Sony leery of the Eee PC?
LAS VEGAS--As a computer, the Eee PC from Asus is intended to be the opposite of intimidating--it's made for children after all. But its potential as a market force is apparently giving chills to its larger industry peers.
Here at Sony's annual Open House event, the senior vice president of Sony's IT product division said the tiny $299 notebook could potentially shift the entire notebook industry.
"If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom," said Mike Abary.
The Eee PC at its U.S. launch last fall.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)He means that if mainstream PC buyers start to find their needs met by a lightweight, simply featured, inexpensive portable, it's likely to impel all of the major players in the industry to pile on by lowering their prices. And that's in an industry with already low margins for retailers and manufacturers.
If the Eee PC just catches on with Linux developers, enthusiasts, and the tech-savvy early adopter crowd, that's fine by him. "But if mainstream buyers buy it, then, whoa," Abary said.
So should Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and their ilk be frightened of Asus? So far, the version of the Eee PC in the U.S. only comes with Linux, but that will soon change. Japan got its Windows XP version last month, and the U.S. should be getting one in the next few weeks. (See the full review of the Eee PC by CNET's Dan Ackerman.)
And even with just the open-source version available stateside, the numbers say it's striking a nerve: the company reported moving 350,000 units of the Eee in the first quarter it was available last fall.
Sony's not the only one taking notice. Acer is reportedly readying an Eee competitor, and the yet-to-be-officially-announced HP Compaq 2133 was developed with the Eee firmly in mind.
As for Sony, though it did start offering lower-priced notebooks last year in the $800 range, don't expect the company to go any lower just yet. Abary says so far the company is just "keeping an eye" on the Eee's activity.
Sony has always positioned itself as a premium brand, and will continue to do so, as was evident in the rest of its PC offerings on show here.
A Vaio to match your crocodile-print shoes.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)The company has been at the forefront of the uber-personalization trend that's taken over the notebook industry. By charging more, the company has more leeway with the options it can offer customers. It began doing colored laptops three years ago and is now branching out into personalized patterns, and--as suspected--textures.
People who buy their Vaio at the SonyStyle store online have as many as 36 different choices for personalizing their laptop. The Graphic Splash line has three different patterns and multiple color combinations, as well as a choice of font on the keyboard. "That's what consumers really, really want," Abary told a gathering of reporters earlier in the day.
Sony also said that Vaio as a brand sells particularly well with women, which could also explain Sony's increased emphasis on personalization. Though 80 percent of notebooks sold industrywide are owned by men, Abary estimated, Vaios' percentage ownership by men is in the low 70s, indicating a higher-than-average ownership rate by women.
But it's not all about appearances. Sony is also pushing its lineup of home theater PCs, which are not primary PCs, but still start at $1,699.
The TP series home theater PC is now a Blu-ray player too.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)Though Sony had earlier indicated that its TP home theater PC (that white round one), didn't sell particularly well last year, it still decided to bring it back for Round 2. It's still round, but now it's got some high-definition guts. Sony beefed it up with a Blu-ray Disc player, Intel Penryn processors, and two Cable Card tuners. It's also now available in black for $1,699 to $3,000.
Though it was released in the fall, the all-in-one PC from Sony, the LT, is part of the same strategy. Again, though it's a PC like Gateway's One or Dell's XPS One, Sony positions the product as a TV with PC capability instead of the other way around. Doing so is likely to lure more high-end customers, with the LT's Bravia-like bezel echoing Sony's line of LCD TVs.
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who writes about consumer electronics and PCs, mostly as chief correspondent for Crave. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur. E-mail Erica.
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This is a gimmick computer for the stupid or the extreme elderly, who do not know what PC gaming or console gaming is.
That is the ONLY market that this computer will resonate with.
That's a really stupid statement! Not every person that buys a computer uses it for games.
I use my computer for graphic/web design and audio/video editing. I could care less about playing games on it.
As for what most people (i.e. casual users) need? Well, most people just want to write documents, read email, surf the Web and so on.
I think the small solid-state hard drive will give the tiny PC "good enough" performance for the casual user.
