Are mini-notebooks pricing themselves out of desirability?
The latest Asus Eee, the PC 901, has been announced. It's basically a point upgrade that adds an Atom-based processor and Bluetooth. The real news, to me, is the price, reported by Gizmodo as $650. The news prompts this lament: Weren't these mini-notebooks supposed to be cheap?
Three full-sized laptops are listed this morning on Dealnews, all of which are more powerful than the Eee 901, and all of which are less than $650. Granted, they're not as small as the Eee 901. And typically, in the smaller-is-better consumer electronics industry, a smaller device would merit a larger price. But the mini-notebook category, as defined by the original Eee, turned that notion on its head, opening up a new category of laptops portable enough to be carried at all times yet inexpensive enough to be treated roughly. Now, one generation in, we've got the premier mini-notebook brand (probably) selling for 62% more than its predecessor.
Worse, there's plenty of competition now. Every Taiwanese laptop vendor has a horse in the race. (The BBG team, to a man, has been eyeing the MSI Wind.) Bigger vendors like Dell and Sony are about to launch their own models, as HP recently did. Shouldn't competition drive prices down, as well?
The weak dollar could be a factor. The LA Times is reporting that Nintendo is moving stock of Wii Fit to Europe in lieu of North America, the better to profit from stronger currency. Perhaps the mini-notebook price hikes are what we can expect across the board for all electronics until the American economy gets its act together.
For me, the increased price makes buying a mini-notebook less a given and more a purchase that merits consideration. I was going to get a Wind to use as a mobile laptop — I'm getting tired of hauling around my MacBook Pro — but the creeping prices of mini-notebooks are now causing me to rethink this year's upgrade path. Now I'm earmarking that money for a second-generation MacBook Air. Which is nearly three times the projected price of the Eee 901, I know, but still within the nebulous "full-time laptop" range that starts — for me — somewhere around $650.
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I couldn't agree more. Yes a larger screen is nicer, but not for double the cost, thanks. I was hoping the eee pc would even get cheaper as it gained popularity. so much for that.
Its hard to argue with teh pricing of the original eee but easy to argue with the pricing for the successors.
Remember the Origami spec? I specifically remember it called for a touch screen (where is my touch screen?! Why does no one else seem to care?!), and a price point under $500.
There's a reason for that. Five hundred is the point where it goes from being a "portable gadget" to "luxury gadget." The EEE PC was designed to be portable and used by kids. I would never give a kid a device that cost over $500. Even if I trusted the kid, I'd be very worried about other kids stealing it.
(On the plus side, the Canadian dollar is a lot stronger compared to the US dollar than a few years ago. A $400 US device then would have cost probably $500-600 CDN.)
I felt the same thing when I saw the price of the 901. I recently purchased a 4G Surf (thanks, Uncle Sam), as a replacement for a dead writing laptop that was running Win 98 with no Internet or removable storage (USB 2.0 hadn't even been imagined at that point). The price (350 on Amazon) was perfect for what I wanted, a simple, cheap, portable keyboard that could occasionally connect to the internet. Sure the 901 has a bigger screen and longer battery life, but the price makes it an unacceptable choice. I guess I'm glad I got my 4G when I did.
The Linux version of MSI Wind is supposed to be $400 and the Dell version is supposed to be under $500 as well.
So I think ASUS is trying to squeeze out more money than is in the niche. Hopefully all the >$500 versions fail miserably and we'll get some price drops.
yes its completly pointless now.
I wanted a hand cranked platic pc that i can cart about and surf without worrying about losing it or breaking it. For the money they want now, id rather have a real laptop.
I think the price they set right now is mostly to avoid the Osborne effect (if there is such a thing). Asus probably churned out a lot of Celeron powered 901s and intends to sell them above the production cost. The price point of the Atom powered Eee must be higher to avoid the 901s prices to collapse. Which is about what I hope will happen to the 701 soon, they already lost about 15-20% of the price on Ebay (Germany) and this should drop even more, once the Eee competitors are available. It might be, that I'll even get that 150 Euro laptop that Asus promised to get to the market a year ago. (Remember, the price of entry was supposed to be $199 ...)
i got a black 701 and i'm very happy with it, when you tweak out your gnome themes and fonts there's really plenty of screen space for content. the fact it can take quite a decent shock is reassuring. i paid aud$486 for mine, and immediately upgraded it with 2gb of ram (about another 60, i think) and put an 8gb sdhc card into the built-in sd card slot to put my home folder on. i am going to soon receive a touchscreen/hub kit which will allow me to put a touchscreen on it and i'll also put in an asus bluetooth dongle somewhere inside the sides of the display. altogether the total cost will be nearing that magic 650 mark but i think everyone here would agree it's a fair price for a mini laptop with touchscreen, bluetooth, 2gb of ram and an 8gb sdhc card.
asus really should have put all these things in as an option imho. i was wondering whether i should have held off and got an 901 but at that price i would not have done it. the 701s were selling so fast i had to trek all over town to find a shop with the black one.
my only complaints with this laptop is it should have come with the cpu clock and frequency scaling enabled, it only runs out of the box at 650mhz not the advertised (and capable of running at) 900mhz, and the keys are a little stiff, although i've heard that the white models have a lighter keyboard. the keyboard layout is a bit suboptimal too, there's no capslock light, and the layout of the shift and arrow keys definitely could be optimised.
apart from that a great little gadget that i carry around with me everywhere.
Get the XO rugged laptop when the next Give One Get One program rolls out- Works like a charm with Ubuntu + XFCE!
Absolutely. I got a killer deal on TWO quite decent Toshiba laptops last year--about $700 or $800 after rebates--for my kids. I would have been interested in an Eee, but if prices keep going up, I'll keep carrying the ball and chain full-size laptop.
The emergence of the sub-notebook market was triggered by the non-profit OLPC project, which got volunteers from MIT to design a computer with radically different priorities than those of the consumer laptop marketers. They wanted something which was portable, extremely durable, and with just barely passable specs, so as to keep the price extremely low.
Suprisingly, this concept was extremely popular with consumers. Many people want something that's super cheap and slow for casual or rugged use, it's just that no laptop company had ever offered something like that before.
There's a reason for that. Laptop companies make money by selling you the latest, fanciest thing in a quickly obsolete or breakable form. They don't make money by selling you something extremely cheap, likely to last a decade, which you can fix yourself. Because there's no margin in that, and the kind of people who are satisfied with that won't come back every year or two with more money.
The OLPC forced a market that laptop companies didn't like, but they've successfully turned it around, into a new high-priced, bells-and-whistles, fast-obsolescence market which will keep people consuming at a good rate.