Asus to take fight to tablets with cheap Google netbook
Chrome-plated?
Eee PC maker Asus will launch a dirt-cheap netbook this summer in a bid the eke out out market share before the tablets take it all.
So say industry moles cited by DigiTimes. The mystery machine will be out in June and cost "$200-250", which is £124-155 in real money.
The snag, of course, is that you can already pick up past-their-prime 10in, Intel Atom-based netbooks for £180. With basic tablets already on sale at as little as £100, which difference will the mooted £30 price cut really make?
If Asus ships the system with Android or Chrome OS, as the sources suggest, then it will at least have a differentiator beyond a slightly lower price.
Early netbooks with Linux caused some buyers problems - they wouldn't run software the punters already had on their Windows computers. This time round, thanks to smartphones, ordinary buyers aren't so fazed by non-Microsoft operating systems. ®
COMMENTS
Here we go again.
The 'Small Cheap Computer' never really came to light, the EEE PC 701 Came close, really good effort, but nothing since, the idea showed great promise, but nothing really came of it, I think that what the Industry considers 'Cheap' is different to that of the 'Consumer' sadly, £200 is a lot of money these days, and with things the way they are now, its the choice between, paying bills and necessities and buying a new laptop, if they are going to call it cheap, it really needs to be cheap!
Or here is an idea, just worry about putting out the hardware and let the buyer choose what OS to stick on it, and save a few more £'s?
Ultimate Tablet
Imagine if there was a tablet available with it's own keyboard attached. You could have the convenience of a real keyboard coupled with the portability of a tablet. Even better if the keyboard could fold up against the tablet screen like a book, protecting the screen when not in use.
Small Cheap
Yep, small cheap computers came out but they managed to "improve" (well, for them) the design by fixing the cheap part.
Umm...
"It's not clear to me why Linux on netbooks lost out."
Perhaps because the distro they were shipped with were c**p and few (if any) of the alternatives worked out of the box.
<asbestos>
allegedly some did - for some machines - sometimes - but for the average Joe - who has even less understanding of a Linux geek's love of a command-line than said geek has for their loathing of one) by the time it got sorted it was too late. The word was out and the damage done.
</asbestos>
Real Money
"The mystery machine will be out in June and cost "$200-250", which is £124-155 in real money."
Oh come on. We all know that if it sells for $200 in the states it will be £200 in the UK.
