Flash in the pan

By Rob Fahey Published 1 August, 2009

The excitement around netbooks needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Published as part of our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz' widely-read weekly newsletter, the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial is a weekly dissection of one of the issues weighing on the minds of the people at the top of the games business. It appears on Eurogamer after it goes out to GI.biz newsletter subscribers.

One of the developments in computer hardware which has caused most excitement among game publishers in recent years is the arrival of "netbooks" - a freshly rebadged corner of the market which focuses on small, light laptop style computers, primarily designed for carrying out online tasks through a browser rather than running offline applications.

This segment is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, netbooks are cheap - the most expensive netbooks are priced at around the same range as the cheapest laptops. They are extremely portable, weighing very little and taking up little room in a bag. All of them are wi-fi enabled and many have a 3G data card built in, making them into highly connected devices. The dream of netbook designers is clear - this is, in their minds, the final step away from "a computer in each household", finally delivering "a computer for each person".

For game publishers, giddy with excitement at the explosion in casual and non-core gaming which we've seen in recent years, it's not hard to see why that's a tantalising prospect. If everyone is carrying around a netbook, everyone is potentially a gamer.

Moreover, the arrival of netbooks is heavily reliant on a further technological advance - web applications, which run in any standards-compliant browser rather than relying on a specific system architecture or operating system. This promises to make the diverse range of netbooks - which run on a variety of hardware platforms, and use operating systems including Windows XP, Linux and Google's forthcoming Chrome OS - into a single coherent target platform for developers.

Web applications are more suited to productivity and media than to videogames - but as countless successful web games have shown, a combination of modern HTML and Flash techniques can deliver fantastic experiences in a browser. Meanwhile, on the horizon, technologies such as the recently unveiled Gaikai streaming service could open up the potential of playing full-scale 3D videogames on a low-powered device, albeit at reduced visual fidelity.

Faced with such opportunity, it's no surprise to hear enthusiastic talk about the forthcoming netbook revolution from the upper echelons of the publishing world. This isn't restricted to games, either - in recent weeks I've also heard people from the print publishing world opine that netbooks will leapfrog e-paper devices such as Amazon's Kindle, while movie streaming services are regarding the platform with interest.

There is, however, a fairly significant fly in the ointment - or, to pick a more relevant animal metaphor, an elephant on the table. There's something nobody wants to talk about when the question of netbooks' shining future is raised, and it's this - right now, the user experience offered by netbooks is pretty terrible, and perhaps as a result, consumers are obviously much less enthused about the concept than the hardware industry is.

Netbooks are cheap and small, yes - but they are also extremely cheaply built, with even the most expensive and prestigious netbook devices suffering from flimsy, plastic components. The small size robs the netbook of the advantage which its low-powered chips should confer, forcing the battery life down to the point where it's no better than a normal laptop - and often actually worse. Meanwhile, undersized keyboards, small, low-quality screens and poor performance for media playback or complex script-driven websites conspire to create devices whose usability is nothing short of awful.

Some of those problems may be solved with time. OLED display technology is presently much too expensive to put in cheap netbooks, but when its price falls, it will offer better screens that need less power. Chipset technology improves apace, and even cheap netbook CPUs will eventually be able to handle HD video content without choking. Even the build quality will improve, although this may be at the expense of pricing.

Other problems with netbooks are inherent and may never be solved. Input is never going to be as good as a laptop, since keyboards and trackpads will always be smaller and less comfortable on a netbook. Connectivity - be it USB ports, external monitor connections or optical drives for DVDs or Blu-ray discs - will always suffer on a netbook. Meanwhile, the actual functionality of the netbook as a communication device will always be trumped by modern smartphones, which benefit from an external screen, a pocketable form factor and an always-on 3G connection.

Herein lies the basic flaw with the dream of the netbook as the "one computer per person" device that will unify the market - that device already exists. In fact, two of those devices already exist - the laptop and the smartphone. In recent years, laptops have grown smaller, lighter, more connected - while smartphones have become more powerful, sprouted bigger screens and better input interfaces, and started talking to the Internet. Netbooks find themselves bridging an increasingly narrow gap in the middle, neither as portable and connected as a smartphone, nor as powerful and useful as a laptop.

From a gaming perspective, it's clear that smartphones are an important emerging platform for game experiences. Laptops, meanwhile, are the standard platform for existing casual game experiences, as well as being popular devices for many more traditional games - especially MMOGs.

Publishers are still working to nail down the most successful strategy to address both of those platforms, and if anything, the buzz around netbooks has been a distraction from the important business of making sure that the growing number of people gaming on their laptops are catered for. It's all very well to talk about a netbook revolution in the future, but right now, how many games are released with a control system optimised for a trackpad or graphics designed for a 13" or 15" screen?

I simply find it hard to believe that in between those two important, rapidly growing markets, there's a sufficiently large gap in which a whole new platform can emerge - let alone become dominant.

Fascinating experiments by Intel and Microsoft with the UMPC platform, a hardware and software solution aimed at bridging the gap between laptops and phones, have fizzled into nothingness - largely killed off by the realisation that smartphones would inherit that market all by themselves. Netbooks, hampered by design constraints and cursed with cheap build quality and weak build quality, their market squeezed from both sides by rapidly improving phones and laptops, seem like an unlikely candidate to inherit the earth.

For more views on the industry and to keep up to date with news relevant to the games business, read GamesIndustry.biz. You can sign up to the newsletter and receive the GamesIndustry.biz Editorial directly each Thursday afternoon.

