Proving yet again that fame and fortune are fleeting – even for computer hardware – the analysts at IHS are projecting that the netbook, the New Hotness just a few short years ago, will disappear completely by 2015. "Once a white-hot PC product that sold in the tens of millions of units annually," IHS writes in an email …

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Friday 12th April 2013 22:14 GMT Anonymous Coward

I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks...

People are getting wise to the fact that ultra-books are not worth the extra $ compared to cheaper netbooks as covered in the recent Reg article 'Netbooks were a GOOD thing and we threw them under a bus'...

Netbooks are very useful for throwing in a backpack and taken along on a journey or when travelling... Also a cheap netbook connected to the TV via HDMI/VGA with a wireless keyboard is far superior to a Smart TV IMHO!

If there are no netbooks by 2015, People will just hold off, sit on the sidelines and buy nothing...Or they'll go the smartphone or tablet route... I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks... Especially the overpriced Win-8 flavour! No doubt though the death of netbooks will hurt consumers overall...

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 08:30 GMT M.D.
  
  Re: I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks...
  
  ...except, this is a talk about the death of Netbooks.
  
  Y'know, because facts (i.e. Sales data) outway misty-eyed opinions.
  
  People will not engage in mass no-purchase (an idea so patently absurd it drove me out of 'read-only' apathy!)
  
  Why? gosh, I guess that's because they are already buying alternatives!
  
  Rattling on about how good a Netbook is to use makes no odds against reality and that reality is that Netbooks filled a niche which has since been appropriated by other devices - and high-end Ultrabook ain't one of 'em
  
  ..oh yes, and I posted in the '...under a bus" article as well and was downvoted - a wonderful illustration of desire overruling data. One day the tech community will get the fact that the consumer buys what they want and us banging drums about 'gone' geeky element makes no difference - mainly because there are so very few IT Techs as % of the pop....
  
  (and by the way, I typed this the same way I type all my comments on El Reg these last 2 years, on an iPad. I admit tho' I can't hack Debian onto it same way as I did my Ps2)
  
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  1. Saturday 13th April 2013 10:52 GMT Craigness
    
    Re: I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks...
    
    I think you missed the point. If what people want is a netbook but the only option in anything approaching that form factor costs 5 times what they wanted to spend then they won't send...or they might buy a tablet or phone. This is a prediction, not a call to arms. But I expect most people would be buying a notebook to supplement a tablet or phone, considering the number of those already out there.
    
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  2. Sunday 14th April 2013 09:45 GMT dajames
    
    Re: I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks...
    
    People will not engage in mass no-purchase ....
    
    Why? gosh, I guess that's because they are already buying alternatives!
    
    People will buy a piece of kit if they feel a need for a piece of kit. If my 4-year-old netbook broke today (and couldn't be fixed) I would try to get a replacement ... but I don't have much hope that I'd find anything on the market today that I'd consider worth spending money on: The screens are too low-resolution and it's hard to find one with 3g fitted.
    
    If I ever do find a more modern netbook with a decent screen and connectivity I'll probably go out and buy it as an upgrade even though my current one may still work. Until then I'll engage in (solitary) no-purchase ... but I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way about the current market.
    
    The problem seems to me to be that the manufacturers want us to buy expensive ultrabooks but we spitefully choose to buy cheap low-margin netbooks instead. Their response is to make netbooks less and less desirable in the hope that that will drive us to buy ultrabooks, but we just sit on the fence and say "Meh!"
    
    Make me a netbook using the screen of the Nexus 10 tablet, put 500GB of inexpensive hard drive it in rather than an SSD (though SSDs are now half-way to being affordable), and put Linux on it and I'll bit your hand off. Until then I'll carry on using my old £300 Acer.
    
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  3. Monday 15th April 2013 08:42 GMT kb
    
    Re: I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks...
    
