Evidence mounts for August Eee PC carnage with $299 Dell E launch
By Thomas Ricker 
posted July 15th 2008 2:26AM
posted July 15th 2008 2:26AM
posted July 15th 2008 2:26AM
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wud.. rhymes with dud?
I feel like some company should market netbooks towards female college students. I'm not trying to sound sexist, but they seem the type to be willing to sacrifice graphics and power for simplicity and size. i can totally see a sorority girl pulling a netbook from her coach bag and facebook-ing during class.
Well, I regularly pull my Eeepc from my clearance-rack Jansport with Smokey the Bear patch.
It had nothing to do with image for me. Instead, it was about looking like less of a target during my 2 mile walks home through West Philadelphia at night after my graduate classes let out. Not having to worry about finding a bag that would accommodate a full-size laptop and not scream "hey, I'm carrying a laptop!" (or being weighed down by said device) seemed like a pretty good idea. I have a computer at home, and there are computer labs at school to cover needs outside the basic range of functions (word processing, pdf reading, etc.)
Plus it actually fits on a tiny college classroom desk, and removes the chance of grabbing the wrong notebook on the way out the door.
For the right person, they're actually very practical little devices.
Lets not forget that this has the most abominable keyboard ever concieved.
No F-keys, missing keys which require Fn to type, and funky keywidths all around.
Another run-of-the-mill netbook. Does it still have the reduced keyboard?
THere are still a few niches to fill with netbooks though:
Battery life. Eee 901 leading but small keyboard. Dell opportunity?
Built-in 3G. Looks like this will become a new battleground in Autumn
Touch: Gigabyte seems to be the only one in this space with alow-cost offering.
Compelling Linux software: I'm seeing a vanilla set of Linux apps. Someone needs to get some decent media apps sorted out. WIth millions of these things already out there, there's got to be an opportunity for some developers.
FAST SSD. All ssd's seem to be averaging mediocre transfer rates so far.
UltraMobile. Looks like that remains a high-end pricing option. Kohjinsha SC3 appears to be leading.
There must be other opportunities.
Steve.
I've given up on caring about these, I'm just gonna get me a cheap (but decent) laptop until someone wins this war... (and makes something worthwhile for me)
no one's mentioned the acer aspire one? for me that seems to be the best 'little laptop' out there at the moment...
tho this dell could potentially be very tasty also
Writing this on a 701 4G, I say I'll buy the one having a responsive keyboard and HSDPA built-in. Asus biggest problem where I live (Europe) is that they simply don't care about this continent, which is readily apparent in the late launches and poor support.
I any case, given the secure WiFi-problem with the 701-series (and all the other issues as well), Asus has some huge trust earning to do in my eyes. Still, I wouldn't touch HP or Acer and MSIs problems has left them in the backwater.
i love this. dell ftw!
Bye bye battery killing 900. Hello E
Wind ftw, aspire one is pants but the dell sounds like a gd alternative .. . .im sure they will have a lot of options on launch
I'm not usually a fan of Dell, but they've really blown away the overpriced competition in this market.
chefgon_ign,
If you're talking about the netbook market, they haven't really done anything there yet. So they couldn't have won or done anything, really. Not yet, at least. Let's wait and see if they can leverage their mass marketing, higher volume power to reach that price point.
The big thing here is the price. So far, nothing (including the eee) has lived up to the original price hype. This market segment isn't about horsepower but price and portability. $300 is close enough, but I'd still like a sata interface so I could swap my drive of choice.
Hopefully this marks the beginning of real competition and price pressure to produce the small, cheap, usable netbook I've been waiting for. Oh, and SATA please!
I'm still waiting to see what the Acer one looks like.
If you go back and look at the previous posts.
There are 5 of these Dell E and E Slim Models.
So this could be the same situation as with the eee.
For the plain E I bet it will go from $300-$400
And for the E Slim 12" screen $450-$550 it seems like they have the low end covered but if the E Slims bleeds into the $500s then it is just the same thing as the EEE.
I really want to get one of these before Labor Day but at this point I don't have a clue which one is going to be the best for the money. All I know is that I am not going to spend $600 on a 901.
