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We’d already said that netbooks are dead, but it was maybe more accurate then to say that they were dying. Now, not only have netbook shipments precipitously declined, they’re getting positively banged out by tablets. As they should.
There’s no point to rehashing why netbooks don’t provide a good enough consumer experience to justify their brief popularity. And even as they’ve improved dramatically—you can watch video on them now!—it’s still very hard to find a compelling argument as to why you’d prefer one over a tablet. According to ABI Research:
“Media tablet shipments surpassed netbook shipments this quarter, reaching 13.6 million units, compared to just 7.3 million netbooks. Netbooks had previously led the way with 8.4 million shipments in 1Q11, compared to just 6.4 million media tablets.”
So say your goodbyes while you can, you lovers of netbooks. Unless you’re too busy playing with your iPad. [BGR]
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This article just sounds bitter?
Firstly, netbooks haven’t evolved one bit in the past 1-2 years. Not at all. Someone, somewhere is crippling them (I’m looking at Intel) A machine of that size with a higher res screen and a half good processor would be great, but none have been made, seems intel want to get notebooks and netbooks well separated.
And don’t forget, you can actually do a little thing called “Work” on a netbook. They have real keyboards, not ideal, but far better than a touchscreen for typing. And you can do more serious image editing and coding on them.
Netbooks are dead because they haven’t evolved. Tablets have evolved at an alarming pace, and that’s why there is constant interest in them.
How about: a keyboard you can actually type essays/articles on. A battery that you can change at will. Upgradable RAM/HDD slots. Great Linux support. USB and other connectivity ports. Usually half the price of a decent tablet.
As the owner of a tablet (Touchpad), netbook (NC10), desktop and smartphone (HD2), I can safely say that my netbook gets the most use out of all of them. I’ve had mine for 3 years now and can safely say that the practical advantages of a proper OS versus an upscaled Mobile OS are unsurpassable.
iPads may be popular, but are very limited in regards to how efficiently you can use them, and a netbook trounces it in nearly every aspect (and battery life is similar to an iPad with an extended battery as well).
It depends what you’re using it for. Most people use netbooks just for basic sofa browsing. Which a tablet does well.
I wrote a 500 word proposal on Pages on the iPad for work the other day; no harder than typing on the keyboard. You must have thick fingers.
The other differences noted… I don’t really see the big deal. I actually don’t need them on the tablet but maybe we’re after different things in life. I wanted the smallest, simplest (no hinges), lightest portable device that had all the Post-PC trappings of my smart phone to consume media on at a good size to go alongside my laptop (work use). If you think a netbook is better at consuming media than a tablet then you’ll deserve the cancerous balls that life from having a laptop roasting your nuts on an evening will give you.
I have a Samsung NC10 that I picked up a while back so I had something portable. Unfortunately the underpowered atom really makes it frustratingly slow for most uses. An ipad would have been a much better alternative had one been available at the time, albeit a bit more pricey.
I reckon netbooks must have evolved enough to be reasonably snappy these days though.
I had the NC20 for a while. It was also a bit underpowered, but I’ve since upgraded to the Samsung X120. Netbook size, but with a proper processor and the important (for me) 12″ screen and full size keyboard which means it’s usable.
As with all devices the netbook has to fit a niche. Before tablets they were often used as a cheap alternative to a full laptop or desktop for web browsing or as a smaller, lighter laptop for working on the commute. These use cases have been attacked at both ends by tablets at one end and lighter laptops at the other. This leaves them with a much smaller audience and as the technology of their rivals improves will wipe them out.
This is very, very much the case. I got my Netbook a couple of years ago now. Back then, the tablet market was -literally- the iPad. Your options for small, affordable computing (primarily for net access, but handy for getting work done when caught out on the go) were pretty much JUST netbooks. Laptops were too bulky and the iPad was too expensive and work-unfriendly.
Today, the tablet market may still be dominated by super expensive over-designed pieces of kit like the iPad, but it’s opening up to cheaper, more viable hardware. The Transformer costs now what a high-range Netbook used to at the height of their popularity. The Transformer offers not only Netbook style function with its keyboard dock (and thus, the viability to do a bit of work on the go), but the openness and extensibility of the Android eco-system too.
The Transformer is unique among tablets today, but it definitively spells the end of the Netbook niche.
I’m not sure that Netbooks were ever really well defined. They were essentially small, light laptops without an optical drive… which you could say applies to the smaller MacBook Air (which certainly isn’t dying), Asus Transformer and no doubt a very large number of new (micro) laptops that will come out in the near future – especially with cloud computing as a future emphasis.
Yes, you could say that the ‘netbook’ is dead… or you could say that laptops are becoming netbooks… or that netbooks are becoming laptops…
The key differentiators are that Tablets have touch-screen driven interfaces and no built-in keyboard. Both of those features make them uncomfortable to use as a truly portable computer – it’s not just text inputting, but also accurate text selection, speedy menu access, ease of cut and paste, playing any more complex game etc etc. And if you’ve ever tried the awful touch-screen PCs, you’ll know that it just doesn’t really work as a base paradigm.
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My netbook is spot on, I take it abroad with me as it is light, ideal for hand luggage especially if you are going with a budget airline that gives you a stupidly low allowance (looking at ryanair here) and I can actually get on with coding on it, which cannot be done on a tablet (until windows 8 tablets start to ship at least).
I can also hook it up to an external monitor for dual screen support which cannot be done out of the box with many tablets (although I have a Asus EEE Pad Transformer and that has Mini HDMI on it, but then again it does not offer dual screen, only clone).
I could not imagine using an on-screen keyboard though to do development work, errr i shudder at the thought.
They can be useful but they’re too slow and expensive for what they are. Tablets are more useful for 99% of users.
The experience of browsing the web on my phone is much better than the netbook I have.