Expect To See Sub-$250 Laptops in 2H 2014
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Laptops
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Notebooks
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Intel
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Microsoft
Last response: in News comments
exfileme
July 25, 2014 9:47:57 AM
Here comes the wave of value-priced Windows 8.1 laptops.
Expect To See Sub-$250 Laptops in 2H 2014 : Read more
Expect To See Sub-$250 Laptops in 2H 2014 : Read more
More about : expect 250 laptops 2014
TheMentalist
July 25, 2014 10:26:47 AM
joaompp
July 25, 2014 10:47:26 AM
It is great to see a little resurgence of cheap laptops again. Everyone knocked the old Netbook design (sometimes for good reason) but it really was a great thing that I wish more manufacturers took more seriously. I picked up an Acer win7 basic netbook back in the day and pimped it out with a 500GB HDD (came with 80GB) and 2GB of ram (came with 512MB lol) and that thing was awesome once you got all of the crap-ware off of it. I use to plug it into the output of mixing boards and record audio for local plays and shows and use that feed for the master audio for video editing later. The great thing about it was that you could set it to record, close the lid, and hide it behind the audio equipment so that you knew for sure that nobody was going to mess with it; and with the screen and wifi off it would be able to record 6-7 hours of content on a single charge so I didn't need to bring my power cord either. Granted if the wifi and screen were on then you would be lucky to get 2-3 hours on a charge which was problematic for other things like long school classes and whatnot, but it was still a great little $280 laptop with ~$150 in upgrades.
Today we have much better displays, much better processors, much faster drives or embedded memory storage, and could make a much better and cheaper netbook... but the only real competitor in the space is the ASUS T100. And don't get me wrong, for what it is, it is really great, but it would be nice to see something with that same form factor, screen, processor, etc. which could hold more than 2GB of RAM. 2GB of ram is simply not enough for a modern x86 machine if you have documents and browsers open to do school work. That same little box with double the memory however would be a great little system that would last a good long time.
Today we have much better displays, much better processors, much faster drives or embedded memory storage, and could make a much better and cheaper netbook... but the only real competitor in the space is the ASUS T100. And don't get me wrong, for what it is, it is really great, but it would be nice to see something with that same form factor, screen, processor, etc. which could hold more than 2GB of RAM. 2GB of ram is simply not enough for a modern x86 machine if you have documents and browsers open to do school work. That same little box with double the memory however would be a great little system that would last a good long time.
Score
3
NeatOman
July 25, 2014 11:45:38 AM
canadianvice
July 25, 2014 12:09:51 PM
Low cost laptops like these are built to fail. I always tell people when I'm at work to buy something more expensive or get the warranty, because I've seen that these inevitably fail within the span of 2 or 3 years (always after the MF warranty though).
Oh well, a lot of them have learned the hard way that not every salesperson is just lying scum.
Oh well, a lot of them have learned the hard way that not every salesperson is just lying scum.
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0
iceTorch
July 25, 2014 12:41:34 PM
Gabriel Fonseca
July 25, 2014 1:45:02 PM
Oh yay, 10" screen coupled with a Atom CPU... reminds me of the horrid "netbooks" that were made a few years ago that were so bad that companies stopped making them and then started selling again and just calling them "ultrabooks" Sadly I have seen the Haswell Celeron do daily tasks twice as fast as even the quad core atom chips.. Ouch!
Score
-4
thundervore
July 25, 2014 2:10:28 PM
el_Fenix7
July 25, 2014 3:54:45 PM
el_Fenix7 said:
I would rather they go with an amd apu, the extra graphics helps incredibly on these cheap laptops. You won't be doing much gaming on a $250 laptop with only 1-2GB RAM and a 16GB SSD even if you had an A10 in there... not enough RAM to run any but the most trivial games remotely well and no storage to install them..
Score
-3
el_Fenix7
July 25, 2014 4:14:21 PM
InvalidError said:
el_Fenix7 said:
I would rather they go with an amd apu, the extra graphics helps incredibly on these cheap laptops. You won't be doing much gaming on a $250 laptop with only 1-2GB RAM and a 16GB SSD even if you had an A10 in there... not enough RAM to run any but the most trivial games remotely well and no storage to install them..
Not even just for gaming, but for general usage. Also there are more than just triple A titles out there.
and the requirements allow for a 500gb hardrive with the ssd. Score
4
canadianvice
July 25, 2014 4:17:02 PM
Gabriel Fonseca said:
Oh yay, 10" screen coupled with a Atom CPU... reminds me of the horrid "netbooks" that were made a few years ago that were so bad that companies stopped making them and then started selling again and just calling them "ultrabooks" Sadly I have seen the Haswell Celeron do daily tasks twice as fast as even the quad core atom chips.. Ouch!Ultrabook was a trademarked term that Intel would only allow the use of if minimum standards were met. Ultrabooks most certainly were not netbooks. They had to have horsepower and parts as part of Intel's minimum requirements that placed them in fairly good straits.
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0
Bananaman8910
July 26, 2014 4:36:00 AM
Bananaman8910 said:
Looks like Microsoft is taking Chromebooks more seriously. With Intel and Microsoft's repeated failures at making significant headway in phone and tablet form factors, they had to put out something different like going back to basics to see if there is still a market for low-cost compact laptops.
For maybe 90% of the stuff I do on my N7, the lack of a physical keyboard, even as nothing more than a more ergonomic grip or self-support base for long reading sessions, bothers me more than performance.
