Why Netbooks Will Soon Cost $99 221
CWmike sends along a ComputerWorld piece which predicts that
"netbooks like the Asus Eee PC, the Dell Mini 9 and the HP 2133 Mini-Note will soon cost as little as $99. The catch? You'll need to commit to a two-year mobile broadband contract. The low cost will come courtesy of a subsidy identical to the one you already get with your cell phone. It's likely that HP is working with AT&T (they're reported to be talking), which announced a major strategic shift a couple of weeks ago that should result in AT&T stores selling nonphone gadgets that can take advantage of mobile broadband, including netbooks. What's more interesting is that low income and cheapskate buyers are starting to use iPhones as replacements or substitutes for netbook, notebook and even desktop PCs. The author's take: A very large number of people are increasingly looking to buy a single device — or, at least, subscribe to a single wireless account — for all their computing and communications needs, and at the lowest possible price."
"cheapskate buyers"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hardly call using an iPhone as a replacement or substitute for a net/note/lap/dog-book or desktop being a "cheapskate buyer".
Re:"cheapskate buyers"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually calling them incompetent buyer would be more accurate, but the parent article is still quite right.
Most people are impulse buyer and will pay anything if the "first byte" is not too painful.
You will see things like:
59$ down payment 19.9 for the three first month (and in small 29.9 for the super premium student value subscription or 59.9 for the standard and 99.9 for the business (the only one that is actually of any use to you) subscription...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Ummm...considering that Asus has done announced they will have a EEE priced at $200 [cnet.com] next year,why on earth would anyone get screwed with such a long term contract to save $100? Personally I'll wait and see what the $200 Asus looks like.
At $200 retail it becomes free with contract - which will no doubt be a selling point.
If it is a decent device (for me, that's a 10" screen, plenty of memory, 16GB SSD or fast HDD, bluetooth) and data service is reasonably priced I'd get one as a laptop replacement.
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A netbook is only really a laptop replacement, when the laptop is in the portable range and not spending most of it's life on a desk ala the 17" screen desknotes. What is happening is smart phones are being bound back to more portable size, the PDA sized phone and even the PDA itself are going to lose ground to the netbook. So compact smartphone, netbook and, desknote/desktop become the standard connected persons digital line up.
Likely the netbook will end up the most populus device in the western market
Re:"cheapskate buyers"? (Score:4, Informative)
Talk about outdated thinking, LMT in Latvia is offering ASUS EEEPC 1000 with a built-in 3G reciever for $2 + 2 year data contract. That offer is there for at least half a year, could be close to a full year now.
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Why would they get screwed ? Because that's what they've been doing forever. People also have a very distorted perception of the value of electronics. They sincerely believe they're getting a $400 phone or gadget for $200, when in reality the phone company is simply eating their profit margin on the sale.
If Asus can sell you an EEE for $299 today, that means it cost $120 to make. If they make a $199 model, building it cost less than $80. That's just the nature of the global distribution model, where mo
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This is great news for the people who will grab these netbooks after the original buyers tire of them or quit their contracts. I'll be watching Craigslist and flea markets.
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Because the iPhone is expensive? For a cell phone, sure it is. But most cell phones aren't handheld computers (yet).
With telecom in many developing countries, buyers skipped having a land line and went right for cell phones. Buyers in developed economies often realize they don't need a land line. I'm not one of them, but, in today's economy, if someone buys a cell phone and it's also a usable web browser, why pony up for a desktop, laptop, or even a netbook?
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Re:"cheapskate buyers"? (Score:4, Funny)
From the OP: ... that low income and cheapskate buyers are starting to use iPhones as replacements or substitutes for netbook, ....
An iPhone costs more than some existing netbooks, so these must be affluent imbeciles or ardent fashionistas (both groups being significant subsets of the iPhone demographic), rather than "cheapskates" or "low income". Of course, these are exactly the right target market for selling a netbook with a locked-in WLAN communication contract, preferably at an eye-watering overall profit level.
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Even in Los Angeles, its middle class. Median household income in City of Los Angeles is about $51k.
Better to just buy it outright. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Better to just buy it outright. (Score:5, Informative)
Wha...? You do realize that "wireless broadband" isn't the same thing as wi-fi, right?
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wifi doesn't count. Coverage is less than 0.1% of land area, no matter which provider you go with, and less than 1% of population.
Covering less than 50% of population is out of the question, and I'd avoid any service which didn't cover 50% of land area, perhaps even 75% of land area.
