Panasonic says Intel Atom not up to snuff for its PCs
Japanese giant Panasonic has said no to netbooks: it's not going to make a Small, Cheap Computer. It's reasoning is that SCCs are consumer products and it's in the business of selling to, well, business.
Clearly it doesn't - for the moment - believe executives and mobile workers want ultra-compact laptops.
Given the battery …
"performance is too low to work with office documents or other applications"
#
The mind boggles, really.
What sort of hardcore 'office applications' require such an excess of processing power that an intel atom can't provide? Sure, there's always going to be power-hungry apps that you might want on your workstation (compilation, place and route, image processing... a few things that spring to mind), but 'editting a word document' or 'editting a spreadsheet' should not even being to approach the same power requirements.
Quite frankly, I blame everyone. The people who've worked on MS office since v6, and anyone who has anything to do with acrobat for a start.
Yes - the comment about battery life phased me as well. My wife's EEEPC 901 seems to go on forever (something like 6 hours running XP).
The other thing that's disconcerting is how snappy it feels (about 25 seconds from a cold boot till you can start working). I guess that's because of the small install with less stuff running all the time, but the end result is a machine which feels strangely quick (and strangely quiet).
Strange, I get decent battery life from the extended battery on my Kohjinsha SC3. On the extended battery, yesterday I ran it for about 8 hours without plugging it in, switched and charged the standard battery overnight, and put the extended one back on, and it was telling me that there was about an hour of charge left. Most of the usage was pulling up documents from the web, e-mail, and taking minutes for a meeting in OpenOffice. My primitive calculations are that with my usage, the stock battery would last about 4 hours. (the stock battery is 2.6AH, the extended one is 5.2
I haven't bothered changing it from the Windows Vista Home Premium that it came with. As an added plus, I can actually type faster, and more comfortably on it's smaller keyboard.
Panasonic don't want netbooks because there is little margin for profit in them silly.
In any case businesses buying computers go on features as the major consideration, not price. The IT bod buying the product drools over features and price is done by someone else.
Panasonic can't do that with its own netbook can it?
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Panasonic says Intel Atom not up to snuff for its PCs
Japanese giant Panasonic has said no to netbooks: it's not going to make a Small, Cheap Computer. It's reasoning is that SCCs are consumer products and it's in the business of selling to, well, business. Clearly it doesn't - for the moment - believe executives and mobile workers want ultra-compact laptops. Given the battery …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Posted Tuesday 30th September 2008 10:51 GMT
David Hicks
Is it only the eee 901 #
That has decent battery life then? I can get a couple of movies out of it on a flight, which seems decent enough to me.
Posted Tuesday 30th September 2008 18:16 GMT
Rik Hemsley
What people want #
"Clearly it doesn't - for the moment - believe executives and mobile workers want ultra-compact laptops"
No, it just doesn't believe executives and mobile workers want cheaply constructed, appallingly slow ultra-compact laptops with pathetic battery life.
Sony and Lenovo make the kind of ultra-compact laptops the aforementioned group find usable.
Posted Tuesday 30th September 2008 18:16 GMT
Ru
"performance is too low to work with office documents or other applications" #
The mind boggles, really.
What sort of hardcore 'office applications' require such an excess of processing power that an intel atom can't provide? Sure, there's always going to be power-hungry apps that you might want on your workstation (compilation, place and route, image processing... a few things that spring to mind), but 'editting a word document' or 'editting a spreadsheet' should not even being to approach the same power requirements.
Quite frankly, I blame everyone. The people who've worked on MS office since v6, and anyone who has anything to do with acrobat for a start.
Posted Tuesday 30th September 2008 18:16 GMT
Flocke Kroes
Panasonic do not want to compete with themselves #
If PHB's buy SCC's, they would not be buying high margin Panasonic status symbols.
Posted Tuesday 30th September 2008 18:16 GMT
Mark Wheadon
901 Again #
Yes - the comment about battery life phased me as well. My wife's EEEPC 901 seems to go on forever (something like 6 hours running XP).
The other thing that's disconcerting is how snappy it feels (about 25 seconds from a cold boot till you can start working). I guess that's because of the small install with less stuff running all the time, but the end result is a machine which feels strangely quick (and strangely quiet).
Mark
Posted Tuesday 30th September 2008 18:16 GMT
Chris Hart
bad battery life? Performance issues? #
Strange, I get decent battery life from the extended battery on my Kohjinsha SC3. On the extended battery, yesterday I ran it for about 8 hours without plugging it in, switched and charged the standard battery overnight, and put the extended one back on, and it was telling me that there was about an hour of charge left. Most of the usage was pulling up documents from the web, e-mail, and taking minutes for a meeting in OpenOffice. My primitive calculations are that with my usage, the stock battery would last about 4 hours. (the stock battery is 2.6AH, the extended one is 5.2
I haven't bothered changing it from the Windows Vista Home Premium that it came with. As an added plus, I can actually type faster, and more comfortably on it's smaller keyboard.
Posted Tuesday 30th September 2008 22:45 GMT
Stuart Halliday
The real reason #
Panasonic don't want netbooks because there is little margin for profit in them silly.
In any case businesses buying computers go on features as the major consideration, not price. The IT bod buying the product drools over features and price is done by someone else.
Panasonic can't do that with its own netbook can it?
Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:18 GMT
bandor
In Soviet Russia #
Hopefully someone will be able to make a good pun out of "Nyetbook"
This topic is closed for new posts.