back to article World+Dog will buy 33m netbooks in '09, says analyst

Whether you think a netbook is simply a small notebook or a compact machine kitted out solely for web access, rather a lot of buyers around the world are using them in place of their larger siblings. In the Western economies and Japan, notebook shipments are declining while netbook sales are on the rise, market watcher …

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  1. Bronek Kozicki
    Flame

    simple explanation

    "a lot of buyers around the world are using them in place of their larger siblings."

    well, majority of netbooks is not crippled with Windows. No wonder they perform adequatly fast and are thus able to replace theoretically faster (but dragged down by large OS) machines.

  2. Andy Barber
    Joke

    33M Notebook?

    At 33 metres it wouldn't fit on a bus, let alone my living room!

  3. Richard 102

    A thought

    How many of those netbooks shipped are replacements? The ones I've tried have a build quality that brings to mind the phrase "Soviet quality".

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Mistype?

    "Take Europe, by far the biggest part of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) conglomeration analysts like to treat as as a single market."

    Europe is the biggest part of Europe? I should hope so. ;)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Netbook Hype

    Netbook Schnetbook --- They're buying them because they're cheaper.

  6. Nuno
    Linux

    Linux

    We don't need more cpu power every year. And we must thanks linux for that! Otherwise, we would all be running Vista, where cpu is never enought, and windows 7 would go the same way, demanding more cpu power to cope with more "features".

  7. davenewman
    FAIL

    A 33 metre netbook

    Although people are buying netbooks with bigger screens, I don't think they will buy a 33m (= 33 metres) one.

    Mega (capital M) is one million. m = metre.

  8. Rick Giles
    Linux

    Wot?!?

    No mention of Linux?

  9. J 3
    Happy

    from 129.5m units to 129.5m

    Huh?

    Wake up, editor!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Too late for me

    After weeks searching in vain for a decent enough netbook that had a screen bigger than a mobile phone, *and* a processor that didn't fall down in an exhausted heap when faced with an OS newer than XP, I gave up and splashed out a little extra for a Dell Vostro 1220 - a *real* small, portable computer. That puppy should keep me happy for a fair few years, future-proofing the extra up-front cost.

  11. Goat Jam
    Go

    Hilarious

    1) What intel/MS want: To sell more high end products driven by their symbiotic "each new Windows release will have much higher hardware requirements" arrangement. Quad Core CPU + Win Ultimate = $$$$!

    2) What people want: Small, cheap computers for accessing the web and maybe editing a few documents. Small, low powered Linux device sans Windows Tax = Far less $$$ for intel, none for MS.

    When people start getting access to #2, Microsoft flies into a panic and dusts off XP to ensure that the unwashed masses are not exposed to that filthy Linux, just in case the find out they like it.

    The problem is that Netbooks dont have the hardware to cope with even a legacy MS OS from 2000, despite being perfectly capable of running most Linux distros from 2009.

    Solution: bump up the hardware specs of netbooks to allow XP to run.

    Result: People see the new bastardised "netbooks" as "little notebooks" and begin to prefer them over their more expensive cousins for a number of reasons.

    Problem #1: Intel's precious high end i7 sales are now being undermined by low end Atom sales because people really don't need that much power in notebooks.

    Problem #2: Come Windows 7, MS high end Windows "Ultimate" sales will be undermined by low end sales of Windows Starter Edition.

    Solution: Use monopoly control of the market to enforce arbitrary restrictions on products in the "netbook" market. In other words cripple netbooks to push people towards more expensive notebooks.

    Result: Bastard Netbooks are more expensive in order to accommodate Windows requirements, have lower battery life, are less robust and are functionally crippled. They are still currently popular because they are the only way you can still purchase XP.

    Problem: People still want cheap and cheerful devices but they are no longer able to buy them. When Win7 hits, it remains to be seen whether people will still want to buy machines loaded with crippleware.

    Solution: ARM based netbooks loaded with ChromeOS and Ubuntu Netbook Remix arrives.