    And here is a WHOOSH for you. What the guy was saying is that many people that WOULD have bought netbooks are now either buying laptops or something like a tablet NOT because that was their first choice, but that MSFT and Intel priced the systems right out of existence. Just look at the EEE, started out less than $250, the last units were selling a hair under $500! That is DOUBLE okay? That would be like saying "nobody wants econo cars" when you make every econo car more expensive than a Mercedes!
    
    I know that I ended up having to get a refurb Aspire One for my dad's GF because we simply couldn't find any new netbooks, and several friends bought 15 inchers not because they wanted 15 inches, but because the only 12 inchers were over $1000 and the 15 was $375 this isn't about the public not wanting them, its about Intel and MSFT not wanting them, MSFT because they think that they can slap a paintjob on a Pinto and sell it for Porsche money and Intel because they have piles of i5s and i7s they want to push for sweeter margins.
    
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2. Saturday 13th April 2013 17:04 GMT dogsolitude_uk
  
  Re: I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks...
  
  "Netbooks are very useful for throwing in a backpack and taken along on a journey or when travelling..."
  
  ^^^ This.
  
  I spent a little while shopping around trying to find a little netbook precisely for this purpose. Ended up buying one second hand for just over £100, upgraded the RAM to 2GB and Win Starter -> Win Home, installed my usual stuff on it and it's a great little machine for doing small bits of coding or writing whilst out and about on the fly (currently learning Python at the moment). The screen's a bit small, but using FF in full-screen mode helps.
  
  The other day I set it up with Apache server and used VLC to stream the webcam so I could watch the bird table in the garden from my office.
  
  Plus I can play Baldur's Gate on it.
  
  Personally I love netbooks to bits, and will probably buy a couple more before they become extinct. I'll certainly be sorry if they disappear.
  
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3. Sunday 14th April 2013 18:12 GMT regorama
  
  Re: I think we should be talking about the death of Ultrabooks...
  
  My phone and tablet can connect to a TV through a small adapter (about the size of a large camera battery). I can use a bluetooth (or wired) keyboard and mouse.
  
  Take the Asus Transformer series or the Fonepad.
  
  Translation: the netbooks haven't died. They've transformed into other platforms.
  
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Friday 12th April 2013 22:54 GMT ElNumbre

Atom, saviour of Intel.

So Chipzilla made a big song and dance about how Atom would be their knight in shining silicone. With netbooks fading and nettops never really gaining much momentum, where next for the Atom other than an occasional NAS box or the odd phone? They don't seem to be taking the fight to ARM in the mobile space, and from what I read, Windows 8 is a bit of a lame duck. Will the high-end x64 stuff keep them afloat until they do think of something new?

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1. Friday 12th April 2013 23:15 GMT asdf
  
  Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.
  
  Intel is a victim of its own success in many ways. You would be hard pressed to design an instruction set harder to put in a phone than the x86(and its many derivatives). If Intel who has more money than God and is always a generation ahead of everyone else in fab technology can't get x86 competitive with ARM in the mobile space then it may well not be possible.
  
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2. Friday 12th April 2013 23:18 GMT asdf
  
  Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.
  
  Also as has been pointed out by others the really big thing keeping Intel out of mobile is their unbelievably shitty integrated graphics offerings. GMA stands for Games My Ass.
  
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3. Saturday 13th April 2013 11:29 GMT qwarty
  
  Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.
  
  Intel screwed up with the Atom in recent years, that's the reality. Bay Trail due second half of the year goes a long way in catching up with x64, more DRAM, quad core and much improved graphics. But its a product that should have been available in 2012 and that's the underlying reason for many of the current issues discussed here including the death of the netbook and poor PC sales. When Intel get to realize its better to keep their fabs busy on lower margin parts is something we'll discover in time, in the x86 v ARM competition theres little room for $100+ parts.
  
  Its a matter of semantics whether the new detachable/convertible formats are the new netbooks. IMO of current hardware the Surface devices give the best idea of what is to come, whether as Windows or Linux derived machines. Apart from screen aspect ratio. Seems so obvious to me that 16:10 is all it takes to make portrait mode useable - simply incredible how these dreaded 16:9 device keep being wheeled out.
  
