The Death of the Netbook
The Age has an interesting article about how Apple supposedly killed the Netbook [1]. It’s one of many articles with a similar spin on the news that the last two companies making Netbooks are going to cease production. The main point of these articles is that Apple decided that Netbooks were crap and killed the market for them by producing tablets and light laptops that squeeze them out of the market.
Is the Macbook Air a Netbook?
According to the Wikipedia page the Macbook Air [2] weighs 1080g for the 11″ version and 1340g for the 13″ version. According to Wikipedia the EeePC 701 (the first EeePC) weighs 922g and the last EeePC weighs 1460g [3]. The last EeePC produced is heavier than ANY Macbook Air while the first (and lightest) EeePC is only 158g lighter than the 11″ Macbook Air.
The 11″ Macbook Air is 300*192*17mm (979cm^3) in size while the EeePC 701 is 225*165*35mm (1299cm^3) and the biggest EeePC was 266*191*38mm (1931cm^3). So the 11″ Macbook Air is 13% wider than the widest EeePC but takes less volume than any EeePC. The 13″ Macbook Air is 325*227*17mm (1254cm^3) which is still less volume than any EeePC. The Wikipedia page about Netbooks defines them as being small, lightweight, legacy-free (in terms of hardware not software) and cheap [4]. The Macbook Air clearly meets all the criteria apart from price.
The Apple US web site offers the version of the 11″ Macbook Air with 64G of storage for $999 with free shipping, for comparison the EeePC 701 was on sale in stores for $500 in 2008. The CPI adjusted price for the EeePC 701 would be at least $550 in today’s money. The Macbook is a bit less than twice as expensive as the EeePC was, but that’s more of an issue of Apple being expensive – a few years ago companies like HP were also selling Netbooks that were more expensive than the EeePC.
Unless having an awful keyboard is a criteria for being a Netbook I think that the Macbook Air meets the criteria.
As an aside, a relative recently asked me for advice on a device that is like a Macbook Air but cheaper. Does anyone know of a good option?
Is Netbook Production Ceasing?
Officeworks currently sells an ASUS “Notebook” that has a 11.6″ display and weighs 1.3kg for $398, it’s got a metal body that looks a bit like a Macbook Air (which is the latest fashion and is good for heat dissipation). That’s not advertised as a Netbook or a “Eee” product but it’s cheap, lighter than the heaviest EeePC, and not much bigger than an EeePC.
It seems that the general prices of laptops other than Apple products (which have always had higher prices) have been dropping a lot recently. There are lots of good options if you want a laptop that costs $500 or less. Even Thinkpads (one of the most expensive and best designed ranges of laptops) are well below $1000.
Do the Articles about Netbooks Make Sense?
The claims being made are that Apple skipped Netbooks because they couldn’t make a good profit. This disregards the fact that the iPhone and iPad (which are very profitable) are in the high end of the price range that was occupied by Netbooks. While Apple does make a good deal of money from the iPhone App Market it would be possible to make a Netbook with a lower production price than an iPhone because making things smaller requires more engineering work and often more expensive parts. This also disregards the fact that there are a range devices which work as an iPad case with keyboard, an iPad with such a keyboard meets most criteria for being a Netbook, so Apple is one iPad keyboard device away from selling Netbooks.
It’s interesting to note that I haven’t yet seen an article about the profits from Netbooks which didn’t make an issue of the MS-Windows license fees. The first Netbooks only ran Linux but later on they switched to Windows, that had to make a big impact on profits. An article about Netbooks which just assumes that everyone has to pay a MS license fee is missing too much of the Netbook history to be useful. I wonder if anyone could make products that are as profitable as the iPhone and Macbook Air if they had to pay for MS license fees and design their hardware to work with MS software (as opposed to Apple who can change their software to allow a cheaper hardware design).
The articles also claim that Netbooks give a bad user experience. When I bought my EeePC 701 it was the fastest system I owned for loading OpenOffice, SSD random read speeds were really good (writes sucked but that didn’t matter so much). The keyboard on an EeePC 701 is not nearly as good as a full size laptop but it is also a lot better than using a tablet, I’ve used both a 10″ Android tablet and an EeePC as a ssh client and there is no comparison. When I’m going somewhere that requires random sysadmin work (or other serious typing) and I can’t carry much weight then I still take my EeePC 701 and I don’t consider taking a tablet. The low resolution of the screen is a major issue, but it’s about the same as a Macbook Air so that’s not an advantage for Apple. I knew some people who used an EeePC 701 for the majority of their work, I couldn’t do that but obviously some people have different requirements.
I now use my phone for many tasks that I used to do on my EeePC (even light sysadmin work) so my EeePC sometimes goes unused for months. But it’s still an important part of my collection of computers. It works well for what it does and I don’t feel any need to buy a replacement. When it wears out I’ll probably buy something similar to an 11″ Macbook Air to replace it unless there’s a good option of a tablet with a detachable keyboard.
My plans for computer ownership for the near future are based on a reasonably large Android phone (currently a Samsung Galaxy S3 but maybe a Galaxy Note 2 or similar next year), a small laptop or large tablet with hardware keyboard (currently an EeePC 701), a large laptop (currently a Thinkpad T61), and a workstation (currently a NEC system with an Intel E4600 CPU and a Dell U2711 27″ monitor). A reasonably small and light system with a hardware keyboard and solid state storage is an important part of my computer needs. If tablet computers with hardware keyboards replace traditional Netbooks that’s not really killing Netbooks but introducing a new version of the same thing.
But a good way of getting web hits on an article is to claim that a once popular product is dead.
- [1] http://tinyurl.com/ajohhp3
- [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbook_air
- [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeepc
- [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook
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