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50% of what land area? the entire earth?
if you live in a more progressive area chances are you already have some form of public WiFi access. if you're a college student and are mainly going to be using your netbook on a campus with an open WiFi network, then you're already going to have free wireless internet access whenever you want. even if you don't live in a progressive area, chances are the places where you'll use a netbook: the library, coffee shop, home, work, school, etc. will probably have wireless
depends on what you want it for (Score:2)
I personally don't spend most of my time roaming the entire earth, so the relevant figure is what proportion of my local urban area is covered by wifi. Now even that could use a lot of work, but I'd estimate offhand that I'm able to get into a free network in about 40% of locations I've tried it at.
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Since I work for a company which sells a Wireless broadband service I can confirm that WiFi is not "Wireless Broadband" just like Ethernet is not wired Broadband.
Wifi where it is available is a LAN. If you connect to Wifi at a coffee shop, travel 100 Meters then connect at a fast food joint, you are moving from one LAN to another. How those WiFi LANs connect to the internet is likely a Wireless or Wired Broadband service.
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I wonder why they say "soon". In my country they already do this, at at least two mobile phone operators. It seems like a rather logical step to me.
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Well, when I was living in the EU I thought you guys seemed to be a bit ahead of the US in some ways and behind in others when it came to telecom. It was hard to get what a USican would call good high speed wired service (no cable modems for example and I currently have FTTH/FiOS I couldn't get that in EU).
I think EU wireless services were more pervasive, better, and made a heck-of-a-lot more sense from a customer perspective.
So, yeah, mobile phone services in the US are pretty sad by comparison...
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It would be better just to buy it outright. With free wireless broadband being so easy to get, and the cost of these netbooks dropping, you are probably just better off buying it outright, and not being tied into a provider.
"Free" and "easy to get" is relative - try traveling around the US on a frequent basis and it becomes neither free nor easy to get.
If ATT could come up with a cheap way to get email and do light surfing / downloading then it becomes a worthwhile gadget for traveling; especially if the device is good enough to do Word and PowerPoint on the road.
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"Free" and "easy to get" is relative - try traveling around the US on a frequent basis and it becomes neither free nor easy to get.
Lets see... last time I checked there were about 5 unsecured wireless routers in range, and there were a lot more last time I went into a major city.... Its both free and easy to get.
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"Free" and "easy to get" is relative - try traveling around the US on a frequent basis and it becomes neither free nor easy to get.
Lets see... last time I checked there were about 5 unsecured wireless routers in range, and there were a lot more last time I went into a major city.... Its both free and easy to get.
Yes, and you have no idea whose router that is or what they are doing with your data stream; nor how long they will be up. Besides the security issue, if you are moving or inside a building may unsecured routers go away.
Not to mention "major city" leaves out a lot of the US.
Finally, leaching bandwidth is not free.
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Not all of use live in or around a "major city". My travel typically consists of the following:
Charleston, SC
Columbia, SC
Atlanta, GA
Occasionally I'll venture into Charlotte or Miami but not often.
My experience there is that unless you're in a hotel (where you're usually going to have to pay extra for it - unless it's a cheap hotel. seems the higher the price the more likely you are to have to pay for wifi), or in a coffee shop, then you're not getting a signal. Even then most of the hotels seem to have a
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Yeah, we've seen this scam before. They used to do it at BestBuy, etc.
Hello grandmothers out there! Get this awful Acer desktop for just $100!
All you have to do is sign up for 18 years of AOL at $25/mo... and a $500 early cancellation fee.
Welcome to the future - UK (Score:5, Informative)
In the UK (which is generally, but not always prefixed with the words "rip off") netbooks/cheap laptops have been available for free as part of contract mobile deals for quite a few months now via major retailers such as the Carphone Warehouse..
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They've been available as part of ADSL deals too, although currently only with AOL [aolbroadband.co.uk]
http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/types/broadband_free_laptop/ [top10-broadband.co.uk]
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In the netherlands you can get an Eee PC 901 for 49.95 euros plus 34.95 euros per month for 2 years. Or even for free with a 59.95 euros/month contract. translation of t-mobile page [google.com]
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It's just a special form of leasing and in the end it will always cost you more than buying the bundled stuff separately.
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It's HP[1] in disguise, but if you're happy with that then fine. A lot of people don't realise that the cost of the "free" phone is hidden in their monthly bill.
[1] As in rent-to-own/buying on tick, not the company Carly screwed up.
