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The $299 Walmart laptop

Saturday, August 15, 2009 by Dave Winer.

The tech industry keeps wanting to think that netbooks are a mistake, but they are not.  

Here's a CNET article about a $299 laptop being sold by Walmart and BestBuy. They're cheap, big and run Vista. 

I'll go over the specs in a minute, but first a story. 

I just took a trip to New York with my new 13.3-inch MacBook Pro, which is a lovely computer. But the next trip I took, a two-day trip up north, I brought my Asus 10-inch and was much happier because: 1. Much longer battery life. 2. A lot lighter and smaller.  

The Mac doesn't even have a replaceable battery. The Asus does. When I travel with it I bring an extra 6-cell, and it's still much lighter than the Mac, and it goes for 12 hours without plugging in. That's a huge important difference.  

And the smaller size meant I could make the trip with just one bag instead of two.  

People who think there is no reason to get a netbook simply don't have one, I conclude. That's fine for ordinary people, but if you make your living as a tech analyst, that's just plain irresponsible. 

Now to the specs. 

2.2GHz Intel Celeron processor 900, 2GB of memory, DVD-RW/CD-RW drive, 15.4-inch screen, 160GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm), 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, and Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition operating system.  

It's all good till you get to the wireless. I like 802.11n. Much faster. And the OS -- sorry -- I don't do Vista. I have a funny feeling that Microsoft is behind all of this. For some reason they can't handle the idea that people still want their 10-year-old OS. All the R&D that went into Vista, well that's Microsoft's problem, not the users'. 

They don't say how much it weighs or how long the battery lasts. Heh. I bet it weighs a lot, and I bet the battery doesn't last very long. Is the battery removable? 

In any case, I'm not surprised the $299 "craptop" sells. But -- I'd also be surprised if they do anything to slow down sales of netbooks. They're in a different class. And it's valid. Get used to it, netbooks here to stay folks. And the big, heavy, Vista class? Well they're probably here to stay too. (And I still love my Macs, and wish they'd make one that was really in the netbook class.)