Toshiba is Done with Netbooks (in the US)

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The US market for netbooks isn’t what it used to be, demand is down and manufacturers are moving on to more lucrative endeavors. The latest to pull out of the US market is Toshiba America; with the company focusing its attention to the more feature rich (and much more expensive) Ultrabooks.

But netbooks aren’t selling like they used to, and Toshiba isn’t the only company that’s pulled out of the US netbook space recently.
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Makes sense , most netbooks are garbage anyway. Great for email and basic level surfing but useless for anything else. The battery life was the biggest appeal for netbooks I think.
 
For sure, I don't know how they make money of something like $200 dollars. They need to concentrate on making a tablet that rivals the Ipad. Netbooks are for people with small hands anyway.
 
Netbooks are far, far more useful than all of those damn tablets everyone is spamming. Yes, even the iPad. Especially the iPad. It seems, though, the tablet hype is cooling down as well, just in time for the overpriced ultrabooks/MacAirs to become the flavor of 2012.

Not that each doesn't have its own niche, but the constant assertions that each device is going to take over the tech world and replace the PC as we know it is getting old.
 
Netbooks are small... everyone would rather have a tablet

I want a keyboard... laptops are small enough and WAY more powerful.

Niche market that may have been there momentarily.

STR: Usefulness doesn't translate into sales though.
 
Here's the reason why.

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MajorDomo said:
The US market for netbooks isn’t what it used to be, demand is down and manufacturers are moving on to more lucrative endeavors. The latest to pull out of the US market is Toshiba America; with the company focusing its attention to the more feature rich (and much more expensive) Ultrabooks.
Click to expand...

Good riddance. Tablets do everything a netbook could do, only better. The only thing that was technically better (keyboard) wasn't really useful. They never replaced laptops except for users who did nothing and those users are better off with a tablet.
 
The ONLY reason tablets have taken off is that a tablet was released with an 'i' in front of it.

If an inetbook came out tomorrow you all know netbooks would be on fire.
 
My first netbook was a VIA C-7 Sylvania G Netbook that shipped with gOS. It was pretty useless in its factory form. A couple of Linux installs later, I settled on XP and was able to get stuff done, but it was still a painful experience. My current everyday PC is a Samsung N150 which is an Atom n450 based computer and it's been doing fine. While tablets are taking over the niche that netbooks once filled, I don't quite feel that they do the same job. Obviously, with most companies pulling the plug on their netbooks in the US, that feeling isn't representative of the mainstream.

The good news is that China is still shipping Windows CE based netbooks and CE core 7.0 is starting to appear on Ebay. Those don't appear to be going anyplace anytime soon so I'll either end up with a tablet and a full sized laptop or a WinCE Chinese netbook and a full sized laptop.
 
modulus said:
The ONLY reason tablets have taken off is that a tablet was released with an 'i' in front of it.

If an inetbook came out tomorrow you all know netbooks would be on fire.
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Not really, I'll give credit where it's due and Apple simple made a better tablet for the average person than anyone before. Netbooks were simply an attempt to make cheap computers cheap. But that's hurting PC OEMs as much as anything as Apple can sell products at very high prices and margins but make a better product and I think PC OEMs are headed in this direction, especially with Windows 8. I think the hardware that you'll see with Windows 8 will be the best efforts that PC OEMs have ever put together. But it won't be the cheapest stuff, that'll still be pretty crappy.

Apple does prove however that people will pay higher prices for quality and quality is what PC OEMs need more than a ton of cheapest of the cheap crap.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Good riddance. Tablets do everything a netbook could do, only better. The only thing that was technically better (keyboard) wasn't really useful. They never replaced laptops except for users who did nothing and those users are better off with a tablet.
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I really doubt that tablets had anything to do with it. Considering no none Apple tablet has really taken off, besides Amazons tablets. HP damn near lost their business because they wanted to shift their focus from PCs to tablets.

