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Rath on 24 March 2011
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greenmedic88 said:
Rath said:
greenmedic88 said:
Rath said:

Sometimes it's because they make very very good products (the iPhone is one of the best smartphones out, no doubt) but sometimes I just don't know. The iPad is an example of a product with only a very very limited range of uses, same goes for all of these new tablet PC's. For most people, in most situations, a netbook is actually a far more useful product. Yet the media fawned over the iPad anyway.

The netbook is really nothing more than a gimped, cut spec/price laptop.

If there is anything a netbook can do that a laptop can't, I haven't heard of it.

I don't consider a netbook a replacement for a proper computer either.


Netbooks have a wide range of actual uses though. They're cheap and highly portable laptops, brilliant for things like note-taking, plane trips, taking on vacation. There are things that they're more suitable for than laptops and there're alse people who they're more suitable for (people who can't afford full spec laptops). I really just can't see what the market opening for tablet PC's is, but people have bought them just because they have that little 'i' in front.

I would hope most are aware that for about the same price, one can buy an entry level laptop that runs a normal version of Windows in addition to all the regular apps people use Windows for.

About the only thing your save over a laptop when you buy a netbook is weight since it's little more than a fold out tablet PC with a keyboard, only heavier and with worse power management. 

The truth is, a tablet PC does most of what the average consumer uses a computer for (web browsing, image viewing, music, video, reading documents, etc.).

Watch and see as tablets continue to eat away at what's left of the netbook market. iPad has the majority market share, but if there wasn't room for growth in the segment, why would all other major computer manufacturers be marketing and developing their own tablet PCs as opposed to say, more netbooks?

Other than that, netbooks are great for running Linux. All 0.92% of the PC market (including servers) that does anyway. 

An entry level laptop would have basically the same specs anyway.

Also yes it does those things, but it doesn't necessarily do them as well and it doesn't do them as cheap. The reason why other companies are entering the tablet market is because the apple brand made a market, I really can't see it being a market that will over take the netbook though - simply the device isn't as useful.