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Comments (58) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • xandoodle #1 3 years ago

    I still maintain that netbooks are pointless for alot of people.

    I'm not exactly rushing to use Lightroom/Photoshop on those tiny screens. Or even Word for that matter..

  • IneptPercy #2 3 years ago

    All it surprises me is that Apple didn't start the netbook thing, they are really good at looks over function.

    I have a few mates with netbooks and they are only good for surfing the internet and even that is pushing it at times, dare I say a lot of people have bought them and said never again.

  • VMerken #3 3 years ago

    It's all aboot money and needs, baby. Right now, netbooks are excellent for user profiles which correspond to a lot of the population. Until something like MacBook Air becomes affordable, a sizeable set of people *will* look out for a cheap, light-weight computer with a screen larger than a smartphone (thus no need to squint/scroll while reading documents), but smaller than a laptop (as man's brain often associates "smaller" with "lighter", which is desired here). Also, man's brain has been conditioned to associate "cheap" with "low end/crap components", so netbooks having lesser components is perceived as acceptable.

    These factors lead to a purchase. And that's what manufacturers want - your money. Doesn't matter if you aren't satisfied afterwards and never want to buy one again... you bought that first one, didn't you?

    Edit: -4. The logic eludes me.
    Edited by 3 at 01/08/09 @ 23:40

  • tnomad #4 3 years ago

    @Bloodkult I don't think he said they aren't selling. I think he said they're a bag of shite and people aren't going to enjoy playing games on them. Which I think is a fair point. Everyone I know who's bought a netbook has soon found it gathering dust.

  • Shinji #5 3 years ago

    @Bloodkult - There's no doubt that the netbook market has picked up in the past 12 months, not least because of the amount of promotion behind it - but it's still only a fraction of the size of the laptop market, and I think it's very telling that Intel this week was bemoaning the fact that its Atom chips aren't meeting order expectations compared to more traditional laptop CPUs.

    I maintain that it's a flash in the pan, but for that to be the case, you do need a flash - and the figures you quoted are just that, I believe. The initial excitement which drove those sales is already being replaced by disillusionment with just how poor the user experience on netbooks actually is.

  • Irien #6 3 years ago

    Industry research (cough, splutter, I know) suggests customer satisfaction rates with netbooks at around 50-60%, which would certainly add water to the "never again" line.

    The big problem is marketting (as usual). These things are advertised as cheap laptops/computers, but are in fact glorified toys. Don't get me wrong, I'm working on one right now for a customer, and I know he'll be happy cos he's gone in with his eyes open (he wants a tiny machine to run one specific app all the time).

    Just this week, one of my customers almost bought a Dell Mini 10 for his child for uni (at the child's request). Neither of them knew it didn't have a DVD drive, nor that the Atom 1.6 wasn't as fast as a Pentium/C2D 1.6, nor that it'd be hopeless for media stuff. I can only imagine the experience the general public has with this!

    So, yep, the netbook seems to be a bit like the Wii (ohhh, contraversial!) in that they sell like hotcakes to consumers who probably aren't clued up enough, and may well not be using them a year from now.

  • Optimaximal #7 3 years ago

    I wouldn't go as far as calling all netbooks 'cheap'... The higher end models such as the Samsung NC10 & Sony's upcoming true VAIO entry are much better put together (but ofc they sold, until recently, in the higher end of the market). Yes, the keyboards are a tad cramped and functionality is reduced, but anyone who buys one for more than just browsing the net on the move is deluded.

    That said, my fianceé is happily using the NC10 I bought her for minor Photoshop work - coupled with a wireless BT mouse, it's tiny screen is fine for touching up photos and other minor things. When she wants to do occasional larger-scale illustration work, she plugs in my spare 17" monitor and a USB hub w. Printer, Keyboard & Mouse attached... Bingo, a hyper-budget workstation!

    Yes, it's nowhere near as fast as, say, my C2D desktop machine (or even the first-gen Core 2 laptop from work), but she's happy to go and make a cup of tea whilst the more CPU intensive filters run and the 2GB of RAM installed in it keeps it plugging along at a nice pace with multiple files open. Of course she wants a MacBook/Pro 13", but such is the way of the world we can't afford one and she also doesn't want a 15/17-inch laptop.

    Don't count the Netbook out - they're currently hamstrung by Microsoft's XP licensing restrictions but once Windows 7 arrives and opens things up a bit and the NVidia ION platform is allowed to spread its legs a bit, they'll start competing a bit more.
    Edited by 1 at 01/08/09 @ 12:22

  • Moonbender #8 3 years ago

    Odd article. Most of the objective criticism of netbooks is limited to a single paragraph: "Netbooks are cheap and small, yes - but they are also extremely cheaply built, with even the most expensive and prestigious netbook devices suffering from flimsy, plastic components. The small size robs the netbook of the advantage which its low-powered chips should confer, forcing the battery life down to the point where it's no better than a normal laptop - and often actually worse. Meanwhile, undersized keyboards, small, low-quality screens and poor performance for media playback or complex script-driven websites conspire to create devices whose usability is nothing short of awful. "

    Netbooks are rather cheaply built, but so are most notebooks, particularly entry- and mid-level ones. Compared to all previous notebooks I have had, my Samsung netbook is extremely solid. And my s/o's Inspiron 1525 does not have better build quality either.

    Battery life depends on the battery size. You can get very lightweight (1kg) netbooks which will run for maybe 3 to 4h -- still pretty good -- or "heavyweight" netbooks (1.6kg) which will run for about 9 hours. For comparison, the 2kg MacBook Pro 2009, heralded for its good battery, runs for 7h according to Apple.

