Comments on: Freescale-powered netbooks could hit $200 this year

By: Dual Sim Mobile Phones

Dual Sim Mobile Phones — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:27:30 +0000

great post

By: Dual Sim mobile phones

Dual Sim mobile phones — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:27:00 +0000

great post

By: Style by Shez

Style by Shez — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 06:35:59 +0000

Nice to know the netbooks will come in even prices.

By: nicfer

nicfer — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:10:43 +0000

Wouldn't also Windows Mobile work on such devices? Sure, it'll suck since it's not designed for 9″ screens but until M$ decides to port win7 to the ARM architecture, that would be a hackish alternative, and even less legal than putting Mac OSX in x86 devices. Or what about Symbian? Dunno if they are interesed in 'netbooks'. But until now, the better option would be ARM Linux distros, like Debian's version for that architecture or Ubuntu's one. Here is where free software becomes more reliable, a small change in hardware can result in too many changes on software, where free operating systems could implement it and publish the changes quickly, while propietary OSes modifications are locked at the vendor's decission. That's why I like free software.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:52:19 +0000

Freescale eh? Will it also fail on the leap year like the Zunes?

By: Brad Linder

Brad Linder — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:31:00 +0000

Whoops, you’re completely right about the first point. I’ll update the
post on that front. I blame this oversight on the fact that I’m still
getting over a cold that hit me pretty hard this weekend.

As for the more likely to return bit — I’m trying not to make any
real value judgements on this one. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s
true, but I do concede that the stats we’ve seen so far have been
gathered in a somewhat less than scientific method.

By: John Morris

John Morris — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:30:18 +0000

Could ya stop repeating that FUD about the higher return rate? ASUS reports no difference in return rates. Their Linux install works. That is the lesson here, ship a machine with a load of SUSE that doesn't even support the webcam and yea, people will be bringing them back, get the preload right and they won't.

So if these ARM machines have a good working load, reasonable build quality and a really low price they should move nicely, especially in the current economic climate.

By: BoloMKXXVIII

BoloMKXXVIII — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:25:43 +0000

Brad, I take issue with a couple of your points.

1. "will likely be limited to running Linux." We have seen Windows CE based netbooks already and heard rumors of Android netbooks.

2. " more likely to return computers running Linux" Xandros and Linpus are not top tier distros and they were not implemented well for netbooks. Suse is a top tier distro but it wasn't implemented well either. If we get something like Ubuntu netbook remix installed by an OEM and all the hardware/software works properly I think the return numbers will drop considerably.

By: Mikez

Mikez — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:31:58 +0000

We might be able to say that in 2009 (2010…?): “Price Tag Rules”
A sorry thing to hear on a tech-oriented site.

My reasoning:
In a serious, economic down-turn;
Furniture, Clothing and Consumer Electronics take some of the biggest hits.

The “Convenience Netbook” thread is still accumulating a respectable
number of views – So maybe 2009 is the year of the “Cheap and Useful”.