Too many people that bought netbooks would come to me asking me why their laptop can't do certain things. Majority of the time it was games. Mostly because parents buy these netbooks for their kids cause they're cheap. Others complained that the keyboard was too small for them.

Technically a netbook can do whatever a tablet can do, and better, except for battery life, and that really depends on the netbook you got. Considering that a lot of netbooks were the same price as regular laptops, I don't think many would have jumped on them simply for that reason alone.
 
I can't say I'm a fan of anything toshiba, their build quality is pretty terrible and has been for a while.
 
BloodyIron said:
I can't say I'm a fan of anything toshiba, their build quality is pretty terrible and has been for a while.
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Have the really gotten bad lately? The last Toshiba I personally owned was a Satellite 110 CS which was a ~100 MHz Pentium with a floppy drive (no CD-ROM) and a passive matrix LCD. I honestly don't remember if it had a soundcard or not, but I'm thinking it didn't. Anyway, it was a very abusable brick of a machine.
 
They should stop making laptops altogether. I bought a toshiba about 4 years ago. It was nice, but overheated like a pig and the build quality was meh. I've had to fix a lot of Toshibas. They just aren't that great. I bought a lenovo and couldn't be happier.
 
Smartphones got cheap and ubiquitous, and laptops got cheaper and lighter. Any market netbooks may have had a few years ago is now gone.

Netbooks sucked anyway. The Atom was a horribly slow CPU and they had cramped keyboards.
 
SkribbelKat said:
Have the really gotten bad lately? The last Toshiba I personally owned was a Satellite 110 CS which was a ~100 MHz Pentium with a floppy drive (no CD-ROM) and a passive matrix LCD. I honestly don't remember if it had a soundcard or not, but I'm thinking it didn't. Anyway, it was a very abusable brick of a machine.
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Toshiba was great back in the 90s. Their more recent laptops are absolute garbage. The build quality is horrendous.
 
BloodyIron said:
I can't say I'm a fan of anything toshiba, their build quality is pretty terrible and has been for a while.
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All of them suck once you get past below $600. Unfortunately those systems are what most people are buying.
 
I don't think netbooks were ever a good deal vs. low-end laptops. And, $200 tablets are the deathblow to netbooks.
 
This seems pretty sane actually. Looking at what newegg considers an ultra book, it looks like ultra books are a bit bigger than a net book, but with a faster mobile processor. They are booth computer that put light weight and aesthetics above functionality. Ultra books are more expensive for the most part, but they'd be closer in price if the netbook had a great processor along with a nice solid state hard drive. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years ultrabooks look even closer to netbooks once the technology gets faster. If you made a budget ultrabook you'd probably have a netbook, and with that said I bet the margins are much better on ultrabooks.
 
I tried a tablet and didn't care for the performance or Android. They're great for media consumption, but everything else is a wash.
 
Godmachine said:
Makes sense , most netbooks are garbage anyway. Great for email and basic level surfing but useless for anything else. The battery life was the biggest appeal for netbooks I think.
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Battery life and mobility. We've had 10 laptops here. But only three regularly leaves the house. All of them netbooks. The laptops rarely left the tables.

This was my first netbook setup.

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Cool part is that it can run anything my desktop can, and when i need to leave the house, i unplug the peripherals and it's back to being a netbook. My mother has the same setup, her AAO's connected to her 21" monitor and a KB/M. She does have an actual laptop (A 15" one with a dual core Turion), and that one was so rarely used, the battery got ruined. I've already offered to get her a new desktop or replace the laptops battery, but she just wants the netbook. It's plenty fast for word processing and spreadsheets (she's an accountant), and she takes it with her in her purse. The only photoediting she does are collages (pure cut and paste), and the netbook can certainly handle that.
 
That's a shame, netbooks are the only portables I was ever really interested in.

Larger laptops don't appeal to me because I want something light and portable, not a desktop replacement when I have perfectly good desktops both at work and at home, synced together via an external HDD.