    Undersized keyboards are simply down to the size, which is an obvious tradeoff -- I don't mind the keyboards of the 10" devices, though I didn't like the smaller ones. There are 12" netbooks for those who can't stand typing on small keyboards, but obviously the mobility suffers. SD media playback works fine, though I'm sure netbooks will struggle with HD content -- but since they lack a BD, there isn't a lot of HD content anyway, unless you're talking pirated stuff; besides, why run 1080p video on a screen with half the resolution.

    If never thought of a netbook as a one computer per person device -- mostly because moving to a (single) tiny notebook screen is unthinkable. It's very much a second computer. It's a cheap & cheerful notebook for mobile use. If you add GPS and 3G, you suddenly have a very interesting proposition. And if my netbook fell down a table and broke, I'd be annoyed. If that happened to a MacBook Pro, I'd have to kill myself. I agree that smartphones are an interesting alternative to netbooks. But complaining about the netbooks' input while heralding smartphones with their horrible input seems disingenious: I can and have programmed on a netbook, doing the same on a smartphone would be excruciating, and the same goes for writing a paper or taking lecture notes beyond a few scribblings.

  • THFourteen #9 3 years ago

    Disagree with this article.... I've got an expensive self-built desktop that i use for the latest games, but for browsing on the sofa / away from home, my netbook (asus n10j) is quality.

    Its got all my music on there, a couple of weeks worth of videos, and some decent games - FM09, Civ4, WoW, Monkey Island SE - all playable thanks to the nvidia card.

    i'm perfectly happy touchtyping with the keyboard, and supplemented the whole thing with a 20 quid logitech wireless nano mouse.

    honestly i dont see what the problem is, it doesnt even seem cheaply built to me?

  • DaemonSpawn #10 3 years ago

    @richardtock
    "Most laptops in pc world have a 32 inch screen"
    Are you insane? My DESKtop's main dysplay is 24"! Where have you seen 32" laptop?!

    I mostly agree with this article - netbooks are painfully slow, their screens are awful and small while controls are horrible. I don't really see the benefits of x86 architecture for such a small devices, because most programs are not designed for 7-10" displays and so underpowered hardware anyway. MIDs are way to go for those who want x86 in small form-factor - these are expensive, but they are for professionals so that's ok. For us normal folks communicator or PMP like PlayStation Portable or upcoming Creative's Zii Egg are the best solution - these devices are portable, powerful enough for video on 3.5-4.2" displays (or even 1080p output on Zii Egg) and they work long enough from batteries. And they are cheaper than most netbooks. And they support games too.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #11 3 years ago

    "The small size robs the netbook of the advantage which its low-powered chips should confer, forcing the battery life down to the point where it's no better than a normal laptop - and often actually worse."

    This is nonsense. The WORST netbooks manage 2.5 to 3 hours, which is still twice what you get from a typical low-end laptop. (Many struggle to get to 90 minutes, and that's just web browsing.) Newer netbooks like the Samsung NC10 and N110 get 8-9 hours, which is pretty phenomenal for a device with a backlit 10" screen.

    Netbooks aren't games machines, though. You CAN play games on a camera, or a pre-iPhone non-touchscreen iPod, but you'd be out of your mind to buy any of those things with gaming as a primary function. I've never seen their gaming capability even mentioned in advertising, and I don't think anyone who isn't a dribbling mentalist has ever claimed that they were going to be the future of gaming.

  • GreyBeard #12 3 years ago

    I got an NC10 earlier this year and its been a godsend frankly.

    I don't play games on it, but then again I have a PSP and a DS for playing games on the go. Where it shines is as a media player, and as a vehicle for running productivity software like Word - both of which benefit hugely from the 10" screen and battery life that is yet to fail me even on the longest journey.

  • Erinan #13 3 years ago

    The paragraph re: battery life doesn't make sense - at all. Recent netbooks can run for up to 10 hours and, yes, I'm sure of it as my Asus 1005-HA does manage that easily.

    And the comment about the keyboard size doesn't make much sense either - just how many keys do you need to play a game??

    Edit- plus, it does everything I ask for. Internet on the fly is damn practical, working offline on Office documents works perfectly, I ripped some of the series I bought recently (haven't bought an external DVD drive, no use for one), all my music and photos are on it as well and it weighs something like 1.5kg. And old games downloaded off Steam work fine as well.

    Sorry Rob, I don't get the article.
    Edited by 1 at 01/08/09 @ 14:14

  • Cylinder #14 3 years ago

    I've been using my MSI Wind (2GB, 300GB HD, XP) for almost a year and it's certainly not slow. With Spotify, Firefox (10+ tabs), Steam, anti-virus, firewall and uTorrent running there's no slow down. I can even launch GTA Vice City with all that in the background and it runs fine.

    With the Atom oc by 8% 720p H.264 video plays smoothly too.

    The only negatives I see are poor HD flash performance from websites, and slow Photoshop performance. But then, if you buy a netbook, you're not getting it to replace your graphics/gaming desktop are you?

  • ben---neb #15 3 years ago

    Well I have a netbook, Samsung NC10, £300. Runs like a dream, I can't use normal sized laptops now, too unwieldly. It also managed to run Plants vs Zoombies fine. ;)

  • i_saw_dasein #16 3 years ago

    I really like my netbook. I run to and from school and work which is a fair distance and while my netbook fits nicely in a backpack without weighing me down I can't imagine doing that with a full size laptop, and the fact that I have a SSD means I don't have to worry (as much) about shaking it around a bunch. It plays media very well and I've had no problems running any web apps that I can remember. I'm running Ubuntu Netbook edition though, so perhaps some of the "poor performance" is rooted in running more system intensive OS?

