Follow us on TwitterAs I look at the large slate of netbooks available for purchase today, I am awestruck by the magnitude of the change compared to one year ago. As we entered the holiday shopping season last year, there were only a few netbooks available. In fact the term netbook was not widely adopted until May/June of this year.
The only real commercially available netbooks were Asus Eee PC 700-series models, which all had 7″ screens. (Technically, the OLPC laptop was also available via their give one, get one promotion. But I don’t consider this a commercial product.)
Today’s second-generation netbooks all have 8.9″ or 10″ displays. The difference is night and day. Not only are the displays bigger and higher resolution, but (for the most part) the keyboards are much larger and easier to use.
When the second-generation netbooks were first being introduced, I thought that perhaps the prices on the first-generation models would drop to the $199-range. That has not happened.
What we see now, is that while there are still some of these first-generation netbooks available, for the most part, retailers are phasing these out. Those that are still available have prices in the $250-$300 range.
At those prices, there is not a compelling reason to buy a 7-inch netbook. When you can get an Acer Aspire One for $299 or a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for less than $320 ($349 less 15%), why would you even consider paying $259 or more for and Eee PC 4G?
So the way I see it, 7-inch laptops are dead.
So I really wish that mainstream blog editors would stop using 7″ netbooks as a basis for their netbook-bashing trash talk.
Worthless nazi. You want to delete sensible comments of opposing viewpoints made in good faith? Fine. I’ll give you unreasonable insults that question your character and have nothing to do with the subject at hand.
You’re a moron. You can’t wrap your head around any concepts except those realistically-unrelated bits generated by that spoonful of wet slop you call a brain. If you can’t understand the value of an ultraportable netbook, you should jump off a building and save future generations from the curse of your genetic inferiority. You are a disgrace to human intellect, and you bring down standards of human worth for all of us.
Worthless Nazi??? Moron???
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An intelligent point of view, well exprsesed! Thanks!
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