My wife's R51 rolled over and died on Friday. She wanted my laptop to keep working - not really an acceptable long term solution. So we compared netbooks + monitor to low end laptops. Her laptop never leaves the house so we could be more forgiving on certain types of build quality - ruggidized was not necessary.
She needed a system that ran Office, a web browser and LaTeX. Consequently, a netbook running Linux or Windows 7 Starter were out. What we found was that netbooks with Win 7 Home Premium (or whatever it was) started around $450. Low end laptops with bigger screens, more RAM, more HD, better CPUs and all started at $450.
So for her primary machine, it made no sense to get a netbook. Unless a netbook is a secondary system, they are virtually pointless to people doing office work.
I appreciate the of a netbook, but with laptops with A) reasonable build quality, B) decent specs and C) comparable prices, I don't see how they will gain marketshare. The iPad and various smartphones increase the pressure and decrease the value of a netbook.
I'd be surprised if they ended up at 10% in 2014 instead of 5%.
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