    I dunno, anyone buying a netbook for gaming is pretty deluded imo.

  • mkreku #17 3 years ago

    I'm waiting for the Ion platform to arrive, then I'll jump on the netbook bandwagon too. Ion will allow you to play HD movies (via HDMI out) and even games.

    http://en.wik ipedia.org/wiki/NVIDIA_Ion

  • gammonbanter #18 3 years ago

    Mobiles phones are the way forward I feel, are far as portable computing goes! Unless you have a specific need!

    A friend of mine who is a programmer and commutes for 3 hours a day, swears by his lil Asus. That makes sense, carrying around a netbook in case you want to send an email or play a few minutes of a game doesn't!

  • Retroid #19 3 years ago

    I've got a netbook (Asus eeepc 900) and it's chuffing great for most things I want on the go; it means I have a choice of full web browsers anywhere I go, and lots of older games / emulators / freeware stuff not only runs bloody well on it but looks great on this screen!

    It couldn't be my 'main' PC if I was a PC gamer, or if I wanted to watch HD video on it, but I have my 360 and (TLOD'd) PS3 for playing HD video in many forms. Frankly my 'main' PC hardly gets used any more because this is so much more convenient.

    YMMV, as always.

  • JammyB #20 3 years ago

    I use my AAO pretty much every day for web, e-mail, messaging, some light programming sessions, watching iPlayer + other media and astronomy. I've got a few games on there like Worms Armageddon, Fallout 2, World of Goo, X-Com etc and all run very well. Very pleased, especially since the AAO is one of the cheapest out there at £200. This article just seems bizarre - battery life, USB, external monitor, build quality - has the author ever used one? Optical drives - please, I plugged a DVD drive in via USB (yes, standard on all netbooks! Amazing!) to install XP and rip some ISOs and have plugged it back in since. If I was a casual PC user I could happily use it exclusively (along with an external keyboard, mouse and monitor).

    The only people burned on netbooks are imbeciles who didn't bother to think about what they're buying, and didn't realise that these things won't run Crysis. Great, I feel no sadness seeing idiots like that divorced from their money.

  • SniperZoz #21 3 years ago

    ERM - this article would only make sense (marginally) if it were a year old!? My sister uses a Samsung NC10, which IMO has decent build quality (for it's price-point) and a silly battery life .. she let me use it on a trip and i spent 1 hour on 3g/hsdpa before a flight, 3 whole hours watching various movies, got home ran windows update and all (easliy another other hour) ... and after all that it still had some 50% battery ... now i don't know - but that seems like way better than any laptop i've used!

    Sure it's not a powerhouse - but that's missing the point really. It can do what no mobilephone/pda can, and that's run a full pc operating system on a 10/12" sceeen for a good deal of hours (7 from my experience). With the arrival of Intel's new ATOM later this year and Nvida's ION platform I'm sure it will be able to run more stuff faster - hopefully w/o sacrifiing on running time too much!

    Article - FAIL!

  • shake_z #22 3 years ago

    i use my aspire one for gaming and media, it's great. like that other guy said there's no point watching HD video with such a low resolution, SD videos all play fine and a 10 inch screen is big enough when you've got it on your lap. i usually plug it into the tv anyway

    obviously it can't play many 3d games but i just play with snes emulators and web games, which work fine 95% of the time. you do get a few more errors with web applications than you'd accept on a normal laptop but it doesn't really matter when you're getting all the benefits of such a small computer. i don't even have another computer anymore, this is my main machine and i never ever find myself thinking "i wish it could do this"

    and as for being a big gaming platform, it's inevitable once enough people have them. saying smartphones are better is ridiculous, that is another big gaming platform for the future but it's not a competing market... they're never going to be good enough to be used as a main web browsing machine simply because the keypads and screens are so small
    Edited by 1 at 01/08/09 @ 18:08

  • wonton #23 3 years ago

    The problem with this article is that its arguing that many people are considering the netbook as some sort of shakeup of the game/entertainment industry.

    But the netbook has very clear limitations, as it should, because it holds a niche. But its a niche which people want, thats why its sold so well.

    imho EG are blowing the netbook's ambitions way out of proportion.
    Edited by 1 at 01/08/09 @ 17:57

  • thesombrerokid #24 3 years ago

    you miss the point of netbooks, they aren't to bridge the gap between laptops and smartphones ,they are suposed to take over the laptop market (as smartphones have for mobile phones), laptops have never fullfilled thier supposed role as a portable PC being to heavy and to much of an enegry drain to perform acceptably, netbooks are small enough to be carried around easily and comfortably and have 10 hour battery lifes, the netbook market is the laptop market especailly once thier old chipset architecture is replaced with more up to date components.

  • YourMessageHere #25 3 years ago

    What an annoying article. Speaking as someone who out of necessity has spent the last 11 months exclusively using an Asus Eee701 (the 630Mhz Atom, 512Mb RAM, 4gb SSD, 7" 800x480 screen model that practically defined the netbook concept), I can say that this article is full of inaccuracies.

    netbooks are cheap - not really. They were at the start of their existence; I got my Eee when it first came out for just over £200. Manufacturers decided, however, that such popularity could command a higher price, and started forcing more powerful hardware on the consumers. Now as their specifications improve, and older models such as mine are no longer sold, the price brackets of netbooks at both ends continue to creep higher. Now one can find a full-size lowish-spec laptop that outperforms the best netbooks for £250-£300 with some luck, while the high-end netbooks push £400.