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And I thought you were talking about the brown sauce. :-)
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In the UK a typical deal is
Mobile broadband on its own - £15 per month
Mobile broadband with a "free" eeePC worth £200 - £35 per month for two years.
So you are paying £240 for the free laptop. That works out like a loan at 8.6% APR. Better than most store HP deals but still definitely not free.
Old news in the UK at least (Score:2)
In the UK, PC World, Carphone Warehouse etc. have all competing on mobile broadband deals for months, throwing in a netbook or laptop at the same time. Just like with mobile phones you're paying a high price for finance on a £150-400 device, plus a 12-24 months broadband / 3G contract.
Separately the phone networks are also competing much harder in the last year for broadband-only deals, and SIM-only deals for calls - those seem like better value if you know what you want.
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2. ??????WTF?????
3. Look like an idiot.
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This is old news everywhere. Schemes like this were tried in the United States several times in the late nineties/early 00's. They were all failures.
No, this obviously isn't the same at all. The schemes you described were to give people free or very cheap PCs in exchange for agreeing to be bombarded by advertising, using a variant of the "get the eyeballs first and then profit will somehow follow" dotcom-era mantra.
The one here is where you get a "free" PC if you agree to commit to a (paid) two year mobile broadband contract; very similar to existing deals with mobile phones and contracts. The phone isn't really free, it's effectively covered by the c
That's already the case... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.sfr.fr/mobile/internet-ultra-portable.jspe?sfrintid=HP_NA_MEA_2 [www.sfr.fr]
You can have an EEEPC for 99 euros + a USB key which allows to connect to the Internet using a 3G+ connection, which for a 2 years subscription costs you 30 euros/per month. Do the maths
You can have one for 1â already (Score:2)
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Playstation 3 80 GB
+ Asus EeePC 4GB
+ 2x Motorola F3
for 0 Euro.
It's bundled with two Vodafon 2-year contracts, respectively for 15,39 Euro monthly.
http://www.sparhandy.de/bundle-details.html?bundle=616&tarifekategorie=20188&gruppe=113&subgruppe=150&zanpid=1169641662356392960 [sparhandy.de]
That was one of the first links searching for 'handy (mobile-phone) bundles.' I don't think something like this is very serious. It will perhaps come with a bunch of sleazy clauses in smal
Ray Kurzweil (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I think that he also predicted that we would eventually also be marrying them at some point. Now I think we're just living together.
Chobits? (Score:2)
The most worrying part of this is that... (Score:2)
Now instead of speaking to "real users" when we build something for netbooks, we need to convince a couple of "telecom marketoids"...
Watch this space for "ringtones windows skins from outerspace for netbooks" at a low 9.99.
And then when you'll go to you favority watering hole you'll find out who the nerds are because their computers do not go "" when they get a new mail.
Lock-In (Score:2)
Step One: Integrate Card in a Specialized "Mobile Laptop"
Step Two: Offer Laptop for Free w/ Two Year Service Plan
Step Three: People might begin to choose a wireless broadband service over their home network.
Extra Step: Keep charging for "extra cards" if they want their home-based setups to use the service.
One device per contract is a deal-killer (Score:5, Interesting)
BInding a single device to a 2-year contract is nuts. Especially a device as limited as a cell phone or netbook.
The iphone, for example, is very cool, but I'm just not interested at $70/month. Yet I pay more than that for my tv/phone/internet connection at home. I'm OK with that because at home I have flexibility -- I can attach as many phones and computers as I want.
I'm sticking with my pay-as-you-go, featureless cell phone until there's an expensive contract that gives me a lot more flexibility.
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BInding a single device to a 2-year contract is nuts. Especially a device as limited as a cell phone or netbook.
The iphone, for example, is very cool, but I'm just not interested at $70/month. Yet I pay more than that for my tv/phone/internet connection at home. I'm OK with that because at home I have flexibility -- I can attach as many phones and computers as I want.
I'm sticking with my pay-as-you-go, featureless cell phone until there's an expensive contract that gives me a lot more flexibility.
Value depends on needs - my home phone is rarely used (and primarily a legacy line) Cell phones are the primary devices we use for personal and work calls; and pay as you go would be orders of magnitude more expensive and the monthly cost is very variable and unpredictable. Most don't offer data plans (well, ATT does but it's a bit convoluted to get it).
So, a contract is a good way to lock in a price and that's less expensive and more predictable. It's essentially a 2 year hedge on costs.