Keyboardless tablets also don't interest me because almost everything I do on a computer involves typing and typing on a touch screen makes me want to burn kittens.

I bought a 10" netbook back in 2008 in my 2nd year of University and it was great, typing emails and documents and assignments, storing notes so I didn't have to carry as much paper, taking to tutorials to look things up. Was very useful, and then when I was travelling internationally last year to conferences it again became very useful to carry around, not taking up much space in my bag or adding much weight and letting me keep working and communicating and working on the presentations for the conferences. Temporarily threw the 120GB Sandforce SSD from my desktop into it while travelling to give it a bit of resilience to being left on while on the move and also made it boot extremely fast and overall made the thing very snappy.

I was hoping netbooks would be developed further, I always thought they were more useful devices than shitty keyboardless tablets that have taken off thanks to the marketing skills of Apple more than actually being more useful.
 
Doesn't surprise me that the shift is going towards Ultrabooks. Essentially more CPU and GPU performance, as well as longer battery life than the last big wave of Netbooks. I still feel tablets will rule them all, however. Except maybe in the battery life arena, but we'll see.
 
heatlesssun said:
Not really, I'll give credit where it's due and Apple simple made a better tablet for the average person than anyone before. Netbooks were simply an attempt to make cheap computers cheap. But that's hurting PC OEMs as much as anything as Apple can sell products at very high prices and margins but make a better product and I think PC OEMs are headed in this direction, especially with Windows 8. I think the hardware that you'll see with Windows 8 will be the best efforts that PC OEMs have ever put together. But it won't be the cheapest stuff, that'll still be pretty crappy.

Apple does prove however that people will pay higher prices for quality and quality is what PC OEMs need more than a ton of cheapest of the cheap crap.
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The only thing I give Jobs credit for was that at the height of the Netbook craze, recognized that tablets were better for giving people really what they wanted. A netbook is easier to carry around than a netbook, but you still need a flat space to use one. A table and chair is most typical. Some might use a lapdesk on a couch, but outside the home, you're not going to find a lapdesk. In fact, the small form factor makes it harder for some to just sit the netbook on your lap. I have to sit it on one thigh and that will block the exhaust vents.

Netbooks failed to delivered on the portability to make it worth compromising performance.

With a tablet, you don't need a desk. You can use it from a couch, the tiny table in some airport bar, etc. That's what most people were really looking for.

As for iPad being so much better. I doubt it. Tablets weren't new. And if you can spend your money on improving what it out there, you can look great. In fact, iPad 1was rushed out there to meet key marketing dates before someone else exploited the opportunity. Its why iPad 2 came out so quickly. Because they pushed something out to market that wasn't as good as it could be.
 
jpm100 said:
The only thing I give Jobs credit for was that at the height of the Netbook craze, recognized that tablets were better for giving people really what they wanted. A netbook is easier to carry around than a netbook, but you still need a flat space to use one. A table and chair is most typical. Some might use a lapdesk on a couch, but outside the home, you're not going to find a lapdesk. In fact, the small form factor makes it harder for some to just sit the netbook on your lap. I have to sit it on one thigh and that will block the exhaust vents.

Netbooks failed to delivered on the portability to make it worth compromising performance.

With a tablet, you don't need a desk. You can use it from a couch, the tiny table in some airport bar, etc. That's what most people were really looking for.

As for iPad being so much better. I doubt it. Tablets weren't new. And if you can spend your money on improving what it out there, you can look great. In fact, iPad 1was rushed out there to meet key marketing dates before someone else exploited the opportunity. Its why iPad 2 came out so quickly. Because they pushed something out to market that wasn't as good as it could be.
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Huh?

I use my netbook heaps without somewhere flat to put it. I use it in bed lying on my side, I'll carry it with one hand and type with the other while walking around, I'll lean back in the couch, raise my knees and fold the screen out to about 180 degrees and use it like that. You always need some way of supporting a device, whether that device is a netbook a tablet or just a good old pen and paper, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at there.