    For game publishers, giddy with excitement at the explosion in casual and non-core gaming which we've seen in recent years, it's not hard to see why that's a tantalising prospect - yes it is. I see nothing whatsoever that indicates any game publishers have any interest in selling games to netbook owners . I mean, yes, they want to sell Peggle and Bejewelled etc etc, I mean serious games, that gamers play, not casual-focused stuff. I played old games of much greater technical sophistication on much less capable hardware, yet Screamer, a racing game I bought from GOG.com, will not run on here because it uses DOSbox, while it ran happily on a 60MHz Pentium in its youth. Experimentally, I bullied Steam into letting me play through Halflife on this PC; framerates were dreadful, and I had to bully it, because 800x480 is not a supported resolution. Developers rely completely on creating games for high-end hardware, so it's obvious that netbooks are not a prime market for them.

    extremely cheaply built, with even the most expensive and prestigious netbook devices suffering from flimsy, plastic components - small size and light weight results in a certain degree of delicateness, especially in highly miniaturised and complex electronics like this, and does not equate to cheap build quality at all. This is inevitable, and pretty obvious; if consumers in general insist on treating other precision engineered machines with as little respect and sense as they treat mobile phones, they have no right whatsoever to complain about build quality. I can't speak for other makes and models, but without doing any more than taking reasonable care of it, I've had no problems and no breakages of any kind with my Eee701 since I got it in November 2007.


    The small size robs the netbook of the advantage which its low-powered chips should confer, forcing the battery life down to the point where it's no better than a normal laptop - and often actually worse - the occurence of anything like this is because of the fundamental misunderstanding of netbooks by manufacturers. They are supposed to be low-end, cheap hardware, yet since the creation of the concept, they have swiftly gained larger and larger screens, more and more powerful CPUs, bigger rotary HDDs in place of SSD, all of which are to blame for the increased power drain. The small size is nothing to do with it. This Eee701 will give me between 2-4 hours of battery life, which all things considered is perfectly adequate for most things, and is the size of 2 DVD cases stacked. And as others have said, battery performance has improved drastically since this machine was new.

    Meanwhile, undersized keyboards, small, low-quality screens and poor performance for media playback or complex script-driven websites conspire to create devices whose usability is nothing short of awful - Wait, what? I hear people moan and bitch endlessly about the keyboards on netbooks; if they want small, they get small. I have applied myself and adapted to the keyboard (I touch-typed all this without any problem), just as anyone has to with any new hardware. My screen is perfectly adequate in quality, and since I have a VGA port I run a 1280x960 monitor as well. I orginally bought this machine specifically for portable media playback, and have hit a problem with said playback exactly once in the 15 months I've been using it (and @ above commenter having trouble with a Dell Mini 10 - bullshit, you weren't trying, I can watch HD res videos on this thing, so a later model with a processor more than twice as fast is limited only by media codecs and software) . And as for blaming the hardware for problems with script-heavy websites - that's like hitting a plate with a hammer and complaining that the china wasn't strong enough. No-one likes that sort of overdone rubbish on a website except marketing executives. Flash ads on EG itself were at one time responsible for 100% CPU loads on my former PC, a much heavier duty desktop that ran Bioshock and Stalker.

    Input is never going to be as good as a laptop...Connectivity...will always suffer on a netbook - the author seems to be thinking about consoles more than he is about PCs. Flexibility is the point of a PC; input is only a problem if you stick to the built-in stuff. There are literally thousands of different input peripherals out there, many dirt cheap. USB hubs and optical drives are also far from bank-breaking. My Eee has a VGA port, three USB ports and a SMC slot, which I find entirely sufficient for mobile use, and at home I hook it up to a monitor, wired ethernet and a USB hub attached to a mouse and USB DVD and HDD drives, all of which (barring the £45 USB DVDRW drive) I possessed already.

    One computer per person - Netbooks are not the same as the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project.
    There are some similarities, but netbooks were never meant to be any more than a mobile second PC for existing PC owners, or very light PC users who only use a PC out of necessity.


    laptops have grown smaller, lighter, more connected...how many games are released with a control system optimised for a trackpad or graphics designed for a 13" or 15" screen - a 13" screen is too big for a PC to class as a netbook. More to the point is the resolution; the physical size is not really an issue. And I'm totally unaware of any game that takes trackpads into consideration. Yet all laptops are designed with trackpads; the point is, this is not a netbook-specific problem. Netbooks are simply small, low-spec laptops, and talk of developers "concentrating on Netbooks" is hiding behind a daft pigeon-holing piece of terminology and only serves to cloud the real issue, which is that lower-spec PCs of all configurations are being left out of the games industry by nearly everyone except the casual market.

    I simply find it hard to believe that in between those two important, rapidly growing markets, there's a sufficiently large gap in which a whole new platform can emerge - let alone become dominant - So do I, but no-one with any sense will a) consider Netbooks a new platform, because there is no concievable way you can argue that they are, or b) try to claim they will become dominant, because they were never intended to.

  • Dr_Wadd #26 3 years ago

    If people buy a Netbook expecting it to play the latest and greatest games they are just fooling themselves (or they've encountered a bad salesperson, which is always highly likely). But, if you`re willing to not push them beyond their limits they are perfectly fine. I've yet to really get started on it, but a little while back I bought the first Fallout from GoG and that runs perfectly well, and just because it is an old game it doesn`t mean it is going to be a second-rate gaming experience.