Keep in mind: most people adjust to the performance of their PC, as long as the PC meets their needs. My mom, for example, didn't notice how long it took MS Office to open her Word documents. Nor did she care, really. She just had some coffee while waiting for the document to load.
But, definitely, gamers, developers, CAD developers, movie makers and other higher-end users won't have their needs met by an Asus Eee PC. It's like expecting a $10,000 car to perform like a $120,000 car.
I think it's a great thing to have so much variety in the PC marketplace, and definitely good to have a smaller, lower-end laptop for casual users. It broadens user choices.
OTOH, it would be one hell of a nice little machine to take on a trip, or into the server room.
/P
I think there will be a big market for people who travel and really just want some outlet for their pics and the possibility of their own "network internet terminal" in a small form factor.
I spent £800 on a gaming laptop, and of course, it's gaming performance is pretty average. If I was buying today, I would have got an EEE for £200, and a £600 gaming desktop, which would kick ass at gaming.
Or actually, I might even have got an EEE, an Xbox 360 and a Wii, and still have £250 left over.
If they were giving it away for only 2 dollars.... it just doesn't meet the expectations that I have for a PC, which one of the biggest one is gaming! I am an AVID PC gamer, and love to play PC games.... the EEE pc just will not play most of, if not all, of the game that I would like to play.
<end quote>
Wow now there's a newsflash...the EEE pc won't play high end games. Of course it won't. It's not even targeted at that segment of the market. Unless I'm mistaken it's marketed as a first computer for children and teens. An ultra portable laptop and perhaps a back up pc. So the fact that it won't play WoW or cyrisis or whatever FPS you can think of isn't really surprising.
Other news flashes for those of you who are surprised the EEE Pc won't play games.
286,386, and 486 computers are not vista capable.
Photoshop is a better graphics program than MS Paint.
Access is more suited for working with databases than Word.
Mini-Coopers are not the best vehicle for the following:
Transporting a refrigerator, sofa, love seat, big screen tv, or other large furniture from one location to another.
Towing mobile homes.
Groups of people numbering more than 4 individuals. Less than 4 people if one or more is morbidly obese.
Landlords frown on adding the following to your apartment:
A second or third bathroom. A sun room, a second or third floor, a basement.
Diving boards should not be used with wading pools.
Dogs are much easier to play fetch with than Cats
On the con side, that small screen size means a very low resolution- less than 800x600. Browsing the net on something that can't match most websides makes it difficult- you're always scrolling side to side or vertically constantly. The graphic chipset simply isn't up to the task of screen real estate management.
It has potential though. I wouldn't mind a throwaway unit like this to check mail and the web on the go. With the full keyboard, it makes it more useful than any smartphone on the market. I could see this being a real handy thing for digital photographers as a mobile image storage solution and larger screen to preview images on without having to take a full laptop with you.
It's also small enough to use on a plane- although without being able to use wireless on a plane, there isn't much else you can do with it.
Pros and cons. If the prices come down, I would be tempted to get the 8Gb version.
It would be perfectly useless for most of what I do with my personal machinery, but as an ultraportable? Not half bad.
On my own end of things, I'd prefer to use something like the MacBook Air - same low weight, but some beau coup serious horsepower behind it. OTOH, I wouldn't worry so much about the Eee getting stolen.
/P
Then you have the high-end laptop segment of the market that is being quickly overtaken by Apple.
Sony, who has been caught sleeping on the wheel, has become sandwiched in the middle as did most of the other PC makers. Is it surprising to find them in this precarious position. The resounding answer is NO. I haven't considered buying a computer from PC for as long as I can remember.
For simple tasks that most users do most of the time, the eeePC is good enough.
It was slow at watching videos, it was slow at surfing the internet, it was slow at running photo applications, etc. etc. etc.
It was slow at doing everything that my parents, who are not gamers (at least, not with cutting-edge games), would want it to do.
It's just, as I stated, as waste of money for the foolish who think this is really going to satisfy them, the extreme elderly who will not know what they are missing, and the extremely young who are too naive to notice what they are missing.
I tested one when a friend had a tester, and it wasn't meeting my expectations at all, even when my friend pointed out to me what you pointed out: that it is more minimalists.