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4. Saturday 13th April 2013 16:47 GMT mmeier
  
  Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.
  
  Actually Atom is alive and well in the Win8 penables and those sell quite decently. And as others stated the next gen is basically out, Baytrail tablets will be in store late Q3/early Q4 this year. One of the reasons (together with Haswell) many are NOT buying right now, i.e a TPT2/Baytrail is basically announced, a Vaio Duo11/Haswell and T903 are "solid rumors"
  
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  1. Sunday 14th April 2013 01:20 GMT Mikel
    
    Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.
    
    There are no Windows tablets selling decently. People don't buy Windows tablets. This whole "Intel's future Atom wonderchip" business has long since come to the same trite meme as the Year of The Linux Desktop. If they ever ship an amazing mobile chip it will be as shocking as DNF finally coming available.
    
    Of course with their top-end fabs 40% idle, maybe they've got a shot at accelerating the process progress.
    
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    1. Sunday 14th April 2013 12:23 GMT mmeier
      
      Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.
      
      Strange. All the big PC manufacturers have new Windows tablets out. Completely new units in many cases not re-cycled tech/chassis etc. And at least DELL and Lenovo have delivery times for their Latitude and TPT2 units currently. And the turnover rate for Ativ500 at the big chains here is high enough that 1/3 of the shops have a "pickup in 2-3 days" instead of "available" listing currently. Given their logistics again a sign the unit sells well.
      
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      1. Sunday 14th April 2013 23:35 GMT JEDIDIAH
        
        Re: Atom, saviour of Intel.
        
        Wasn't there just another article a couple days ago about how Win8 is killing PC sales and how everyone's sales are in the crapper?
        
        Vendors pushing stuff and vendors selling stuff are two entirely different things.
        
        Of course the industry doesn't want netbooks or nettops. Why let you buy suitable kit for $300 when they can sell you something for $600 or $1200?
        
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Friday 12th April 2013 23:16 GMT Anonymous Coward

IHS?

Just a quick question: should I know, or care, who IHS are?

I never heard of them before this article. I clicked through to their page and I'm none the wiser.

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1. Sunday 14th April 2013 08:19 GMT Destroy All Monsters
  
  Re: IHS?
  
  Possibly something to do with NHS?
  
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2. Monday 15th April 2013 00:11 GMT P. Lee
  
  Re: IHS?
  
  Isis, Horus, Seth? ;)
  
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Friday 12th April 2013 23:18 GMT Will Godfrey

Well now. Maybe I should get a spare battery for me EeePC then

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Saturday 13th April 2013 01:30 GMT pompurin

My Toshiba NB550D (about £215 when I bought it) is a real trooper. I upgraded it to 4GB of RAM, give it a 64GB SSD drive upgraded to Win7x64 and it is now an excellent field laptop. I take it to all the dusty LAN rooms where there is no room to move and this fits the bill. The Battery lasts over 10 hours. The only major downside is the screen vertical pixels of 600, however It does do HDMI@1080p and is a very convenient tool.

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1. Wednesday 17th April 2013 04:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  I concur, a great little netbook. And you can replace the screen with a 1366x768 one- look here in Tom's hardware - http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/88590-35-trying-upgrade-toshiba-nb550d-screen-wsvga-wxga .
  
  I am the jbbandos there, and my next upgrade will probably be changing the 4GB I put in to 8GB RAM. I've also changed the wifi for an Intel 6300-N.
  
  Why can't the manufacturers give us something like that? A AMD APU (Intel GMA500 fiasco meant I won't ever buy an Intel chipset netbook/laptop), 1366x768 at least, 4-8GB RAM, a decent HD or a SSD, 802.11n dual band, HDMI out, all in 10" form factor, makes a perfect Linux netbook, but there are painfully few out there. And if you want 3G connectivity, you're out of luck.
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 01:36 GMT wim

I would love to get my hands on a decent laptop with some normal specs

play hdmi content on a television

have a screen with minimum 800 pixels height

around 11 inch

preferably mat display

works with linux

I have now a vaio vpcx11alj on loan from a friend and it would be perfect except that the screen backlight flickers under linux. Running the thing under the installed windows is perfect if you want to do some meditation while you wait for your webpage / program to open.