It all depends on
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Contract plans only make sense because the majority of people sign them for a cheap phone. If less people signed contracts, there is a good chance phone companies would work harder on customer retention, rather than acquisition, and prices would drop for non contract and pay as you go (and they are getting better anyway, Virgin Mobile offers unlimited voice for $80 a month with no contract, which is somewhat competitive/comparable with the $100 unlimited plans from the big carriers, except for data/messaging, which aren't all that expensive).
Contract plans only make sense because the majority of people sign them for a cheap phone. If less people signed contracts, there is a good chance phone companies would work harder on customer retention, rather than acquisition, and prices would drop for non contract and pay as you go (and they are getting better anyway, Virgin Mobile offers unlimited voice for $80 a month with no contract, which is somewhat competitive/comparable with the $100 unlimited plans from the big carriers, except for data/messaging, which aren't all that expensive).
Except that by not being able to spread out the cost of the phone over 12 or 24 months many people would not buy a phone. If there truly was interest in pay as you go you'd see a lot more uptake on those plans.
However, consumers find contracts a better value and so chose them. There are plenty non-contract alternatives at a wide range of prices. Overall, however they are not as popular as contract plans because consumers find more value in a contract with a subsidized phone. While VM offers a good deal
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I sort of think people prefer contracts because they are bad at thinking. But that is just me.
I think you think wrong. Predictable costs have value.
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Most of the contracts that people sign include wildly unpredictable costs in the event of an overage.
However, a little planing and watching minutes can pretty much alleviate overages.
We don't need to agree, but I really don't think that the cell phone market in the U.S. contains particularly savvy buyers (i.e., they don't have any idea what the providers actual costs are, they don't know how much usage they actually need, they don't look at how much that usage costs under different pricing models, etc).
On that we agree - most people buy shiny when it comes to phones.
Ahh convergence (Score:5, Interesting)
As a self-professed gadget guy I can say that I carry 3 devices with me always: cell phone, pocket PC and thumbdrive. Sometimes I also carry a Nano if I will be listening to music for a prolonged period (battery issues with the Pocket PC and the cell phone). Here in the states, the smartphones with touchscreens and web browsers and available 3rd party applications require you to sign up for a data contract, the cost of which I cannot justify. The pocket PC has a decent camera, a good music player, a host of games and applications, WiFi, a good size screen
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cell phone, pocket PC and thumbdrive. Sometimes I also carry a Nano
I carry an iPhone, with a few jailbroken apps, and Air Sharing (as a thumbdrive replacement), which seems to cover all the bases. Haven't found the screen size to be a limitation, save perhaps for reading books. The only area that it's really lacking in is the camera, which is pretty rubbish, but I think I'll always prefer a real camera for that.
My bet would be on phones (not necessarily the iPhone) as the next convergence device - when we have slightly more power, and ubiquitous wireless keyboards/screens
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A lot of people are saying that netbooks with become the portable convergence device of the future. I can only assume they have never actually seen a netbook in the flesh. They are small compared to a laptop, but they are huge compared to a PDA or cellphone. You wouldn't want to lug one around all day just t
The rise of real mobile computing and tech support (Score:2)
The only thing missing with the iPhone is a nice external keyboard to use when occasions arise on-the-go, where I might be at a table and have the ease of use of a keyboard for rapid typing.
Perhaps Netbooks will fill in this niche. Hell, throw in a few remote access clients and it could be a sysadmin's drea
News? (Score:2)
Or is this some US-specific backwardness, like paying for recieving calls? (no offense intended, but the US market really does seem to be 10 years behind the rest of the developed world, at least judging from slashdot-articles
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Paying for receiving calls is forwardness, not backwardness. As it is in Europe, providers can extort pretty much any rate they want on incoming calls, and the market doesn't punish them -- because it's the customers of other providers who pay. In Denmark it is typical that the inter-carrier rate is around 0.15EUR per minute, whereas in the US it's less than $0.01 per minute plus perhaps $0.10 for the customer on a really expensive plan. It also makes number portability between mobile and fixed networks pos
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*blink*
My wife and I used to be on different carriers. If she called me from cell to cell, yes, she had to pay more for that call (which is outgoing for her). Incoming, I paid exactly nothing at all. Inter-carrier rates for incoming calls are non-existent where I live and I know they don't exist in Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands. Maybe Danmark is special i
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Inter-carrier rates for incoming calls are non-existent where I live and I know they don't exist in Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands. Maybe Danmark is special in this case?