The biggest obstacle to me using my netbook anywhere and everywhere is that it exhausts out the bottom so while I do use it on my couch or on my bed, I never use it for long because I know it's blocking the vents.
 
jpm100 said:
The only thing I give Jobs credit for was that at the height of the Netbook craze, recognized that tablets were better for giving people really what they wanted. A netbook is easier to carry around than a netbook, but you still need a flat space to use one. A table and chair is most typical. Some might use a lapdesk on a couch, but outside the home, you're not going to find a lapdesk. In fact, the small form factor makes it harder for some to just sit the netbook on your lap. I have to sit it on one thigh and that will block the exhaust vents.

Netbooks failed to delivered on the portability to make it worth compromising performance.

With a tablet, you don't need a desk. You can use it from a couch, the tiny table in some airport bar, etc. That's what most people were really looking for.

As for iPad being so much better. I doubt it. Tablets weren't new. And if you can spend your money on improving what it out there, you can look great. In fact, iPad 1was rushed out there to meet key marketing dates before someone else exploited the opportunity. Its why iPad 2 came out so quickly. Because they pushed something out to market that wasn't as good as it could be.
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I don't agree with most of this, you make the case as to why I think hybrids should do well with Windows 8. Essentially the form factor does everything a tablet and a netbook can do. Yes, there are keyboard solutions for tablets and devices like the Asus Transformer but those don't truly convert a tablet into a laptop.

My first Windows 8 machine is going to be whatever good Ivy Bridge hybrid with a Wacom pen digitizer comes out first. Lots of rumors about these kinds of devices, I wouldn't be surprised if Toshiba has a hybrid Windows 8 product on the way.
 
Godmachine said:
Makes sense , most netbooks are garbage anyway. Great for email and basic level surfing but useless for anything else. The battery life was the biggest appeal for netbooks I think.
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That and the fact it easily fit on an airplane tray was why I bought mine. I got tired of traveling out of town every week and only having an iPod Classic video to keep me company. Even after installing an older SSD, upgrading to Win 7, adding more RAM, and swapping out for a better WiFi card it's still not very pleasant to use. Good news is I'm not going out of town every week anymore so the mine sits in the corner collecting dust.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't agree with most of this, you make the case as to why I think hybrids should do well with Windows 8. Essentially the form factor does everything a tablet and a netbook can do. Yes, there are keyboard solutions for tablets and devices like the Asus Transformer but those don't truly convert a tablet into a laptop.

My first Windows 8 machine is going to be whatever good Ivy Bridge hybrid with a Wacom pen digitizer comes out first. Lots of rumors about these kinds of devices, I wouldn't be surprised if Toshiba has a hybrid Windows 8 product on the way.
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My point should have added this, since it wasn't clear.

I bought a 11.6" netbook form factor with low end laptop grade processor/memory. If I had it to do all over again, I'd buy the low end laptop. It just didn't bring anything from its size in terms of convenience to make the smaller screen worth it.
 
jpm100 said:
My point should have added this, since it wasn't clear.

I bought a 11.6" netbook form factor with low end laptop grade processor/memory. If I had it to do all over again, I'd buy the low end laptop. It just didn't bring anything from its size in terms of convenience to make the smaller screen worth it.
Click to expand...

It's all relative though. I was always happy with my netbook purchase because I didn't see anything a larger low end laptop would bring to justify the extra weight and size. I never needed a high performing laptop because I have a high performing desktop.
 
Tudz said:
Huh?

I use my netbook heaps without somewhere flat to put it. I use it in bed lying on my side, I'll carry it with one hand and type with the other while walking around, I'll lean back in the couch, raise my knees and fold the screen out to about 180 degrees and use it like that. You always need some way of supporting a device, whether that device is a netbook a tablet or just a good old pen and paper, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at there.

