In 2005, at WinHEC, Bill Gates decided he was tired of playing second piper to St. Jobs in marketing, and tried to pull something of his own out of his pocket. But he missed something rather big: it didn't fit in his pocket.
The 7-10 inch formfactor is a fail in the consumer market. That's not to say that it shouldn't exist, or that there is not a market for it. Just that it is not quite as cool as people want you to believe it is.
A 7 inch PC is a very niche market. 7 inch does not fit in your pocket (if it does, either lose some weight or get slightly less baggy pants). It also is not really usable as a machine. I have personally worked on a machine like that, and I cannot stand it for more than about five minutes. The screen is too small to display anything interesting, and the machines are too weak to do any real work.
That said, they exist, and, as a believer of strict free-market capitalism, I believe that they do not exist without purpose. There are many special applications in the world which could benefit from this device. I saw a demonstration at MIX where BMW did a rich internet application interoperation with their dealers, and had their dealers carrying ultra portable Vista machines running a neat WPF 3D app that integrated with the web. Very cool. In this case, it is small enough to carry short distances (inside the dealership) but big enough to show clients. Where a laptop (even a 12 inch tablet) would be too large an unwieldy, and a PDA/Smart Phone would be too small to show, a 7 inch PC is the perfect compromise. Another great example might be a field technician, who uses a touch supportive device as his uplink to base, once again merging ease of quick carry with display size and ease of interaction.
But as a consumer devices, these 7 inch machines cannot be of much use. Sure, you could hook one up to a desktop monitor and keyboard, and thus use it as a tower, but you would be paying $400 for a machine that does not outperform a 3 year old budget tower (which are worth about $20 on ebay). These things are (usually) not even capable of running Vista, let alone Aero, leaving you stuck with a dated OS, no processor power for applications, little memory, and little else. If you're going to buy a micro-desktop, buy a Mac Mini (or Dell s version, whenever they get it through their thick heads that they should build one and sell it in the US). If you want a cheap PC, go to Wallmart. But why by an EeePC?
Sure, like business users, there are some people who could use a 7 inch machine, often for the same reason. Perhaps as a home automation controller (until it gets lost in your kids' room), a car PC (can it dock?), a fancy portable DVD player (with a lousy screen), or even as an office organizer device (to show off how hip and well connected you are). These are small markets. But you can't carry them like an iPhone and you can't use them as a laptop, which are the two major markets. Not because of some grand Microsoft/government/soviet/alien/religious conspiracy, but because of the simple fact that it doesn't physically fit in your pocket.
FAIL
No comments:
Post a Comment