So where are the netbooks that should exist by now?

[reddragdiva]

I want a new netbook — my cheap'n'cheerful Mini 9, having had the crap beaten out of it on a daily basis, is slowly failing in new and exciting ways.

The netbook form factor is perfect for me. But the visible hand of the market means Moore's Law hasn't done its work, so available netbooks are not 4x as fast as 2008, but about 2x for the same price (~£200) and build quality (cheap'n'cheerful).

Does anyone have tips on where I can track down the sort of device that should exist by now?

Comments

[thorfinn]

Oh right. :-) Yes, you're definitely right about that, that's where the cheapie market went. Way less moving parts in a tablet than a netbook, so much easier and cheaper to build. Tablet + USB keyboard is probably highly equivalent, if one could find a Linux capable tablet.

And yes, Google's attitude to patents has been... naive. On the one hand, I do think that software patents should just be entirely thrown out - the whole thing is ridiculous... but on the other hand, they *do* exist, the legal landscape around patents is actually fairly clear, and to just ignore the risk and claim that whatever you developed is magically non-violating just because you clean-roomed it is... wilful ignorance, at its best construction.

[ideological_cuddle]

I don't know that the tablets are really anywhere near as cheap as netbooks, but it seems that's where the random-toy money went, so the vendors followed. Tablets are sexy, netbooks are not.

If you're mostly using a tablet/netbook/whatever to work on remotely stored data then the OS doesn't matter very much. I know ltempt uses his Transformer mostly as a glorified mobile thin client. It's actually a pretty neat bit of kit.

The specific case I'm thinking of is even worse than Google just saying "we clean-roomed it!". It's stuff that came from Rubin, prior to Google buying Android, and which appears to be clearly traceable to his time at Apple. Real bonehead stuff.

And yeah, I don't much like software patents, but they're a fact of life (for now, anyway) and refusing to acknowledge them is really fucking stupid. I don't particularly want to reward Apple for the way they've been using them to beat competitors about the head either though, which doesn't leave a lot of options in the "usefully featureful smartphone/tablet" space.

[thorfinn]

Tablets: *nod* I think there's a lot of logistics and design vulnerability in that folding joint that's the required feature of a netbook/laptop - that just sucks to engineer around. There's a reason the flip phones mostly died, and it's due to the same issue. It isn't impossible to engineer around, just makes life difficult. I guess I have no idea about the cost, but I can't imagine that if you took the components from a netbook, threw out the keyboard, and stuck them in a tablet form factor, it would become more expensive. :-)

You're right that a lot of the tablet people aren't retailing down at really cheapie end, that I have no idea about, but I would guess it's the "new shiny" factor.

Patents: Well, that's the thing - copyright you can get around by clean rooming. With patents it doesn't matter whether you clean room or not - the whole point is that the patent applies to everyone (that has a legal landscape with good support for international IP law). Whether they independently came up with the process or ripped it off is actually completely irrelevant to the question.

On the Apple specific front... err, what do you *expect* them to do? If they didn't do that, they would be being sued into the ground themselves (and frequently are being sued). You can't do *anything* in computers without violating lots of patents - that's the ridiculous part about the whole thing. Perhaps it would be nicer of them if they campaigned harder to ditch the entire system... but that seems unlikely, since they seem to have a much better handle on the system than some of their competitors. Why campaign against guns when your competition appears to prefer to use popguns and water pistols instead of machine guns?

[ideological_cuddle]

They're behaving rationally. Not suggesting otherwise. The landscape being what it is, they're doing what they have to.

But I don't have to like it.

Mostly IT vendors cross-license stuff. This doesn't seem to be happening in this instance, except for Microsoft/APPL and Microsoft/HTC/etc. Not sure what's up with that, whether any of the Android people have tried to do a cross-licensing deal with APPL.

[thorfinn]

*nod* True, you don't have to like it. :-) But in this case, the blame belongs with the system, not the actors within it.

As far as Android vendors - I'm betting they're not doing a lot of cross-licensing. Android's patent violations are Google's problem, theoretically, not the responsibility of the hardware vendor. Where there are patents that are around a form factor that isn't specified by Android and is the implementation of the vendor, then yes, they should be licensing with APPL themselves. I'd bet that there probably are some - but there's no reporting on such deals, it's a quiet and private contractual money flow between companies, or possibly virtual non-existent money where there are patent cross licensing deals. And of course, theoretical patent issues with Android where the responsibility belongs to Google can still stop the hardware vendor from selling their gear... which some have obviously failed to take into account.

And Google is certainly not playing well with others - the bullshit around the Nortel patent bidding is a clear example of that idiocy. It also took them a *lot* longer to respond to the Lodsys patent trolling, and they've done it in a weird and not very clear way, to boot. Asking the patent office to re-examine a couple of patents, rather than saying "look, we have a license for that patent, it covers Android developers" is (which was the fairly quick Apple response)... well, yeah.

I really am sympathetic to the idea that patents are bullshit and need to be thrown out, but a company like Google just going ahead and acting as if that's the case when it's not is just... well, asking for trouble.

[ideological_cuddle]

So far APPL have only sued OEMs, not GOOG, even where the thing they are suing about is in fact an Android feature rather than something about the hardware or the custom interface stuff.

See the HTC case in the US right now. One of the patents is for making phone numbers/etc in emails/texts "active" links which cause the phone to dial. This is a basic Android feature, not HTC-specific.

The reason APPL are suing HTC rather than GOOG over this is that the process they're using can ban import of goods but not force a payment of damages. So they sue the OEMs through this process to stop the products being imported. No point taking GOOG through this because they don't make anything they can have banned.

They might go for Moto now though.

Chances are that HTC just don't have enough patents to make it worth APPL's while to cross-license. Or maybe APPL don't want to, they'd rather sink the competitors. Can't blame them for that, much.

Look, I don't buy into this popular thing of dismissing Apple as "patent trolls". That's Lodsys and all those guys who do nothing but buy up patents and sue people.

But I'm uneasy about giving Apple more money, and I'm not keen on paying more for Android either. Which really only leaves WP7 right now, and that has all sorts of problems too.

All the options are sub-optimal in way or another.

[thorfinn]

*nod* And if Android *had* a valid license for those patents, all the OEM would have to do is point upstream and say "FOAD"... but that seems to be impossible, thanks to the Goog trying very hard to disbelieve in patents. Everybody clap hands now! *headshake*

I'm mainly comfy with giving money to Apple because that continues to mean their products are targeted at me, the bunny giving them money. If that changes (i.e., they stop targeting their products at me), I'd start to get uncomfy with giving them money pretty fast. :-)

But yes, everything in the space has sucky things about it right now, so it's a question of which kind of sucky do you not care about most.

[thorfinn]

In theory also the OEM would have a case to pass the suit on to Google where the patent in question is regarding an Android feature. That *still* doesn't let them sell the product unless/until there *is* a valid license, of course.

[ideological_cuddle]

Here you go.