Nope. You're just uninformed. The carrier loses money when you call a different carrier. (Unless you're on a really crappy plan.)
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That doesn't matter to me as a customer.... You do realise that?
It should matter to you that a call can be produced for 0.03EUR/min and you're paying at least 0.10EUR/min for it. Twice that if you're calling from a land line. That's the cost of not having a competitive market.
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By "paying for incoming" calls you mean "paying more for an outgoing call because you call a different carrier".
The cost ends up at the consumer, no matter which way around you twist it. In the US, the person who has a choice in using a mobile or not pays for that choice.
I checked with my carrier and outgoing calls to any carrier (fixed and mobile) in my country are exactly the same price an outgoing to a cellphone on the same network.
Yes. You are paying the same price for something that costs vastly different amounts for the service provider. This leads to complete distortion of the market.
The best customer for a cell phone provider in Europe is the one who spends all day receiving calls from other carriers. The worst customer is the one who spends all day actually making calls.
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Or is this some US-specific backwardness, like paying for recieving calls? (no offense intended, but the US market really does seem to be 10 years behind the rest of the developed world, at least judging from slashdot-articles :-))
The problem with /. 's discussions of cell phone markets is they fail to look at the market in an objective fashion. The conclusion is often "X is bad / behind the times / worse than mine because it is different.
Yes we "pay" for receiving calls; but given we don't if they are from the same carrier (I would wager a lot of calls are within a household who probably has only 1 carrier) of occur in the evening or on weekends most people never see any impact on their bill. If you do a lot of peak calling you ca
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Being from the U.S. myself I don't see any reason to defend charging for incoming calls. My landline doesn't get charge for incoming calls. Neither should my cell phone. I don't mind if they charge enough for outgoing to make up the cost (I would guess they already do this anyway).
Unless you have a very limited plan incoming calls have little to no effect on your charges - unless for some reason you receive a lot of prime time calls from people not with your provider.
As for the cost, the marginal cost for the call is essentially zero ; so other than truncation fees (if they still exist) it really doesn't cost anything for the provider to connect you.
The worst offender of all is having to pay for incoming texts. I have never sent a text in my life, and I only receive a few a month, and those that I receive are generally accidents, or are from someone at work who doesn't realize that dialing my number and calling is cheaper, easier and less time-intensive than dialing my number and typing in a text message.
Block all text. Issue fixed.
Unlike you I am not hopeful for the election to change anything. I have not heard anything from either candidate about this issue, nor would I want the government to get involved. I simply want consumers to stop laying down and taking it, which is probably a shallow hope since they are so addicted to text messaging.
You missed the tag
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True. Yet, the logic behind this is equal to the logic that originated the "pay-for-reception" in the US. (Read my other comment [slashdot.org]) A caller, calling a cellphone has no way to know where the other person is. If I call my brother right now, he might be in Germany for all I know. Who gets to pay? Not me, since I didn't know and it would be unfair to me. So he gets to pay. That's the basic idea behind roaming.
/If/ your carriers would be state-based instead of country-based you would have exactly the same problem that we have in Europe.
This brings us back to "backwards".... In my country an unlimited plan like that is 30€/month. Sure, roaming isn't included in that, which limits it to my country but the same is true for the US... After all it still is one country and the networks in different states are owned by one and the same company.
While the US is one country in size and scope it matches the EU - we essentially get unlimited roaming across the same area and no extra cost for long distance.
Since our market is different our cell phone plans are different. That's the crux - our plans better fit our needs than yours would, so we have a large calling area for one price.
From another perspective - isn't the EU one Europe (I say somewhat TIC) so why can't there be one cell plan?
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As I said, it all makes sense within the historical context. One thing I want to add: the EU is nothing like the US. If anything in Europe is comparable to the US, it is... Germany! The Bunderländer are equivalent to your States. So, while indeed geographically, Europe is similar to the US, politically it is not. As such, in practice every country has its own operators. Sure, they are owned by one multi-national company, but the subsidiaries have to observe local laws (taxes, etc...) This simply is not true in the US, making things way simpler.
Well, given the wide array of local taxes and regulations the US market has many local issues as well.
As for similarities; I doubt each Bundeslander has it's own army or air force.
I don't think it's because the markets. I'm pretty sure that the US could function perfectly fine with the caller pays structure. To me this is entirely historical, so I don't buy your arguments.