    Result: Microsoft can no longer support ARM processors with their mainline Windows codebase due to the massive amounts of inter-dependancies that the bloated spaghetti monster called Windows has evolved in to. The best they could hope for is to port WinCE to the new netbooks. Intel too have no comeback because ARM have been making ultra low powered CPU's for the embedded market for a LONG time and intel have consistently failed to match them, despite numerous attempts to do so.

    I can't wait to see this play out, it should be fun.

  12. jake Silver badge

    In my experience ...

    In my experience, people are purchasing so-called "netbooks" as a companion to their notebook or laptop ... Modern technology being what it is, laptops & notebooks are plenty powerful for most desktops, and people are using them as "sometimes transported" desktop machines.

    Laptops & notebooks are also not being replaced as often as desktops have been in the past, again thanks to technology.

    I suspect that the stats are a temporary artifact of the so-called netbook not being quite as mature as the laptop/notebook ...

  13. Patrick 14
    Paris Hilton

    WHY

    Why do people buy these rubbish little machines.

    I have used them since the eee pc 701 4gb. that one had crap wifi. had 901 Toshiba NB100 had the HP 2133 nice but hot and slowish. i fund this faster on IE but not much

    and two of them was sent back as they was that rubbish the 901 took 5 mins to boot to xp that i could use.

    I find them slow at just about everything. IE , video play back etc etc.

    my wife has a old Dell D400 which has a "Centrino" 1.6ghz and intel video and leaves this shower of netbooks standing. came with external dvd and was only £180 and bluetooth too.

    One seller in Manchester is doing the D400 but with some screen marks for £90 each but no dvd rom.

    if you pay the upto £40 from ebay for a brand new battery you can still get good time on these notebooks.

    And with the size of the netbooks now getting over 10" its silly not to get a decent centrino based 12" sub notebook.

    I still have a old Sony picturebook with the P2 400mhz cpu and if it had access to the 1gb most netbooks have i feel it would match them for speed if not beat them...

    and why did i buy so many netbooks. I was hoping they would be better with the other CPUs...

    Rant over

    Paris as even she is not that stupid...

  14. adam payne

    NC10

    I recently purchased a Samsung NC10 and I love it. Fits on top of my XBox 360 and runs quite fast for saying it's running Windows.

  15. Hugh_Pym

    @GoatJam

    Damn. I wanted to say that.

    Kudos for the clearest netbook market analysis so far. I keep telling people who ask me about buying a netbook 'Put it on your Christmas list it could be a whole different market by then'.

  16. Tony Smith (Written by Reg staff)

    @Patrick 14

    You hate netbooks but you still bought four of 'em?

  17. Patrick 14

    @ Tony Smith

    The 701 had Celeron cpu. the 901 and the toshiba have the atom and the HP a Via CPU.

    So yes I did try them and found out no matter what CPU they have, they are all Rubbish.

    And for the record I was not trying to play 3D games on them.

  18. Sooty

    @Patrick 14

    try buying a decent one!

    I find my MSI wind perfectly fine for 99% of the tasks i used to use my desktop for, certainly video & dvd playback is fine, even when output to my 1080p tv, i honestly wasn't expecting it to be able to cope! It has become my main machine over both desktop and notebook, simply because i can stop what i am doing at any point, about 30secs to hibernate, and stick it in a coat pocket or bag to take with me.

    I can even play 3d games with it, just not the most recent ones. Aside from having intel graphics, it's pretty much identical spec to my old gaming laptop, just with a small screen.

    The only gripe i have with it, is that i'm used to multi core machines now, and it appears to be sluggish doing some things compared to them because of this.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    Got fed up waiting for a decent netbook...

    So I bought me a second hand HP (compaq) tc4400 tablet PC. 2.0GHz Core Duo processor, upgradable to 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, 12" screen (1024x748), Aero compatible grapics, full size keyboard AND a touch screen. (plus the usual WiFi, Bluetooth and USB ports)

    Upgraded it to Windows 7 (build 7260). It runs a treat with its 1GB ram. Also using the Finger Print & TPM 1.2 security devices for protection. (having said that, I will use TrueCrypt instead of BitLocker, since latter only uses AES128, compared to TrueCrypt's minimum of AES256 for total disk encryption.)

    All this, and over three hours battery life per charge.

    It cost less than most good Netbooks, I'm well happy.

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