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Follow us on TwitterA few days ago I was rambling about form factors and now primo IT website of the UK, The Register, posts their take on notebook categories and how they are defined.
With the recent controversy and lawsuits around use of the phrase netbook, along with the general confusion over notebooks vs ultraportables vs ultrathin vs how ultra stupid stuff like this can get, The Reg’s handy-dandy flow chart is just in time. Be sure to send this to your tech-ignorant friends and relatives.
My take:
Overall this flowchart seems pretty spot-on. The big differentiators revolve around screen size, inclusion of an optical drive, and weight, which are where I draw my lines in the sand as well. What does seem a bit off is that the deciding factor around the netbook is if there are “video ports.” I don’t know quite what they mean by “video ports,” but many netbooks now have VGA output. Perhaps a better differentiator would have been the Atom processor, but maybe that is too easy. C’mon Reg, get with it…
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I find this topic very interesting. Based on the myriad of models, I can see the challenge the manufactures face to differentiate their products. Especially in a market filled with enthusiasts that modify their machines to get even greater performance and a wider range of functionality than they were originally designed for. Unlike a product that is simply bought and used such as a pair of Nike shoes, or a luxury watch, notebook computers are certainly in a class by themselves. Even more so than smartphones, which operate based on a fixed hardware platform. Yet the ongoing quest for access to the net for a wide range of purposes, is having quite an influence on that segment as well. As an early adopter I’ve watched the notebook category evolve from the initial models with 10″ monochrome screens to the notebooks of today, comprised of every size type that one could imagine. Along the way the identifying nomenclature known as “Laptop” has stuck with portable computers far longer than I anticipated as the true definition of a laptop predates the notebook, and no longer applies to any of the portable computers we use today. It has become quite generic, yet seemingly everlasting. Once the first “Notebooks” where conceived and that market took off, I truly expected the name “laptop” to fade as well. Thus I ask myself, just how much longer the term “Netbook” will last, and if so what will they look like a year from now? Fascinating stuff to consider.
[...] caught up? The naming craze got some convoluted that there was even a flow chart created to help you figure out what device fits in what naming bin. Despite all the hype around the [...]
What can i say than this: an educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious – just dead wrong.Michelle