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0
applegetsmelaid
July 26, 2014 2:34:17 PM
nero912
July 26, 2014 5:20:27 PM
damianrobertjones
July 27, 2014 10:55:42 AM
Quote:
5 hour battery life is alright but IM spoiled by the 8 hour battery life on chromebooks.Oh god the new fancy buzz word of Chromebook! There's windows laptops that have long battery life as well (usually with FAR more ram and storage)
Quote:
Looks like Microsoft is taking Chromebooks more seriously. What does this have to do with Microsoft? This is really more to do with the OEMs realising that they REALLY can sell crap to consumers (again - Just like all those Chromebooks and $150 tablets)
Wake up people... Try not to throw your cash away on crap.
Score
0
K-beam
July 28, 2014 6:17:35 AM
Quote:
Low cost laptops like these are built to fail. I always tell people when I'm at work to buy something more expensive or get the warranty, because I've seen that these inevitably fail within the span of 2 or 3 years (always after the MF warranty though).Oh well, a lot of them have learned the hard way that not every salesperson is just lying scum.
Uh, my 9" eeePC from 2008 is still working with WinXP. My son dropped it on the tile floor and the hinges are now quite loose, but the thing just keeps on going
Just 1 month ago I took it along for a PPT presentation and with the screen off it was only 50% at the end of the day (with the upgraded 8-cell battery).
The thing just won't die
Score
0
The thing many people fail to understand when it comes to reliability is that semiconductors hardly ever fail (first) in a properly designed product and the engineering + parts cost of going from crappy electronic design to something that seemingly just won't die is often less than a dollar on a $200+ item.
Score
0
canadianvice
July 28, 2014 11:12:36 AM
K-beam said:
Quote:
Low cost laptops like these are built to fail. I always tell people when I'm at work to buy something more expensive or get the warranty, because I've seen that these inevitably fail within the span of 2 or 3 years (always after the MF warranty though).Oh well, a lot of them have learned the hard way that not every salesperson is just lying scum.
Uh, my 9" eeePC from 2008 is still working with WinXP. My son dropped it on the tile floor and the hinges are now quite loose, but the thing just keeps on going
Just 1 month ago I took it along for a PPT presentation and with the screen off it was only 50% at the end of the day (with the upgraded 8-cell battery).
The thing just won't die
Lucky you. The years I've worked in retail however suggest a larger trend - the number of people who get screwed by cheapie systems is large enough that people should be concerned. Plus, that's a netbook. Those were designed to work and be cheaper - it's not so easy with a properly sized laptop that isn't running half a gig of RAM.
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0
assasin32
July 31, 2014 10:38:51 AM
Quote:
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5 hour battery life is alright but IM spoiled by the 8 hour battery life on chromebooks.Oh god the new fancy buzz word of Chromebook! There's windows laptops that have long battery life as well (usually with FAR more ram and storage)
Quote:
Looks like Microsoft is taking Chromebooks more seriously. What does this have to do with Microsoft? This is really more to do with the OEMs realising that they REALLY can sell crap to consumers (again - Just like all those Chromebooks and $150 tablets)
Wake up people... Try not to throw your cash away on crap.
Can't think of any window laptops that can match a chromebook in real world performance for the price when you combine batter life in the picture if you use your laptop for basic things like web browsing and typing up papers. Fact is windows is far more resource intensive than chrome os and that added hardware costs money where as chrome os will run very snappy on minimal hardware.
Personally I don't consider Chromebook a fancy buzzword as it serves a useful purpose. It helps tell the distinction that this particular laptop runs Chrome OS, not Windows so don't expect your windows software to run on it.
Some OEM's have been selling crap, others have not. The Samsung Series 3 Chromebook for example is a very solid laptop for money and in real world use is far better than it meager specs lets you believe. I know because I own one and use it quite extensively. It has been one of Amazons top sellers since release for a reason. And my real world battery life on that with bluetooth off, doing web browsing, youtube, writing papers, etc is over 7 hours without messing with the screen brightness.
Score
0
canadianvice
July 31, 2014 11:52:02 AM
assasin32 said:
Quote:
Quote:
5 hour battery life is alright but IM spoiled by the 8 hour battery life on chromebooks.Oh god the new fancy buzz word of Chromebook! There's windows laptops that have long battery life as well (usually with FAR more ram and storage)
Quote:
Looks like Microsoft is taking Chromebooks more seriously. What does this have to do with Microsoft? This is really more to do with the OEMs realising that they REALLY can sell crap to consumers (again - Just like all those Chromebooks and $150 tablets)
Wake up people... Try not to throw your cash away on crap.
Can't think of any window laptops that can match a chromebook in real world performance for the price when you combine batter life in the picture if you use your laptop for basic things like web browsing and typing up papers. Fact is windows is far more resource intensive than chrome os and that added hardware costs money where as chrome os will run very snappy on minimal hardware.
Personally I don't consider Chromebook a fancy buzzword as it serves a useful purpose. It helps tell the distinction that this particular laptop runs Chrome OS, not Windows so don't expect your windows software to run on it.
Some OEM's have been selling crap, others have not. The Samsung Series 3 Chromebook for example is a very solid laptop for money and in real world use is far better than it meager specs lets you believe. I know because I own one and use it quite extensively. It has been one of Amazons top sellers since release for a reason. And my real world battery life on that with bluetooth off, doing web browsing, youtube, writing papers, etc is over 7 hours without messing with the screen brightness.
You would think it does, wouldn't you?
That said, real world experience dictates that Chromebook means nothing to consumers, because we see them get returned all the time for not being able to run Windows software.
Evidently, seeing that it runs ChromeOS is not enough for the intellectual heavyweight that is the modern consumer to figure out it doesn't do the whole "Windows" thing.
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0
!