The article touches on it lightly, but the real reason you can't say netbooks are dead is that the entire concept of a "netbook" was bullshit from the very beginning. Manufacturers wanted to put some pressure on their suppliers to lower prices, so they invented a category of low-price and low-quality laptops. Consumers never really paid that much attention, because anyone who actually picked up a netbook could tell that they were garbage.<p>Turns out that selling low-quality computers for cheap and making up the difference on volume is a difficult business model to make profit in. Now the manufacturers want to chase Apple by building "ultrabooks", which is marketing-speak for "laptops that aren't complete shit". But Apple is years ahead because they didn't waste time on netbooks, and they've got their logistics so optimized that they can make a fat profit on prices that would leave other manufacturers taking a loss on each sale.<p>You'll know that PC manufacturers have figured out how to correctly apply the Apple model when they:<p>* Stop plastering their products with advertising stickers.<p>* Trim their product lines back to the core (How many laptop models does Dell sell? How long did it take you to figure out?)<p>* Invest in build quality and reliability, potentially at the cost of end-user repairability.
I got a netbook with an atom for $250-ish dollars just about 4 years ago and still can't find anything under $400 dollars that's enough of an improvement to make it worth replacing.<p>The crap SSD long ago died so my machine now runs LXDE off of a USB key, but it's still chugging. Still even gets 4 or 5ish hours of battery life which is pretty damn amazing after sitting around that long.<p>I keep thinking at some point someone will make a 12" cheap device with a day's worth of battery and maybe keep it completely fanless.<p>But no. The only thing remotely close any more are chromebooks, which lack the hard Linux features that make my netbook so useful. Unfortunately everyone else just price gouges you for something with an i3 that mysteriously costs $600.<p>As for Ultrabooks... they are HEAVY. Every time I see one I think they look great until I pick one up and it weighs ~ 2.5 times what my netbook does. Go figure... One of the things I love about my netbook is that I can hold it up with hand all day.<p>In any case, I don't think they're dead. Marketers just figured out how to label them ultrabooks and get an extra few hundred dollars.
I believe Netbooks will be seen as a very important development in the evolution of computing devices. The early Netbooks focused on a small, portable form factor which also had an extremely long battery life. Hardware was mostly from the previous generation and the default OS was an open source Linux variant. Yet, it was <i>good enough</i> for most people.<p>Certainly, Microsoft and Intel would hate the creation of such a category which would hurt their margins significantly. In fact, Asus was forced to sell Windows only netbooks after a point in time.<p>But at least now the customers know that such a long running, ultra portable and cheap device is possible. This, I believe, was a big achievement.
I'm experiencing a small personal 'netbook revival' myself, with the recent hacking of a Motorola Lapdock to accomodate small miniPC's like the MK802 and so on .. you can see a picture of it here:<p><a href="http://seclorum.minus.com/mGeislSULuCVd" rel="nofollow">http://seclorum.minus.com/mGeislSULuCVd</a><p>The cable mess is ugly as hell, but after the New Years break I'll get a bit more time to design and build a better solution for the mess using a local 3d printer and laser cutter.<p>My hope is that I can modify the device so that it will be possible to just simply plug in any one of the hundreds of new miniPC devices that are being released, it seems, almost daily.<p>Of course, I'm also avidly waiting for Motorola (or someone) to just make a lapdock that makes my hardware hacking redundant - but I don't predict that this will catch on for another 3 to 4 months, yet. And in the meantime, 5 hour battery life on the Lapdock+MK802 combo that I'm currently running is <i>really</i> nice.<p>In fact, I'm grandfathering my Macbook Pro as a result of this work, and will turn it into a desktop build server only for the task of running xcodebuild ..
Netbook is still here. Samsung and Acer still make them. They're called Chromebooks. They only run the internet. They are small. They are cheap. They have the word book in the title.<p>The netbook is dead, long live the netbook!
Tablet + keyboard cover docking station is just an overpriced netbook. And this combo is on the rise - people want to be able to do real stuff on their devices, when you have so much computing power always with you. And for that you need screen space and keyboard.
The tradeoff netbooks promised was lower price in exchange for more limited performance, and the Atoms at the time were the right fit for that niche. Eventually, though, as more mainstream processors got cheaper, it started to make less and less sense to keep those lines going...<p>But lots of mobile chips now occupy this exact same price/performance space: very cheap, and not especially performant, but good enough to surf the web. We've already seen some ARM laptops, and I expect to see more in the next year, occupying the former-netbook market position. So far it's just been Chromebooks, and I have some skepticism of the viability of the ChromeOS platform in the long term, but the hardware can continue in that direction regardless of the software (my money would be on either WinRT or a slightly desktop-ified Android).
I quite like netbooks, having been initially sceptical about them. As a note taking device they're hard to beat. Tablets just aren't as convenient because you have to faff about with external keyboards and trying to get the screen at the right viewing angle. Also netbooks have the edge over tablets in terms of being able to install a wider variety of linux based operating systems.
I've am currently using a 11" HP dm1 3016 (just a grade above netbook), and I refuse to believe people do not find value in netbooks. Yeah, they may be underpowered, but are usable for most tasks that an average user needs to do, mostly web browsing and facebook, watching 720p movies, using MS Office, and a long backup (~7-8 hrs after 1 yr).<p>Heck, I've been developing for Android on Eclipse, working on Spring MVC app, Play 2.0 projects and doing graphics work on Adobe Photoshop on this laptop since I bought it in Dec., 2011. Attached a 24" display to the HDMI port when needed. Planning to upgrade to SSD, and it will last me a few more years. What it cost me, around INR 20k (~$400).<p>I guess what netbooks need is an upgrade to a minimum 1366x768 display (which is why I bought the dm1 and not a 10" netbook) and an AMD E series Fusion grade processor.
Android is leaking all over the place. Into consoles, TVs, Cameras. I may be naive, but it seems to be just a few small tweaks and a few dozen good apps from being a better-than-chromeOS netbook OS.<p>Android (or some other tablet/mobile OS) might eat the netbook market.
The best use of a netbook is as a <i>bedbook</i> - it's the laziest way of surfing the web, just balance it on a thin pillow on your chest, attach a trackball mouse, and you can burn almost no calories for hours on end!
So if we redefine the term "netbook" from 'small, shitty, cheap laptop' to 'small, cheap laptop' then "netbook" sales were really always super healthy.<p>Congratulations on achieving your word count, please stop.