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 06:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  if used is OK
  
  try and find a ThinkPad X201 or Samsung NC20
  
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2. Monday 15th April 2013 08:52 GMT kb
  
  What you want..
  
  Is a EEE 1215B or 1225B, B stands for Brazos APU and from what I hear they have been supported for at least a couple of years now in the major distros. The size is 11.6, 1376x768 with HDMI that can do 1080P under Win 7, not sure about Linux, and gets around 5 on the battery new if you are on Win 7, I was able to get about another hour in Expressgate which is the Linux ChromeOS style OS that comes baked into the netbook. I hear there is a way to add your own apps to EG but I never tried it, it had a browser and media player and that was all I needed at the time.
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 02:15 GMT Captain DaFt

Netbook dead?

Nobody around here got the memo. The stores couldn't keep'em in stock over the christmas season.

Of course, these are running unsanctioned Android ICS, so fly under the radar.

Hell, I bought one, and guess what? Using it for this post.

A word to MS, ICS does just fine with a wireless mouse and keyboard, no touch screen needed, and it interfaces with my TV via HGMI perfectly!

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 02:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Netbook dead?
  
  Oops, typo! That should've been HDMI.
  
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2. Saturday 13th April 2013 12:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Netbook dead?
  
  Ooo! That sounds fun. And I have a spare partition where I used to dual boot Snow Leopard until I decided WIn 7 Pro was better...
  
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3. Sunday 14th April 2013 02:29 GMT leexgx
  
  Re: Netbook dead?
  
  unsanctioned Android Tablets are annoying to hell apart from some tending to have crappy touch screens, they also lack google play store as well so mostly makes the device not very useful as bunch of my customers found out, one got an official Android Tablet device {after they smashed the screen}, 7" samsung tab i think and it was completely useable and she agreed with me the other tablet was junk (it was an copy of an official tablet they even gave it the same name)
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 02:36 GMT Chairo

It was clearly

the artifical limitations intel imposed on the netbooks that killed them off. 1024x600 is a bastard resolution that just doesn't work well, even for web browsing.

And limiting the Netbook flavour of Atom to 32 bit was plain evil, as it prevented a complete switch to 64 bit, even for the rest of the world.

Who would have needed a 32 bit Win7, if not for the Atoms?

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 11:40 GMT jason 7
  
  Re: It was clearly
  
  A lot of windows nowadays are deeper than 600 pixels. Not fun having to navigate around a 700 pixel deep one when the top and bottom have disappeared.
  
  If a customer comes to me with a broken Netbook I now refuse to fix them. When you can buy a new laptop with 4 times the performance for £260 its really not worth it.
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 03:28 GMT JeffyPooh

Netbooks are dead

And in other news, Apple is shifting a shed load of 11-inch MacBooks.

I guess it's that last inch or two that can assure satisfaction.

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 11:42 GMT jason 7
  
  Re: Netbooks are dead
  
  According to sales reports worldwide they aren't.
  
  Plenty of iPads but not the bigger stuff. That's in decline.
  
  Then again 5 years ago, folks were predicting we'd all be using netbooks by now...
  
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2. Saturday 13th April 2013 14:32 GMT csumpi
  
  Re: Netbooks are dead
  
  Unfortunately your claim cannot be backed up by AAPL's quarterly reports nor their stock price. The day your purple bubble bursts, you'll be surprised. Paris, because she'll be there to comfort you.
  
