Two days ago, I said netbook prices were falling. Now, they’re plummeting. Dell put out a promotion today – I get one just about every day – that it Mini 9n is $199. That’s not quite half of where it started. But Dell may be trying to unload the 9n because it only has 512M of memory and a mere 4G of storage – not enough to even to host XP. It comes with Linux which severely restricts the market for it.
Dell has also dropped prices on its notebooks and floortops (who puts them on desks anymore?). An Inspiron 530 with Cor 2 Duo Processor, 2G or 3G of RAM and a 320G or 500G hard drive goes for $299. I gave the two drive and memory capacities because Dell at the top of the ad seems to say the higher capacities for $299. Below that, it looks like the lower specs.
8 comments On Dell (sorta limited) Netbook for $199
Wow, 512 meg, 4gig? Not useful enough to bother with.
One question – “It comes with Linux which severely restricts the market for it.” Err, have you looked at or dare I ask used Linux lately?
It is no longer the OS of die hard techies, but is actually a very usable competitor to either Windows or OSX. There are almost no tasks (I personally can’t think of any at all) that can not be completed perfectly well on pretty much any Linux variant.
On limited hardware such as the 9n Linux can provided an environment that is perfectly usable for pretty much anyone, unlike Windows or OSX.
I personally recommend the openSUSE distribution of Linux, but ultimately I recommend any variant of Linux. It is perfectly usable for everyone, not just the uber geek.
I don’t think Linux restricts the netbook market. I believe most people use netbooks for browsing and as long as they have Firefox, they can get everything done.
Linux is actually an advantage on netbooks because it boots much, much faster. On the order of seconds instead of minutes.
I must disagree with the previous writer. Linux does not always boot faster than XP. Ubuntu and OpenSuse both boot slowly in my opinion. But, an operating system should not be judged simply by its booting capacity. The netbooks could really strip down its OS and create a fast Linux boot, but offering a 4gb flash drive while giving XP better opportunities to succeed is a slap in the face to Linux Distros. I cannot wait until the Netbook Wave truly explodes; I actually like the new Ubuntu GUI for netbooks. See Ubuntu Remix at http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr
The problem with Linux is that
1) it’s not Windows and
2) customers don’t realize this
Netbooks look like Laptops so most customers expect them to work like Laptops and that includes having Windows (I refer to the general customers, not us computer-litereate people reading this blog).
The higher return rates for netbook result from customers buying a netbook, trying to install some Windows app from the internet and then getting furious when it doesn’t work. A truly unpleasant surprise.
As long as the customers are not properly enlightened by the vendors that Linux is not compatible to Windows, Linux will in many cases fail to meet the customer’s expectations. This has nothing to do with the technical quality of the Linux-OS installed on the Netbook.
To be honest, I have not used Linux…but XP on the HP Mini and Asus Eee boots pretty fast. There again, I have not loaded tons of stuff onto them like I have my desktop which takes fully 5-7 minutes to boot. And I take stuff off it periodically which I suspect few people do…
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