Remember the days when we thought 499 Euros was a great price for a mobile PC with 1.2 Ghz, 1024MB RAM, BT, Wifi and a 30GB drive? Three months later and the Packard Bell Easynote XS20 is now going for 349 Euro which is even better value but the amazing thing is that its probably not low enough for consumers. The Acer Aspire One with a better screen, 80GB drive, far better design and the new Atom processor with better video and graphics capability, is the same price!
As a consumer, I’m enjoying these low prices but I can see that the little guys are going to get squeezed out. Innovation, as we’ve seen it with UMPCs over the last two years, will become more and more difficult as people demand lower and lower prices. It’s almost sad.
Price source: Geizhals.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:39 am
There is no real innovation in something like the Easynote. True innovation in the UMPC category will come from the OS point of view. If Apple comes up with a 9-inch tablet version of the Mac Air with an appropriately designed version of their OSX, people will happily pay more. True innovation escapes price wars.
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July 9th, 2008 at 7:11 am
No matter how cheap the EasyNote gets - it practically screams “I’m ugly” ;-). Beside - who cares about a whimsy 7 Inch Screen if cheaper netbooks such as the Acer Aspire (the cheapest version costs even less than the Easy Not now) have a 8.9 Inch screen and look WAY better?
Guess I’ll be either going for Acer or Asus or maybe Gigabyte … Gee too many choices there :o).
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July 9th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
One year ago I would have considered this device at this price. But today? No way!
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