The last few weeks have seen a relieving of the old guard by the new. Three new ultraportable machines have entered the force, while two have gone away for either new homes or to be sold on eBay. The Acer Aspire ONE, the only netbook I have ever owned, departed to do duty as my girlfriend's sister's primary PC. It was replaced by the MSI X340. My Motion LE1600, the TabletPC that I used as my primary work machine, has been replaced by an HP 2730p EliteBook. Months ago, I sold my Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium, believing that I had outgrown the need for a UMPC. At the end of last week, I was compelled to rethink that conclusion and then recapitalize that capability via the purchase of a Fujitsu U820. While I have dived back into a network configuration that emphasizes portability, I look around the industry and question some of the products that are being placed in the market ostensibly as machines that meet this ultraportable need.
Most recently, I came across the Acer Aspire Timeline 8000 series laptop. I am loathe to come at this from the perspective of "just not getting it" with regards to why this device exists and who would want it. I am loathe mainly because they are the questions that I frequently see written by people about TabletPCs and UMPCs. Obviously people who do not ink need not make comments or question the existence of ink-based computing products.
In the same vein, I don't want to call someone crazy who is considering this device. Maybe it is just beyond me because I do not personally have a use-space for it. This device falls into a new product stratum that I have dubbed the razer-top PC. Yeah, ok, everyone does not have to start using it. I just needed to a term to keep this straight in my own head.
This sub-genre of laptop was spawned by the MacBook Air. Despite the fact that the Air was a relatively poor device that I, again, could not see the point of when it debuted, all of the laptop manufacturers have fallen over themselves to compete in the market-space that the Air created. The MSI that I just recently brought into the 'WERKz falls into this category. So does the Dell Adamo, the Lenovo X300, and now the Acer Aspire Timeline series.
These devices range in cost from marginally more than a netbook to astronomically more expensive than a netbook. When the prices on these climb into the stratosphere, they just don't make sense. Their ultramobility is just not on a scale that justifies an order of magnitude greater in expense. This is why I declared the MacBook Air a questionable product. Same for the Lenovo X300 and Dell Adamo. When I was in the market for my own razer-top, I went with the device that was stamped with what I regard as a reasonable price-tag for the capability delta it provided over a netbook. It is a triangle analysis where you need to consider cost, performance, and portability.
One design choice that I fail to grasp is how and why these devices debut at one form factor, and then the industry seems to creep towards putting them in larger and larger packages. It will perhaps sound a bit OCD, but I have a firm concept that 13" is the breaking point for ultramobile products. So, to me, once enter the 14" zone, I expect a high performance PC that has little or no compromises. While the Aspire Timeline series is very thin, I still question the use of the 14" screen for a device that runs a Core Solo processor. Most of us who are interested in ultramobility are ok with a 13" form factor or less. Those who are reluctant to enter into the realm of ultramobility, the ones who when you ask what kind of laptop they are looking for express concern over getting something with a screen that is too small, are not likely to want to go into a 14" screen just because it is razer-thin.
More concerning about the Acer Aspire 8000 is its hobbled specs. I had a 14" Toshiba laptop. That machine ran a full Core 2 Duo processor at 2 GHz. The Acer comes with a 1.4GHz Core Solo proc; the same one that is in my MSI X340, which has a smaller footprint and lighter weight. I have talked about footprint before, and mentioned how it can make more of a difference than weight in terms of portability. For this reason, I had no interest in a MacBook Air because it occupied the same footprint as my 13" MacBook but would not have performed as well. When a device occupies the same footprint as a device that is heavier, but sacrifices performance in the pedigree of its hardware or drops features, I don't get it. I'll carry an extra pound or two if the lighter device is going to take up the same amount of space in my laptop bag but sacrifice performance.
The portability factor in these devices needs to make up for any loss in performance and the prices need to balance it all out. At 13", I can see this math. Between a MacBook and a MacBook Air, the downstep in performance for the upscaled price (I am talking about at the time of the Air's debut, not after the most recent round of MacBook price cuts) did not pass the smell test when considering that the Air would occupy the same footprint as the MacBook.
In my own recent decision making, I considered going back to a MacBook to replace the Acer Aspire ONE. When I had to compare the the MacBook versus the MSI X340, the comparo did pass the smell-test. The X340 lost some in its Core Solo 1.4GHz processor. Memory in the two machines was the same. The X340 doubled the mid-level MacBook's hard drive capacity. This is becoming more and more of an issue these days as my iTunes archive, which includes various seasons of TV Shows, now exceeds 100GB. With only a stock 160GB HD, the mid-level MacBook would have put me in the corner where I would immediately need to upgrade the HD. That would have been an additional $100 off the bat.
Yes, I was presented with the choice of going into a less-performing platform that occupied the same footprint as the higher performing MacBook. But the X340 is just over half the weight of the MacBook. And costs $400 less; $500 if you consider that a HD upgrade to the MacBook (plus the cost of my own leisure time in doing the upgrade) would have been an absolute necessity.
When I tried to subject the other options to this math test, the Lenovo X300 and Dell Adamo (the only other two choices at the time), they were egregiously outside the box in terms of cost.
The Acer Timeline 8000 (14" model) might strike a cord with a certain niche of users who want close to a full-screen mobile computing experience, but do not want to carry the extra weight, and are not bothered by taking the performance hit. I have a hard time judging how large that group of particular user might be. The one thing the Acer has going for it is its price. At that cost, you can almost afford to make a mistake and take it back if it does not suit. With my own experiences in ultraportability over the last few years, I know that at that size, I would personally go with something smaller that has the same performance specs, or something thicker and heavier that blows its performance away.
Truth be told, all of these devices are fighting for extremely thin niches of users and customers. The ones that will win the fight are the ones that offer some unique feature that brings on-the-fence customers who are still necking their choices down across the line. Really, these devices, the razer-tops specifically, are competing less-so against themselves, and more so against netbooks in general. My experience with the Acer Aspire ONE was a pretty good one. But the X340 weighs only a half-pound more, doubles the hard drive capacity, and presents a larger screen for viewing of video. Customer price sensitivity goes up when you get above $1000. Below that, things are muddier. Razer-tops have a fighting chance if the customer base gets tired of the cramped keyboards, small screens, and sluggish performance. I guess the moral of the story is, if you are going to look at a razer-top as an alternative to a netbook, look carefully. Whereas almost every netbook on the market right now has the exact same specs, razer-tops range a little wider. Run the smell test and ensure that what you are gaining makes up for what you are giving up and that the dollars are in-sync with those trade-offs.
- Vr/Zeux..>>