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3. Sunday 14th April 2013 18:51 GMT ThomH
  
  Re: Netbooks are dead
  
  The PC market as a whole is contracting a lot more quickly than Apple's computer sales — per that recent IDC report, worldwide computer shipments are down 14%, Apple's are down only 7.5%. Obviously you should frame that with the fact that Lenovo has managed to buck the trend entirely with 0% year-on-year difference but it seems to me that you could argue both that Apple is failing (sales down) or that it is succeeding (it's significantly outperforming the market average).
  
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4. Monday 15th April 2013 08:55 GMT PJI
  
  Re: Netbooks are dead
  
  I had thought, after seeing the average netbook and other, smaller form laptops, that the 11" Air would be too small, until I saw one and played with it and spoke to others who have bought one. It's rather impressive and now I may have to reconsider my hard and fast decision to buy at least a 14". That smaller size seems to be remarkably readable, powerful and useful and, of course, wonderfully portable.
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 04:36 GMT Tank boy

Fire sale

Can't wait. When the price drops to 200 bucks USD, I'll be buying one just for shits and giggles.

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Saturday 13th April 2013 05:07 GMT Jodo Kast

Great travel PCs

Perfect for almost everything with Windows XP.

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Saturday 13th April 2013 07:25 GMT Dave Bell

Like for like

So, a tablet has a screen comparable in size to early netbooks, but where's the keyboard?

The first netbook I bought is still running, and still a useful machine.

Tablets do some things better, but need extras to do some of the most basic jobs computers are used for.

A netbook was a good choice for the schools market, something that a child could carry around and use, but I have heard a few stories about Linux-hostility from teachers. The ultra-cheap computers don't seem to be enough, and are tablets going to be any use?

They'll call them something else, and they will have more power, but that cost-niche for portable keyboarded computing isn't going to go away. Looking at how Ubuntu has changed, we seem to have thrown away a few good ideas that came from the netbook boom.

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 08:04 GMT Robert E A Harvey
  
  Re: Like for like
  
  >Linux-hostility from teachers
  
  They are a weird bunch, aren't they?
  
  A couple of years ago someone on here recounted the tale of his kid's IT teacher saying "No-one uses keyboard shortcuts." I asked around, and the schools round here thought that too.
  
  2 1
2. Saturday 13th April 2013 08:30 GMT FrancisKing
  
  Re: Like for like
  
  The keyboard is the big weakness on a netbook. Using a keyboard means that you have to have the screen further away, which makes it look smaller. My 10" ipad has the same size screen as a netbook, but is an excellent size whereas the screens on netbooks were too small.
  
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3. Saturday 13th April 2013 17:04 GMT mmeier
  
  Re: Like for like
  
  The keyboard (and mouse) are In the carry bag :)
  
  Been doing that for quite some time, using a BT keyboard/mouse (MS 6000) combo when I type longer text on my privat tablet pc. Actually recomended against buying the Ativ500 with dock(1) a few times since it offers no benefits (dock is keyboard/standup only). Tablet pc + BT => More choices
  
  (1) Exception: When you need/want 3G, currently you can not get the 3G/non dock variant
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 08:12 GMT spegru

pah

The reason netbooks are losing out is because of Microsoft. When first introduced with Linux on board they were fine since they didn't have to be dragged down by crapware anti virus or indeed the monolithic piece of junk that is windows. Of course msft put a stop to that because of the underlying PC architecture. In turn, that killed the business case for the hardware makers.

So pleased am I with my Packard bell dot s3 netbook with its 7.5 hr battery, that sensing this very netbook demise, i bought a spare one.

It does everything I need running Linux Mint!

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 17:06 GMT mmeier
  
  Re: pah
  
  Strange that Lenovo (one of the more sucessful PC makers) produced new netbooks well after the "Linux" hype had died down. The last units where even developed after XP was no longer sold and used Win7 as an OS.
  
  As for monolithic - read Professor Tanenbaums comments on Linux, read on the design of the NT Kernel (Hybrid) and hide in shame.
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 08:55 GMT Tommy Pock

I bought my MSI Wind U100 from a car boot sale for £95. Stuck Ubuntu and an extra 1GB RAM in it and now I use it almost exclusively for everything.