But there is no reason to do so - the current system works fine and changing the billing structure would simply confuse people. As I said, with our minute structures incoming calls are really not an issue for most users.
After all, the EU could function perfectly fine with no roaming charges, flat rate pricing and caller / receive
If I Could... (Score:2)
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Frankly (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why I can't simply "dock" my 300MHz 64Mb RAM, 2Gb storage mobile phone into a cradle and use a normal keyboard, mouse and screen to edit documents, write emails, browse web etc.
Psion had fully featured word processors, spreadsheets and cardfile databases running on 16bit hardware a decade ago, the problem isn't the OS or hardware... All the current crop of smartphones are up to the job.
Re:Frankly (Score:5, Informative)
You can.
Nokia's N95 8GB comes with a TV-out cable in the box. Hook it up to a 42 inch plasma screen, pair a bluetooth keyboard with the phone and you're all set.
You can even play Quake on it.
Use the built in Webkit browser or install Opera.
It has full desktop-style office apps available. Out of the box it can read .doc and .ppt and a few others.
It has a media streamer (realplayer) so you can watch TV, listen to Internet radio, podcasts etc.
There's a mobile version of DivX which will play your "backups".
Want to go insane with yourbandwidth? Try the Bit Torrent client that's available - SymTorrent. Mind you, you're better off using the built in WiFi for that.
Better keep a charger nearby!
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If only (Score:5, Insightful)
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If mobile broadband were fast enough to watch TV online,
It is.
if the bandwidth caps were high enough to connect to my firm's remote server 8 hours a day
They are.
and watch 5 hours of TV shows online a week
That can be iffy, can you stay within 10GB?
and it was less than the $30 a month I pay for internet now
It's more than $30. Mobile broadband isn't going to win over very much of the fixed broadband market in the near term. There are lots of downsides to it, including cost and (often) latency. Still, it's wonderful to have in addition to fixed broadband.
Already happening in Asia (Score:3, Informative)
Several networks are already offering this kind of deal here in Taiwan. Some of them even giving them away for free if you take the unlimited 3G network plan combined with a 2 year contract. The unlimited 3G plan costs about 22USD at the current exchange rate which is pretty decent since you get a netbook worth close to 400 bucks retail price (they give away Asus EEE PC 901 and 1000H and such and not the cheap surf model)
Personally I think that it is a good deal.
Predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
1) MS-Windows only
2) Overpriced monthly service
3) Hardware hard-wired for only a single carrier
How wonderful, I can hardly wait.
Why don't we do this with cars next- "Get this wonderful car for only $8,000; just sign this $800 per month, 3 year contract for Exxon gas- and oh, by the way, it will only run on Exxon gas, and you are only allowed 20 gallons per month".
Many Real factors. (Score:2)
This seems a lot like the 1990s to me. Remember People PC. They in general did the same thing but with PC's and Dialup Internet. If you are going to sell people a laptop you realize that you will need to support the laptop not just your Internet connection. The reason why this works with cell phones is the fact that for the most part most of them are fairly locked down. While a PC is wide open and uncontrollable. Unless you get a $99 laptop and you cannot add or remove program except threw a safe channel
People with low to intermediate computing needs... (Score:5, Insightful)
... will indeed be able to get things done with a well-chosen netbook. The more intelligent among them (be their income low or relatively high) will prefer to buy their netbooks the traditional way, not as a part of a two-year service contract.
On the other hand, whoever expects to satisfy their computing needs with an iPhone or a similar device will end up dissatisfied, and doubly so when on a service contract that has to be paid for monthly from a low income.
why would i want two contracts? (Score:5, Interesting)
I cannot understand why anyone would want to pay the mobile companies twice.
I currently can use my mobile when appropriate but when I need something more I use bletooth to connect my eee to my phone to use it's connection. Yes this does mean paying more on my phone contract but not as much as 2 contracts would be from what I have seen on these plans already. (I'm in the UK they have been selling like this for quite while now)
Only thing that probably sucks is when it comes time to renew my contract and get a nice shiny new phone there will be no bolt on options and I will be forced to have two contracts to make the mobile companies more money.
This is not a good thing, the only people who would needa mobile broadband only option are people without a mobile. For the rest it should just be bluetooth or whatever to the mobile phone. Yes I realise the operators in the US try to discourage you from this or ban it on most plans, but that is just bollocks, if i can use the interent on my phone whats the difference if I can connect another device? NOTHING, that's what, it just does not help them rip you off.