    I`m more of a console gamer than a PC gamer, but if I want to play a relatively recent PC game I`m fine that it doesn`t work on the netbook, I`ll run it on my main PC. But the netbook does have one advantage when it comes to playing older games, it is much more convenient for connecting temporarily to the television.

  • SwedBear #27 3 years ago

    I've yet seen any ads or push to promote the idea that Netbooks are for gaming so I'm not sure what this article actually is talking about?

    I had a eeePC900 and now a eeePC 1000H and both have been very nice for what they were designed. I brought my eeePC 1000H to a conference in Madrid and it was a brilliant machine. I could work in Open Office (and while I prefer a larger keyboard I think the eeePC1000H for example has a perfectly adequat keyboard) and even do some Dreamweaver work over VPn for work. During the flight to and from Madrid (from/to Sweden) I watched several episodes of Supernatural that I had ripped and Is till had a lot of battery time left when I got home.

    The reason there is a lot of people that are not satisfied with Netbooks is because a lot of people, just like you apparently, haven't figured out what they are for. They aren't desktop replacements. They are for surfing and other stuff that you do not need a super CPU/GPU for or a huge screen for (when I'm home I usually hook it up to a large screen though).

    As for build quality - that's nonsense. My eeepc is very well built and I see no real difference to any "proper" notebooks I've had.

    Yes - netbooks aren't for hard-core gaming but that shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out.

  • Kaprikawn #28 3 years ago

    I'm holding out on getting a netbook at the minute because I don't have a need for an x86 machine. I'm waiting for the ARM based ones (preferably Cortex A9). Once they come out we'll have power and battery life. Ok, they'll only be for people who can tolerate Linux, but I'm one of those people.

    Like others I found this article to be an unnecessary attack on netbooks, they're not supposed to be gaming machines. But I think we'll see promising stuff coming out in the future when the machines not tied to Windows come out. Platforms such as Android and Google's OS look like they could have legs.

  • butler` #29 3 years ago

    Curious article idd.

    I've read it twice and I'm still failing to see the point.

  • skillian #30 3 years ago

    I started writing this comment to address some of the stranger arguments made in this article but frankly, there are so many that I don't think it's worth it.

    I'll just sum up most of the issues I had with the piece by saying you seem to have missed the point of a netbook and so the whole basis of the article was flawed from the start. It reads like the disappointment of someone who doesn't know know much about computers and got taken in by an over-enthusiastic Dixons salesman.
    Edited by 1 at 01/08/09 @ 20:08

  • White_Westie #31 3 years ago

    To be honest I cannot see netbooks being a flash in the pan... Perhaps you saw mobiles as just 'a fad' in the old days?!

    Seriously though, I am looking forward to getting my netbook (as I am sure many others are). I am holding out for the netbook with windows 7 and touch screen.... thats right ... its like having a bigger iphone that I can tap away at in bed at night with the windows interface i love........

    This way I can surf the NET.......... sat next to the mrs, and not have to worry about being in another room...

    Or I can remote dial in to work and done some stuff on the work pc.... via the Net book...

    probably a 8 - 10" TOUCH screen would be nice.....

  • chaywa #32 3 years ago

    My NC10 can run Half Life, Deus Ex and GTAIII with bountiful mods at my disposal. For a portable device that is also perfect for taking lecture notes and follow up research at university throughout the day I really can't fault it in that respect.

    Bluetooth mouse ftw

  • sickpuppysoftware #33 3 years ago

    My netbook loves Fallout 1 & 2

  • DUFFKING #34 3 years ago

    Haven't used my desktop PC much since I got my eeePC. This thing is perfect for me really, much better than lugging around a huge laptop like a few people did in 6th form last year. Not being able to play games on it doesn't bother me at all, I can still play stuff like Quake 3, UT, Half Life, C&C, RCT and ScummVM fine :)

  • max66695 #35 3 years ago

    Wow, how wrong can one article be. lol. Not read any of you guys comments but I imagine many of you are on netbooks. I know I am. My desktop is basically a server now whose monitor barely ever gets switched on.

  • Waffleaber #36 3 years ago

    Bought an Acer Aspire One from asda for £150 with Linux on it, it's a piece of crap for running games but absolutely brilliant for internet browsing and any office work I have to do.

    It also keeps my housemates off my gaming PC which makes it priceless.

  • Grayvern #37 3 years ago

    A netbook with windows XP and a wireless mouse is great for legacy pc games. Planescape torment is great for train journeys.

    Also makes a good alternative to really expenxive photo storage machines. Ive got a EEPC with the typical 1.6ghz processor and from my sony a700 (with a sandisk extreme 3 cf card in it) connected via usb from camera to netbook it took approx 4 mins to transfer 3.6gbs of photos. Which imo makes it perfectly usable for end of the day photo dumping, while on a trip etc.

    Photoshop CS4 opens in about 30secs to 1min and an 18.7mb raw file displayed in the converter in about 10seconds and loaded up to standard photoshop in the same time. Sharpening also didnt take that long.

    Edited by 2 at 02/08/09 @ 18:43

  • Sunyavadin #38 3 years ago

    These things truly are the crappest little turds on the market.

    Utterly useless. They're like Carphones, or what ipods would be without Apple's PR juggernaut behind them - namely the least functional, overpriced devices available which nobody would have use or desire for.

  • clockworkzombie #39 3 years ago

    My iPod touch is what I use for this purpose. I already have a MacBook but I was going to pick up something smaller to throw in a bag when travelling/ visiting friends as the Macbook is a nuisance to tote around all day etc. After I purchased the touch I no longer need the netbook.