The biggest obstacle to me using my netbook anywhere and everywhere is that it exhausts out the bottom so while I do use it on my couch or on my bed, I never use it for long because I know it's blocking the vents.
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Unfortunately you just agreed with me. The blocking vents thing prevents you from truly using it everywhere except for a few minutes. You can leave a tablet on the bed or couch indefinitely.

As for the knees thing. Sitting with my knees straight out, the centers of my thighs are further apart than netbooks. A netbook would actually start to slip down between my legs. I have to pull my knees together to support one. That isn't comfortable for any length of time. Maybe if I was a girl, it would be less of a problem...
 
jpm100 said:
My point should have added this, since it wasn't clear.

I bought a 11.6" netbook form factor with low end laptop grade processor/memory. If I had it to do all over again, I'd buy the low end laptop. It just didn't bring anything from its size in terms of convenience to make the smaller screen worth it.
Click to expand...

I mistyped, I actually DO AGREE with most of what you said earlier. And again, I think you made an excellent case for hybrids as they can bring the best of both worlds in terms of productivity and portability.
 
Tudz said:
It's all relative though. I was always happy with my netbook purchase because I didn't see anything a larger low end laptop would bring to justify the extra weight and size. I never needed a high performing laptop because I have a high performing desktop.
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Yeah, I never said it was high performance at all. relative to a typical netbook it is. But its comparable to a low end laptop in reality. My point is that it wasn't the processing power that was lacking. My dissatisfaction is entirely related to the size not being a significant plus in the end.
 
heatlesssun said:
I mistyped, I actually DO AGREE with most of what you said earlier. And again, I think you made an excellent case for hybrids as they can bring the best of both worlds in terms of productivity and portability.
Click to expand...

In the end, I think it will be a docking station with a full sized keyboard and full size monitor with plenty of USB ports that will be the future of tablets/PC convergence.
 
jpm100 said:
The only thing I give Jobs credit for was that at the height of the Netbook craze, recognized that tablets were better for giving people really what they wanted. A netbook is easier to carry around than a netbook, but you still need a flat space to use one. A table and chair is most typical. Some might use a lapdesk on a couch, but outside the home, you're not going to find a lapdesk. In fact, the small form factor makes it harder for some to just sit the netbook on your lap. I have to sit it on one thigh and that will block the exhaust vents.

Netbooks failed to delivered on the portability to make it worth compromising performance.

With a tablet, you don't need a desk. You can use it from a couch, the tiny table in some airport bar, etc. That's what most people were really looking for.

As for iPad being so much better. I doubt it. Tablets weren't new. And if you can spend your money on improving what it out there, you can look great. In fact, iPad 1was rushed out there to meet key marketing dates before someone else exploited the opportunity. Its why iPad 2 came out so quickly. Because they pushed something out to market that wasn't as good as it could be.
Click to expand...


Performance? Dude, the netbook i'm using now is atleast as powerful as the desktop i used to use for 3D rendering. It's more powerful than the PC is used when i started working!

Are you claiming that wordprocessors today use more resources than 3D Studio MAX???

We've long passed the point where we need to continiously upgrade to get our work applications to run decently. So much so that the lowest entry level PC you get now, is overkill for office work.

When i first got the netbook. I knew that i was getting an underpowered machine and was expecting to treat it as a desktop *accessory*. My desktop is more powerful and comfortable to use than any laptop, and i can sync my files with the netbook which is a *LOT* easier to carry than any of our laptops. I'm a programmer, and i've always wanted to be able to continue coding while commuting (Programming = Text editor 95% of the time) and the netbook was the chance for me to get a cheap laptop and do just that. And then move them to the desktops (either at work, or home) for the CPU intensive testing and debugging.

That is, up until i realized that the netbook was running all my desktop applications decently. Initializing an application was longer, but once it's loaded, it performs pretty much like a desktop. I had an extra monitor lying around (That white 15" in the pic). And then tried to see how often i'll need to switch back to the desktop when it can't handle what i'm doing.

