Submitted by Manufacturers are taking advantage of the Windows 7 release to roll out a slate of new laptops, and the big trend is low prices. We wrote a couple of weeks ago about Netbook watchers predicting that Windows 7 will be licensed too high for value-priced netbooks. But licensing fees don’t seem to be preventing laptop makers from aggressive pricing on their new laptops, even ones with premium features and finishes.
Didnt Ballmer come out and say that things were going to get more expensive, not less. They had been shooting for the low end too much? I guess you take what you can get…
This article is about laptops. The issue will be even more dire with netbooks. Because laptops (even these cheap ones) will be priced in the $400+ range. But netbooks are in the $200-$300 range. When you go looking for a $200 netbook, even $20 extra starts to become apparent. In other words, it will become increasingly difficult for Microsoft to hide the “Microsoft tax” in the price of the hardware.
How low are they willing to go just so they don’t lose the marketshare? As past experiences have shown us, they’ll go to negative figures and lose money if they have to.
And that’s disregarding ARM processors. I honestly don’t know how they’re going to deal with that. It’s not even a question of porting Windows to ARM, even if they did it’s useless, it’s the applications that would have to be ported too. Virtualization is probably out of the question with such low-power hardware.
Once again another article that is gushy over the hardware specifications and little to no mention on how mediocre the bundled operating system is. You’d swear that these IT ‘pundits’ believe that the only thing an end user does it plugin the computer and stare at it all day with a dopy look on their face.
Then there is this piece of news:
HP EliteBook 2530p […] $899 with Intel Core 2 Duo chip.
So I can save $100 and be lumped with an operating system I don’t want to touch with a 40 foot barge pole. It would have been a nice piece of hardware to buy for a Linux laptop but too bad HP decided to go with Broadcom for their wireless (based on their support page).
I thought there was a broadcom driver now, is there not?
Yes there is but it is problematic and is unsupported outside the kernel
I’ll be looking for a new laptop for Christmas so if Win7 can push down the prices its that much better for me. I’m hoping the aggressive pricing lasts that long.
So, if they are pushing down the price of the laptops – aggressively – what are they adjusting their profits with?? Is this an attempt at the volume game??
I also think that there might be some worth in looking at the performance levels of Windows 7 to get an idea of whether much of the cost is being adjusted through lower hardware costs…
People use netbook for web surfing and emails
Installing over bloated OS on netbook is a bit overkill
Nobody use netbook for games because the screen is so small 
So a strip down OS is good enough for the purpose and faster than a full feature OS