According to a Cnet article, at a recent Raymond James IT Supply Chain Conference, Stu Pann, vice president in the sales and marketing group at Intel, said his company sees the Netbook differently now.
His most jaw-dropping statement was, "If you've ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size--it's fine for an hour. It's not something you're going to use day in and day out."
I could only speculate about the logic behind this statement especially considering that the Intel Atom processors found in most netbooks are perhaps the hottest selling in Intel's product line. However I could say for certain that there will be millions of netbook users who will argue with that viewpoint.
Techradar in their recent article "Notebook vs Netbook: which should you buy?" found the netbooks to be extremely capable but not as one's sole computer especially if you are a gamer or fond of heavy multi-tasking. This is what they say about the overall netbook performance:
Speed-wise, we didn't experience many problems when working on Word, Excel or PowerPoint files on a variety of netbooks. File opening and saving times were fairly nippy and even cutting and pasting large images or lots of tables and graphs didn't slow things down too much. However, if you keep a lot of documents open at the same time and are constantly switching between them, it can place a strain on a netbook's limited spec.
This is mainly because netbooks tend to come with a limited amount of memory, but it's also due to the nature of the Atom processor, which isn't a patch on the dual-core and quadcore processors found in full-blown laptops when it comes to multi-tasking.
On the whole, we'd say that for day-to-day office tasks, netbooks have enough processing power to get the job done without feeling too sluggish.
My OS X netbook of choice, the Asus 1000H, is not my only computer. You simply cannot beat the speed as well as the convenience of working on a full-featured desktop or notebook. That is why I still have my MacPro setup at the Technocop HQ and my Macbook tethered to a 22 inch monitor at the office. But for my day to day computing chores, I find my netbook to be very capable. At this price point, its reasonable processing power, light weight, and respectable battery life are simply hard to beat. Heck, I recently survived a 1 week consulting job with the netbook as my only computer.
Perhaps, I will not argue with this conclusion by Techradar:
For more intensive tasks, you'll find that a netbook's limited performance really gets in the way. However, as a companion for your existing laptop or desktop PC, a netbook is hard to beat. They're highly portable and the good battery life is also a boon. Add to this the fact that they're so competitively priced and you've got a really tempting device.
Technorati Tags: Netbook
Hello Techno Cop (nice name!). Don't you find weird that pundits go on to say things about netbooks and how much they are no good and still people are still buying them like crazy?
How come that no one ever bothers to interview actual netbook owners and ask them what they use their mini laptops for and what they like and dislike THEN draw all conclusions?
For instance, when the Intel exec said that no one would use the netbook day in, day out had he bothered to ask netbook owners if they use their machines day in and day out, the general answer would have been "No!".
Anyway... great tech policing :)
Posted by: Jay Bika | December 04, 2008 at 03:11 AM
@Jay,
I couldn't agree more with the need to survey consumers first. We have to give it, though, to Intel as there was no misrepresentation, I think, on their part insofar as consumer use is concerned. You are right that to support this sweeping claim about netbooks, they should have cited a consumer report.
I have a consumer report for them... During the last Black Friday sale and for the past 2 months at least, Netbooks are on the top 5 products in terms of computer sales at Amazon :-)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/ref=pd_ms_pc_mte
Posted by: Nap | December 04, 2008 at 07:50 AM