It is now four years and three netbooks later and i'm doing all my work on the dual core netbook. Flash Development, Eclipse, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, mySQL server, etc. are done on the netbook. My files are shared over the network and my main rig is on an SSD with the same applications and settings, so it takes literally seconds to switch to the desktop any time the netbook gets bogged down. And that rarely happens.

I am now wondering... How much CPU do you actually need to do work? I still need to switch to the quad core occasionally for gaming or video editing. But word processing, modeling, photoediting, programming, web browsing, video playback, etc. The netbook can handle it. You're not gonna go blazing fast like on a desktop, but you're not going to spend much time staring at the 'wait' icon either.
 
jpm100 said:
Unfortunately you just agreed with me. The blocking vents thing prevents you from truly using it everywhere except for a few minutes. You can leave a tablet on the bed or couch indefinitely.
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Yeah but that has nothing to do with netbooks but rather poor cooling choice. Using that argument a netbook with proper side or rear ventilation would have taken the world by storm. I'd often just place a book under my netbook to ensure it was cooled when using it on the bed or couch for extended periods (you could quite happily use it for a while without that, it did have some side ventilation as well).
As for the knees thing. Sitting with my knees straight out, the centers of my thighs are further apart than netbooks. A netbook would actually start to slip down between my legs. I have to pull my knees together to support one. That isn't comfortable for any length of time. Maybe if I was a girl, it would be less of a problem...
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Is a tablet really that much more comfortable though? That's my point. Anything you use that you have to, ya know, "use" is going to need to be supported, whether it's a tablet or a netbook or a laptop or a pen and paper. None of them are terribly comfortable to use sitting on a chair with no desk, but at the same time the size and weight of a netbook mean you can use it just as good as anything else and the fact you can rest the base of it on/against something and rotate the screen would make it more adaptable to using in a variety of places.

I'm not denying it's uncomfortable to use a device away from a desk, I'm just not seeing this difference in usability between a tablet and a netbook that you talk about.
 
jpm100 said:
Unfortunately you just agreed with me. The blocking vents thing prevents you from truly using it everywhere except for a few minutes. You can leave a tablet on the bed or couch indefinitely.

As for the knees thing. Sitting with my knees straight out, the centers of my thighs are further apart than netbooks. A netbook would actually start to slip down between my legs. I have to pull my knees together to support one. That isn't comfortable for any length of time. Maybe if I was a girl, it would be less of a problem...
Click to expand...

Holding a tablet for multiple hours while trying to accomplish something gets uncomfortable too. There really isn't a good, egro-friendly solution. They're all not very great to use, but after owning a tablet and a netbook, I think the netbook has the tablet beaten down pretty well on the comfort side of things.
 
jpm100 said:
Yeah, I never said it was high performance at all. relative to a typical netbook it is. But its comparable to a low end laptop in reality. My point is that it wasn't the processing power that was lacking. My dissatisfaction is entirely related to the size not being a significant plus in the end.
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The size i can put up with for the sake of compatibility with my development tools. Extra monitors and keyboards are not in short supply. A netbook + a high end desktop rig. Is still cheaper than a mid range laptop.

An atom, is enough to run anything that's on your desktop right now. I have never been a fan of laptops, especially after owning more than a handful of them and seeing their limitations first hand. They're all too bulky to carry around everyday.

If you want me to give a direct impression between netbooks and tablets. I've had two 10" tablets and three netbooks in the last four years. Tablets are purely for media consumption only. It's nice for checking emails, but i actually go all the way to my desk to write replies rather than put up with the software keyboard.

At work, i usually arrive first. And end up waiting outside the door until the boss arrives with the keys to the office. While waiting i'd be sitting on the ground typing on the netbook with the same development tools we use for building game sites. When the office finally opens, i bring my work inside and copy my files right into my workstation.

My transformer still can't do that.
 
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