Please replace the headline. (Score:2)
I think it should be "why we will get netbooks after paying 100Euro immediatly". Please avoid the word "cost". It implies somehow that you do not pay something later. At the current subsidiation rates for mobile devices by cross financing, for many devices the original "price" is not more than a token of goodwill.
If could make a single law regarding that it would be that the contract financing the mobile device should be something which is made separately from the contract for the mobile sata transfer. Some
Verizon (Score:2)
Celphone: $60/mo -- but you can only use its data functionality with crippled browser.
Data plan that allows you to attach a computer: $60/mo more on top of that.
Worse yet, Verizon until recently didn't keep theit users from using their "1x" data service, only asking for $60/mo to get access to faster EV-DO network. Now "1x" is blocked unless, of course, the user bypasses their retarded configuration that allows them to distinguish calls from the phone itself from calls made through the phone using USB or Bl
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I wouldn't be doing Verizon with this one.
Sprint. They offer their data plans separate and for a relatively reasonable rate with or without a phone contract attached. Moreover, it seems that while they don't have as much penetration of total voice coverage that Verizon has arranged, they have more high-speed coverage than Verizon seems to have (For example... While my EVDO phone has full-on coverage, GPS, etc. here in the DFW area, on a trip to OKC to acquire some new horses at auction for the horse farm
The Failed Business Models of the 1990s (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a big difference between the subscription plan you buy with your mobile phone and subscription plans like this: with the mobile phone, the thing the customer is actually interested in isn't the physical phone, but the ability to make phone calls on the network, so paying the subscription fee makes sense for the consumer; the cost of the phone, which is usually indexed to the customer's desire for features/prestige/etc. is incidental to the actual thing being sold: access to the wireless network. With all these plans to sell full-fledged computers by tacking their price onto some other service, the problem is that the other service is usually incidental to customer's actual interest: the computer. If the customer doesn't really want the thing you are trying to sell, then you will have a tough time keeping them in the subscription plan.
This was tried by a number of companies in the late nineties, and all failed miserably. Apparently there are a bunch of young MBAs out there who didn't learn the lesson of the iOpener.
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But in 2008 most people use a computer mainly for web browsing and email, so for most people a computer is useless without an internet connection.
Shouldn't netbooks cost $99 Anyway? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Speaking of which, why the seriously crap resolutions?
It's because of people who want XP on these machines. Microsoft does not want XP on machines with resolutions bigger than 1024x768, with more than a single core 1.6GHz CPU, and 1GB of RAM.
So unless the OEMs are going to grow some balls and sell machines with dual-core atoms and 1280x768 equipped with Linux, you're going to have a technically inferior machine with XP or the better one with choice of Linux or Vista. (see: HP Mininote. 1280x768, runs Vista and SUSE.)
These are also LED-backlit; I don't know if
here in Finland ... (Score:2)
This has been the happening for a year now or something, longer time anyways.
Nothing upfront, laptop + wireless broadband (GPRS i think) 15-29euros a month, 2 year contract.
So, $59/month x 24 plus $100 = $1500 (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like not so much a bargain. But that's just me.
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Depends on if you were going to get data access or not. If you're getting both, then $59/mo for what you'd have gotten ANYHOW means that you got a laptop with access for $100. If you're not doing that, then it's not a good deal, no.
data access doesn't cost that much, though (Score:2)
Adding an unlimited-internet data plan for a Treo costs $15/mo with Sprint.
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So, $59/month x 24 plus $100 = $1500
Seems like not so much a bargain. But that's just me.
You're getting wireless internet the whole time. For some, it's worth it.
$289 (Score:2)
Today's Woot has a new Acer net book for $289 with no subsidy. The downside - smallish three cell battery.
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Laptops will cost $99 for a much simpler reason. (Score:2, Insightful)
Bah! Why commit to a mobile broadband contract? (Score:3, Interesting)
$100 Linux based MIPS laptops [linuxdevices.com] are much better but don't have the CPU power of the others. That is the $100 laptop I might buy.
Linux version $99,Windows version $99+2 year contr (Score:2)
Linux version $99, Windows version $99 plus 2 year contract.
I'm ok if they add the 2 year lease on the Window version.
Windows users like leasing software, paying every year, hoping that this version fixes some of the annoyances of the last one.
Why exactly does binary only software cost money, when software that comes with source code is free?
the computing dark ages (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a problem here, in that the mobile phone network operators have a very different philosophy than computer manufacturers.
