMHO, he should not have used a site heavy in Microsoft Silverlight as its practically alpha status mean that for a netbook like the MSI Wind, it'll be processor heavy. Same think with the 720p HD video, a Via C7/Nano based netbook may have better there, especially if it had some sort of specialist HD decoder.

His point that the price difference between the netbooks and full sized laptops is apt due to the fact that you can now buy a decent spec laptop direct from the manufacturer (HP, Lenovo, Dell) for the price that PC world wants to sell you a netbook. Hell, its cos of that that I got the Lenovo Thinkpad R61e that I'm typing on now.

Well, I can relate to both points of view. Office Depot has a 15.4 Compaq widescreen notebook with 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive and Vista. After rebates it's $399. That's the same price as most netbooks. 

I'd say it's evident you are getting more for the same amount of $$ with the laptop.

But a more accurate comparison would be to a thin and light laptop - where the prices are close to $1000 or more. I work for a social service agency and the investigators use these in the field. Nice HP's with a 13" screen that way about 3lbs. Compare the netbook PC's to a thin & light laptop and you are getting less - for less. 

I personally would prefer to have the $400 laptop and with all the additional storage, speed, bigger screen and keyboard. It's not like the difference between 2.5lbs and 5.5lbs is going to kill me carrying it around. But others obviously think the three pounds difference matters more than the tradeoffs. If portability was my main concern than a Palm PDA with built in Wi Fi is under $300 and is truly portable. 

Netbooks are selling and they fit a niche that people seem to want. Smaller and less useful than a ful size notebook, bigger and much more functional than a PDA. Making something people want seems a better business strategy than trying to convince them they want something else.

If you used your laptop to stream Rush Limbaugh, I'm not surprised at all that your battery ran out quick.

Agree with what most of you are saying. These little netbooks do what %99 of PC users do, and well. Web, multimedia(video, music, pictures) and office apps in a breeze. Not to mention a huge amount of games. AMD is just playing poor sport because they could have led/dominated this market(which Intel reluctantly entered) but pretended fight for the high end. My eeePC 4g does everything a road warrior wants. 3hr battery life isn't bad considering you aren't carrying around a BIG battery. I know a lot of laptop owners who dream of 3hrs. If I wasn't so complacent with my $349 4g with $60 16GB SDHC card the eeePC 901 with 6hr battery life would be nice.

If any of these posters above actually watched the complete video I would be surprised. I did watch the complete video and all Moorhead is doing is looking out for the consumer by asking, "do consumers know the tradeoffs" between the two? I think that is a good question and an important one for consumers and glad he has the guts to ask the question no one wants to ask. Is an hour and a half good for a road warrior? Is single taksing good enough for someone at home? I would say "yes" and "no". Glad he is spurring the debate. He isn't alone. PC Magazine, IDC and Kyle at HardOCP are seeing the same things.

@ regulas

Perhaps you need to figure out a way on how power your netbook from the large reserve of hot air that you stream off of Rush Limbaugh site. 

@ article

Moorhead know that these netbooks cut into his bonus. Had his company had the foresight and creativity, they would have come up with a chip and a chipset more suitable for these devices than either Intel's or Via's offerings. It is not too late for them to do this. AMD has a lot of talent, but wastes it on being a loser in the "mainstream" x86 market.

I partly agree with him. Those notebooks are way over priced and you need perfect vision to read anything on the screen. They are useless as portable devices unless you dont ming carring a bag full of batteries around the place with you. And as for Dr. Dweeb I'm not surprised it's the first laptop he's owned, it shows, he is just not aware of how much nicer it is to use a proper laptop.