    The touch is smaller, lighter, easy to charge. The touch is quite useful in everyday use as it has a dictionary, thesaurus, Quickoffice, email, web browsing and of course a multitude of games. If I could get one with a 6" or 7" screen I would be very happy.

  • Raya #40 3 years ago

    Doh - EG again mentions Flash and talks about 3d as if it's possible in the future. What about Showckwave 3D! That's ancient but will run 3D games in a browser on a netbook. What about Unity 3D? What about Blender... Wake up EG

    VMerken - yes Mac book air is by far a better option, if you can afford one. Totally gorgeous. Glad I got one. Recommended :-)

  • Dillinger #41 3 years ago

    completely rubbish article. its reads like the writer somehow resents netbooks for some odd, petty reason. I have one of the first (EEE 701) and it gets used more than my primary PC - lounging around (inbetween looking after kids). And despite the small screen, it doesnt feel particularly flimsy or cheap. Neither does my mother's Aspire One. yes, i could get a better spec laptop, but why bother? For browsing, and occasional DOSBOX use, its fantastic. I really cant understand the point of this.

  • 3william56 #42 3 years ago

    Sorry Rob, but that's a right load of old tech snob b*ll*x you're spouting.

    I've got an Eeeeeeeeeeeee 1000H, and it's great. Built solidly, nice screen, much better to net surf / edit photos / watch video / email than any SmartiPhone will ever be, at the expense of needing a small bag. 7 hour battery, more storage space than a phone. Not my primary computer (nor are they intended to be) or gaming rig, but for portability (net down the coffee shop or email on the sofa), or travel (wifi net abroad, photo and holiday vid watching and processing, vids on the plane) it's perfect. Who uses CDs/DVDs now anyway, except to install - and a cheap USB optical drive sorts that (or wifi to main computer).

    Not going to be firing up Crysis any time soon, but so what? No HD - doesn't matter on a 10" screen - you'd need a magnifying glass to see the detail. A collection of smaller casual games from MAME to Peggle/PopCap are perfect for plane/train rides or airport waits.

    Like the smartiphone market - any publisher who ignores the netbook market is a fool (especially as the netbook market also happens to be the non geek non serial upgrader 5 year old PC/lappy brigade, of which there's a hell of a lot more to sell to than fifty core gazillion Ghz nitrogen cooled gaming rigs).

  • sopoca #43 3 years ago

    Whoever wrote this article is, to say the least, what I call – irreformable. Someone who is viewing the current situation with an old thinking and an old subconscious sentiment. The netbook story is simple - take my experience for example. I wanted a laptop that's light, small and can run on battery for an average of 8 hours. Of course there were many of them on the market - thinkpad x61 being the best of them. Do you know - knucklehead - what is its price? or was?..No?..You probably don't. So I love netbooks, and please do BS me about "performance" - 99.9999% of you don't run adobe photoshop or any other boring stuff on your PERSONAL computers. All we want is to get online, surf a little bit, browse through some photos and occasionally write something. So don't BS me about "performance", cause I, and most of the users also- just don't give a shit. NOBODY watches movies on computers anymore..even if you have 20'' display, like some madness-looking notebooks have – it’s still far worse that 40'' hdtv. Nobody plays games on a computer either..we've got consoles for that. Period. Oh, I'm sorry..there's is Crisys...OK...I'll give you that, though personally I can perfectly do without it, as long as I have my x360 around. As far as WOW (world of warcraft) goes for example – it runs PERFECTLY on my netbook. So let's put our dicks back where they belong. Netbooks soon will be ONLY personal computers out there, apart from desktop machines, that we all use at work. Especially with the new TVs that are able to stream video directly online and our consoles beating the crap out of PC games business. Also, some serious errors (technical) in the article - about how input is worse on the netbook than on 'regular' laptop - what a bunch of bull - I'll take any notebook in terms of 'input comfort' with my toshiba nb200, or the new sony W. What's also important when I bought one (nb200), I didn't feel like ass invaded by the hardware manufacturers, that were trying to sell me a NETBOOK (more powerful though) for 5 times the price (vide thinkpad x61) and didn't even bother of giving me a choice whether I wanted the 'extra' power or not. So don't spread BS about the netbook market and embrace it.

  • robg #44 3 years ago

    The ludicrous rants above aside, this article seems pretty misinformed. I have a PC upstairs, and I want to go on the internet downstairs sometimes. £200 device that lets me check wikipedia, google, facebook, email, etc etc? Bargain.

    If you have a friend who bought one without checking it had a DVD drive, then he should've done his research. Might want to give him a ring about that power drill he bought; it's absolutely no use for ladling soup and I think that'd make the basis of a good article.

  • penhalion #45 3 years ago

    Oh dear. It makes you wonder if these articles are made purely to rub people the wrong way. Netbooks are set to become stronger in the next few years. With the advent of the dual core atom chips and the better display technology out there, the netbook is fast becoming the standard for travelling computers.

    Now the largest laptop I will cary about with me is a 13 inch macbook pro. If Apple create a 10 inch macbook with edge to edge screen, then even my 13 inch system would feel too big.

    Netbooks are here to stay and with the rise of the casual gamer, they are only set to gain more and more market share. Eventually all you'll need is a netbook and maybe a small docking station at home for the desk.

  • Farzlepot #46 3 years ago

    As great as netbooks are for travelling internet use (although, I prefer my mobile for that as it fits in my pocket - who takes a netbook to the pub?!), I don't understand why people buy them purely for home use. Extended typing sessions on a keyboard the size most netbooks are packing would render your hands quivering wrecks after a while. Use a desktop for home use, or a traditional laptop if you're concerned about space. Save your median nerves, people!