Labor day maybe. It's clear Dell is not going to do before end of August cause they are not willing to cannibalize their sales of the regular sized laptops with school season starting! Knowing that makes the wait extra frustrating.
to make 299 you will see lots of 'gotchas' on this dell
how would someone who would get one of these go about using their ipod/iphone for loading music... ? wait for an xp version?
@BOB
"how would someone who would get one of these go about using their ipod/iphone for loading music"
Well.. you could always load your music onto your ipod using the media player that comes on the laptop... It probably uses Amarok for music, which has excellent support for ipods. I know it works with 1st and 2nd gen nanos, ipod classics, and shuffles.. I dunno about iphone though.
Oh wait! was this another one of those "nothing working under linux" comments? in that case, you sir, are an idiot.
I'll go ahead and assume that $299.- dell will cost $550.- like the other "$299.-" sub-notebooks then eh.
You want to try making sense next time?
So... still a reduced keyboard?
I'll buy the first to have a full-sized keyboard.
I'm guess the E Slim will be the way I end up going.
This doesn't make any sense. A full-size keyboard would make it a 12" laptop. :P
Let's hope that Dell keeps its word on the price unlike what every other manufacturer has done. Also, please let it be more than an 8GB SSD for $299. It is really not enough- you get 3.7GB leftoever on the Acer Aspire1 because of the OS and pre-installed programs.
But... but... It's a DELL!
How about we get apple to make the 901 with a 80gb harddrive, and sell it for 500?
I havent see the EEE Pc or MSI wind, etc, in many retail stores. I am assuming Dell will sell these in BB and other retail locations like its other laptops andl will get much more exposure than any other netbook. Combined with the lower price point, I think Dell has positioned itself nicely to lead this market segment.
ASUS will have to lower their prices to compete with DELL.
Have yet to see an ASUS model @ the $299 price point.
Thanks to DELL for bringing out an acutal usable model with decent features at a good price.
Keep the SSD, give me an HHD or HHHD or whatever we're calling it now (member when it was called HD?) and upgrade it to XP or XPLite.
I have an Eee 701. I'm typing on it now.
I will only upgrade to an Atom-based 8.9" or 10" with a 6-cell battery, and min 12GB storage (HDD or SSD). I like the idea of SSD, but I'll take an 80GB HDD in a pinch. Apparently, performance is not affected, and it's user-replaceable/upgradable. I'm not in the habit of dropping my laptops anyhow ;-).
Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to upgrade.
So, this Dell E, the Acer Aspire One, etc... are not good enough.
The MSI Wind, with the 6-cell battery is my current frontrunner. The Asuses are too expensive to consider anymore.
From the articles, it appears Dell does not plan to offer beefier configurations of the Dell E, and neither is Acer.
I don't care for the HP offering (not Atom-based), and it's rather bugly.
+1... Wind is my current frontrunner too for the same reasons. Atom, storage space, Linux OS, pricepoint. If only the damned thing would be available sooner than later!
I'm looking for something for online undergrad classes. I have my gaming rig at home, my super-duper smartphone/pda for on-the-go email and Gmaps and my super-productive desktop at work... I just need something to fit in the middle of it all.
still waiting for the perfect subnotebook that has 10" with 6+ cell battery and wireless N. Wind comes the closest minus the wireless N but the 6 cell battery isnt available yet.
Back in the Windows CE days we enjoyed "instant on" with many UMPCs.....I loved My Jornada 680 and 720 with about 8 hours of battery life! Crazy that it has taken so many years to get back to that simple idea...I look forward to buying a Dell E.
I, for one, am a huge Dell user. We started with Dell 10 years ago and there have been times when it has been bumpy. All in all, I trust their systems and I find their website very familiar. I love refurbs. Haven't bought a new system in over 7 years, to the best of my knowledge. I am excited about Dell's Mini E, but a little nervous about Linux. I think I would prefer an XP system. For the Vista lover above, I tried VISTA and found it hogged resources like a kid hoarding candy. I'll stick with XP on a netbook. Or maybe I'll even try UBUNTU (if I can pronounce it). Anyway, I am a mid-range, somewhat fearless user. I am not afraid to crack open the shell and look at the inside of the egg. Cheers to all!
What's the latest news on the launch of the Dell E? According to http://netbookusers.com it's still likely that the launch will be in August. But it's already August, 4?
Any word on the "E-Slim"? That 12.1" laptop?
vaporware