Network operators are used to sell a service, and they see the device just as a necesary evil in order to sell the service. The effect of this is that most devices they sell tend to be locked-down, not transparent to the user, and stripped off of unwanted functionality (my PDA clamshell came with lots of software, for web browsing, for email, for many things, even many things I didn't really need, except the one thing I really needed most which I had to install myself and was one of the reasons for wanting a PDA in the first place: a python interpreter that I could use to hack around while waiting in the queue in the bank).
Yet computers in the epic 1980s era always included at least a programming language as a standard offering. Literally, even users who didn't know how to program had a programming language sitting in their ROM, floppies, or hard disk, because computer manufacturers (in that era, at least) were used to sell a kind of machine which is not very useful without a programming language built-in: the general programmable computer. Many machines from that era even booted up directly into a programming environment which was inseparable from the operating system.
After the heroic epoch of 1980s, PC clones dominated the market and Microsoft (but Apple also has to bear responsibility here) popularised a different philosophy: that the user is not supposed to know how to program and that they should be made to learn how to program in order to use a computer. Computer manufacturers started packaging computers with the idea that what they sell is not a computer per se but rather just a platform to run applications.
But even in the applications era it was easy to get into programming because, after all, the programming language could be installed as an application and used like any ordinary program. Therefore, the amateur tinkering (hacking, and I mean nothing bad by this word, it is the crackers who do bad things) spirit did not die, because those who felt the urge were able to find and set up a programming environment quickly.
At some point a great threat to the applications era appeared while the media and entertainment industry started moving into computing with technologies like the DVD: it was the combination of digital restrictions management (DRM) and treacherous computing (some people say "trusted", but one has to wonder how you can trust a computer that refuses to obey you). The philosophy of selling computers was threatened to turn from "selling application platforms" (after it was already shifted from the 1980s "selling general programmable computers") to the evil "selling platforms for specific/allowed applications only". This threat is still alive, but unfortunately now a second threat is appearing.
The second threat to the "selling platforms for applications" is, again, twofold: part of the threat comes from the rise of cloud computing, and another part from the entry of mobile telephony network operators into computing with such arrangements as bundling a netbook with a service plan. These developments threaten to change the philosophy of selling computers to "selling platforms for services". Computers will not be seen as application platforms anymore, not even as platforms for "trusted" applications. If this threat materialises, computers will be seen simply as devices needed to access a service, whether this service is mobile telephony, weather reports, stock market news, cloud-based word processing, video delivery, or email. Users in the future will forget the notion of application, just as most of them have forgot the notion of general programmable computer now. They will only know computers as windows (pun intented) that give them access to a service.
There is really no reason to believe that netbooks sold bundled with service plans by mobile phone network companies will resemble the netbooks we now know. Now they
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, but have you considered you can leave your work in the "cloud" and only downloaded it when you need it?
Sure you will fill a 30GB HD in a hurry if you keep everything you download, but you don't. You just download it again when you needed it again.
At least, that's what I would do.
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Yeah, if you trust the "cloud".
Personally I kind of like to have control over my work, instead of trusting total strangers to look after it and not lose it or accidentally give it to other people. But maybe I'm just old-fashioned?
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Not if you stream HD videos all day long, without storing them. Yeah, I know that it's stupid, but then again, so is YouTube. People will do it anyway. :(
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I work in computers at Best Buy(I know, i know we suck) and we have been pushing the mobile broadband with the eeePCs for a while. They have been a big hit with those who want full computing capabilities(ex. truck drivers) as oppose to something just like an iPhone. This will be a great partnership if it works out. I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner.
First of all, BB fits a nice niche - I don't find you suck even if some sales people are somewhat clueless (like the ones that keep insisting a less than full frame dSLR somehow magically turns a 200mm lens into the equivalent reach of a 320mm)at least most are helpful.
That convergence is the next area of growth - once screens become decent enough to do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations for an extended period I think they will become mobile devices of choice for may road warriors. By usability
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That seems like a job for nVidia's Tegra, if they'll just allow Linux developpement already.
I'd love to see it sold as a cell phone. I'd buy it up on the spot. If it was like the demo kit, but with a slide-out keyboard (or a slide-down keypad like the LG Shine). Bluetooth and Wifi, and maybe DisplayPort out (I would prefer DVI-I or analog, without silly restrictions, but whatever) so you could hook it up to your monitor/TV and have a bluetooth keyboard/mouse so that you could use it as a full computer when