discounted to $99 late last month, at Staples. And while Windows 8.1 tablets retailing for double digit figures are not so surprising anymore, this is a fully beefed up laptop, with all manners of connectivity options, and of course an accompanying keyboard. All the advantages you get from the notebook form factor. Just for the record, this ASUS machine is an 11.6-inch device, with a respectable 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, drawing its power from an Intel quad-core Atom processor paired with a solid 2GB of RAM. Totally at home for basic tasks. The only issue is finding one at this sweet a price.]]>
This is another sales ploy like the netbooks that sold and then everyone realized how slow they were and that they couldn’t handle anything except email and barely do that properly.
Netbooks did strike a chord with consumers, just not in the right way. People were very interested in a cheap laptop that can do basic things, and they still are. Chromebooks are starting to do pretty good. As of now, it seems like Google figured out how to do the cheap notebook thing. Microsoft is going into round 2 with a slightly different approach.
Funny Story: I had a customer give me her netbook “because it sucks and I can’t do anything with it”. I thought wow perfect because I had a 3 year old at the time that had issues lifting such a heavy laptops we already had at home. I set it up for him, put windows 8 on it but then he couldn’t use any of the apps due to too low of resolution so I modified registry entries to change what the PC portrayed as resolution to allow the apps to run. I put a bunch of software and games that he would like. We gave it to him for his birthday. A PC his size… Yeah… He used it twice, looked at me and said dad this computer is too slow. He went back to struggling with the heavier laptops to use.
Chromebooks are starting to have a similar effect. People in the field are pissed off that their printers are not compatible and they cannot do things they can do with their windows computers. Others use it and I haven’t heard anything bad about it from them except for settings issues.
These computers however are netbooks in disguise. The processor, the memory. These things are a ploy to sell computers plain and simple. People want lower cost laptops and this is the answer however people get upset when they get it home and it doesn’t do what they want it to do efficiently.