It didn't do web surfing well, it didn't do the running of ACDSee (photo software that is pretty barebones) well, etc.
The only thing it did do well was e-mail, and that was just BARELY acceptable.
People are just going to have to pony up the money for a $2000 dollar PC, and let's be honest: a $2000 dollar notebook should last you, the way they are making them now as long as you get a discrete graphic card in it for a good 4-5 years.... by which time a computer 10 times better than yours will be $1,000 dollars at most.
The fact that I can so easily surf the net while I relax and watch tv in bed is a plus. I don't need a full sized laptop for that sort of thing.
truly different. It won't be any easier to use, it won't be a different
user experience, it will just be Windows on a smaller screen. The
Linux (I admit I am not a Linux user) experience if new and
refreshing would be the driving point, not the tiny size. Computer
makers could learn from Nintendo...a low price point, simple to
use, and less glitz and glamour...makes a hot selling product (or
two.)
Sony should be very concerned.
With respect to the person that says only "stupid & elderly" would buy it....that's hilarious. Only the "stupid" would NOT buy such a useful device. ;-)
It is about time that somebody rattles the cage of those who kept prices on laptops artificially high.
Sony deserves to be slapped. They keep on relying on Windows on the software front and their own softwares never work properly on Windows. There is no major renovation in their laptops for the past ten years. Their last real renovation is the subnotebooks. They ran windows. Now they still run the crap windows and do the same thing. As a consumer product, its boring. As a business product they are too expensive.
Apple is not scared of EEE PC and why should they? They keep renovating. They make exciting and attractive OS and other softwares. Windows work on them too. Why Sony cannot inovate like Apple do? They can make Linux for PS2 why not for their notebooks. Do bootcamp for their notebooks, let user choose what to use. Maybe even as crazy as have windows on a virtual machine inside linux. I wont want an ipod if sony has an attractive solution for everything. There are tons of developers for Unix/Linux. I think who made that EEE PC statement should be fired.
Huh? You do know that Sony supports individuals installing Linux on their laptop line, and that they ported Linux to run on both the PS2 and PS3 (the PS3 itself runs it), right?
They also have distros tailor-built for their newer Vaio lines.
Here's their repository of Linux and other GPL-related binaries, as well as code:
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/search.html
/P
Just because the Applause button suddenly became a bit of a concern dosent mean actually lett the departments free to expolore the world and find better opertunities won't help.
Japan is far to departmentalised its home grown philosophies to opressed and in this daya nd age with Chaina and other parts of Asia beginning to let there people breath some more perhaps you should follow suit.
Sony many be slightly nopolistic but it can change and in a healty way and let those Japaniese cosin breath and find solutions.
I think your problem is nut Asus's EEE its that Asus has let its dudes breath that bit more than you have you have been digging for gold so much so that now the world has began to stike it your not quite up on the act.
Just because the Appaluse button suddenly became a bit of a concern dosent mean actually letting the departments free to expolore the world and find better opertunities won't help.
Japan is far too departmentalized its homegrown philosophies too oppressed also and in this day and age with China and other parts of Asia beginning to let there people breath some more perhaps you should follow suit.
Sony may be slightly nepolistic but it can change and in a healty way letting those Japanese cozins breath and find solutions.
I think your problem is not Asus's EEE its that Asus has let its dudes breath that bit more than you have, you have been digging for gold so much so that now the world has began to stike it your not quite up on the act.
"Sony has always positioned itself as a premium brand, and will continue to do so, as was evident in the rest of its PC offerings on show here."
wait let me "oooh" and "aaah".
pictures of snakeskin vaios
ahem...... ga.. no, wait... GASP!! how was that?
well, i've got something for anyone thinking about buying anything by sony.....
ROOTKIT!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_BMG_CD_copy_protection_scandal
this will show you how "premium" sony products are. and how much they care about their customers too.
http://backpackcomputing.googlepages.com/home
- Sony Laptops
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by law_hog
March 2, 2008 8:26 AM PST
- Overpriced, under spec. They are trying to be Apple (I am not an apple fanboy and the only thing I own that is made by them is an iPod).
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See all 51 Comments >>They are just trying to separate the ignorant and vain folks from their money. Very sad.