The only thing I find it difficult to live without is multi-touch on the trackpad - I have a unique hatred for Unity's scroll bars.

Otherwise it does everything I need a computer to do.

I don't watch films on it but I wouldn't watch them on a 15" laptop or a tablet either.

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Saturday 13th April 2013 10:32 GMT RonWheeler

Average 13 inch laptops

Average 13 inch laptops these days re much thinner and lighter than they used to be too. I suspect that portability has cannibalised a lot of the potential netbook market share too. The difference of a couple of mm between a poser toy ultrabook and most mainstream laptops is often minimal now.

Having said that, my old netbook is still going strong and goes on holiday with me every time.

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1. Sunday 14th April 2013 20:09 GMT bailey86
  
  Re: Average 13 inch laptops
  
  Agreed - I picked up an HP Elitebook 2540p from Amazon for approx 400 quid and whacked it up to 6GB RAM for peanuts. I mainly need browsers and terminals and with Xubuntu installed the responsiveness is pretty much instant. On top of that it will run Netbeans (which is Java based) when I need it.
  
  My Dell Mini 9 is great (again with Xubuntu) and I let lit-lun use it - but she prefers the OH's (13 inch) Mac now.
  
  I think the problem is that 13 inch seems to be the lowest limit for a machine which you can work on all day. Generally, at home and in the office I plug in a 24 inch monitor and a keyboard and via the Displayport connection the screen looks great. I would say that the set up is as good as any current PC. But when I've needed to I've been able to work all day on the 13 inch Elitebook on its own - I'm not sure I'd want to work on the Mini 9 all day without it being plugged into an external monitor.
  
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Saturday 13th April 2013 10:53 GMT Tom 7

And in two years time

we will have something with an HD touch screen, very decent graphics and multi core arm processor with 10 hour battery life, add on keyboard so it looks exactly like a netbook, with a 'new fancy marketing name' and a price tag 30% more due to Windows 9 sitting on shelves in shops while similar Android devices fly off the shelves while IHS or their ilk tell us the 'new fancy marketing name' devices are on their way out as a large customer of their has asked for a market 'survey' that says so.

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1. Saturday 13th April 2013 11:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: And in two years time
  
  Intel battery life will be 10 hours or so in two years, ARM v x86 wars will have new battlegrounds. Whether Microsoft remain so stubborn on licensing costs that their market slips away - perhaps they will be as stupid as you imagine. But maybe not. Who knows? I don't. You don't either.
  
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  1. Saturday 13th April 2013 17:10 GMT mmeier
    
    Re: And in two years time
    
    Intel battery life for Atom IS 10h right now for the better units. And with more performance than poor ARM can deliver in it's newest version (A15). And the next gen Atom is around the corner.
    
    You can even get 10h with core-i but that will be heavier than an iThingy by a factor of 2 (Vaio Duo11+Sheet) or 3 (T902 with second battery). But the power! The power! T902 can emulate an ARM device at full speed and still has power to spare (Full power core-i)
    
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Saturday 13th April 2013 13:24 GMT Paul C

Netbooks

Between myself and colleagues at other universities in IT, and students we work with, I saw dozens of different models the first few years. The Linux experience on early Netbooks (wifi drivers, etc) wasn't always a smooth one. One or two people around you with problems would suddenly make WIndows XP Home sound great on a cheap notebook.

I'd actually argue that Netbooks would have failed earlier if Windows hadn't shown up on them. Your average consumer wanted a cheap computer at that time, and Netbooks did serve the function of bringing laptop prices down for a lot of people. Personally, I'd rather have a Thinkpad X230 with a 9-cell battery on a long trip, and I know a lot of people like the 11" Macbook Air, because a computer should be capable. People will put up with tablets not doing some things a computer does because to them it's not a computer. If it looks like a notebook they want it to be powerful enough to do what they need, and they want it to run their favorite software.

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