  • penhalion #47 3 years ago

    @Farzlepot

    Er I think Netbooks are more for the coffee shop generation than the beer and pretzels club. :)

  • skillian #48 3 years ago

    @Farzlepot

    My mum has a netbook for home use, but just plugs a normal keyboard and mouse in when it's at the desk.

  • infoxicated #49 3 years ago

    I dunno, I take my Eee PC to the pub and sit and work on it with a pint of Staropramen to keep me company quite often. I wouldn't want it as my soul development machine, natch, but it's perfect for having on the go and it's got enough grunt to run MySQL and Apache for web development work.

    This article comes across like one of the ones you get on the BBC site that tries to explain a new fad or gadget to the great unwashed masses in very simple terms. Either that was his intention (loaded with bias as it is) or Rob Fahey doesn't have a fucking clue what he's talking about because he's never used a good quality netbook and had to knock this pile of bollocks together to keep his word quota up for the month.

    If he's going to treat the readers of his articles like uneducated idiots that he can feed any old rubbish to, I'll certainly be avoiding everything he writes from this point forward.

  • bivith #50 3 years ago

    QuakeLive runs nicely on an EEE PC

  • midnight_walker #51 3 years ago

    Ridiculous article that has totally missed the point. I've owned (through work) an EEE 701, 900, Samsung NC-10, and actually do own myself a Samsung N-120, and I've been privileged enough to demo test at length the HP Mininote 2133, Asus EEE1000H, Samsung N110 and NC-10. They're absolutely fantastic devices and since I got the 701 my desktop PC is barely turned on anymore. I really wonder how I ever got on without one. The N-120 I'm using to post this is now my main PC, more or less, despite having a shit hot PC (well, about a year ago maybe...) but I'm not really a PC gamer anymore. If I was, this would not be my platform of choice. Anyone who buys a netbook with the intention of playing Crysis et al is a fool. Saying that, it does run the old classics I know and love, and even runs Monkey Island SE very well and even Soulstorm is very playable, albeit with most stuff turned down. I've installed the Win7 RC on my NC-10 and it runs like a dream. I have absolutely no complaints about these devices - anyone who understands their purpose really wouldn't write drivel like this.

  • SteelPriest #52 3 years ago

    "forcing the battery life down to the point where it's no better than a normal laptop"

    whaaaaat? the main reason i bought my EEE was that netbooks are the first laptops (under £1000) that can actually fuction as portable computers.

    My old Acer used to last an hour at a push. My EEE 1000HE lasts 8 if you're not using wifi. EIGHT!

  • Daryoon #53 3 years ago

    My EEE is bollocks for running games, mainly because it uses some form of snobby ol' Linux and I can't install things without a great deal of time-consuming effort (if, indeed, at all).

    However, it's the perfect word processor, which is why I brought it, and lack of games mean a lack of distractions! Therefore it is awesome.

  • grussbarbar #54 3 years ago

    As has been said a lot in the comments, the quality and capabilities of netbooks seem to lie much higher than is suggested in the article. Personally, I'm very happy with what my EEE 1000HE can do. As such, I feel that the popularity of netbooks isn't by chance, but rightly deserved. If publishers then are excited to have netbooks as a potential new market, I'd say they could very well be right to be.

    I'd imagine that developers focusing on lower-end PC-games (which can be run on netbooks) and digital distribution will be able to get pretty good sales from them. The games don't have to be low-quality either. Something like Bookworm Adventures (2), just recently reviewed on Eurogamer, works perfectly.

  • phycus #55 3 years ago

    Have an Aspire One which I got in Singapore last year, perfect when travelling down under. Used it mainly for email, skype, and uploading my holiday snaps. Light and easy to carry round and battery time is great (5+ hours).

  • Gecks #56 3 years ago

    i use an aspire one as my main pc - linked it up to my LCD and my keyboard/mouse and it pretty much does everything i used my old desktop for, but takes up less space and is a pretty decent portable computer with it.

    i should say that this purchase also coincided with my giving up with PC gaming as i was happy enough with my consoles, but i certainly still use my netbook for all my old favourites - system shock 2, fallout, etc. i didn't buy it as a games machine, or some kind of productivity monster; i bought it because it was cheap and i don't need any better.

  • Grayvern #57 3 years ago

    Also I don't know where people get the Idea that photoshop is that intensive, it really isn't for most normal uses. Photoshop runs faster on my netbook than Capture 1 does on my PC (free trial of capture 1).

    For most normal users PC's of almost any price have been good enough. The real problem is software manufacturers writing bloated inefficient graphically intensive software marketing it to people without powerful processors or gfx cards who really don't need it. Like 15 megapixel compact cameras and Chelsea traktor's

    Also it needs to be said that the fact that netbooks have small hdd or ssd's leads to a greater incentive to keep them devoid of crap meaning that they can potentially beat far more powerful towers with 500gb to 1tb hard drives that for anyone with a tidiness problem quickly become unmanageble byzantine messes.

    That said ill always have a desktop as well but then I like to play more intensive PC games.

  • infoxicated #58 2 years ago

    Netbooks took a 5th of mobile PC business in Q2

    [link url=http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/09/01/netbo ok_shipments_world_q2/
    ]http://ww w.reghardware.co.uk/2009/09/01/...[/link]

    Not bad for a flash in the pan during a recession, eh Rob Fahey?