Sony vs eeePC

from Engadget

So at Sony's Open House we were having lunch with Mike Abary, Sony's US SVP of Information Technology Products Division, who oversees Vaio computers (among numerous other things). Of course, the inevitable question came up about the Eee PC's success thus far, and what that means to computer companies on the higher end of the spectrum, like Sony. Mike's response was a little surprising, but certainly sensible enough: if consumer expectations begins to weigh too heavily toward the $300 end of PCs, he believes that kind of consumer adoption would have a profoundly negative impact on the industry, referring to its effect as "a race to the bottom." We know there are a lot of Eee fans in the house, but the man makes sense. Sony isn't trashing ultra-cheap machines so much as recognizing that it's hard to push things forward when your primary objective becomes making the very cheapest possible machine you can (and not very best). Innovation is hard enough to subsidize, but when your already thin margins flatten even further in trying to sell ultra-cheap machines, it's easy to see the economics working against tech companies. (Asus has less to worry about here because its primary business is making PCs for other companies.) Of course, the reality is that ultra-cheap machines probably won't soon envelop the lion's share of computer sales and threaten what most think of as "real" PCs, so we probably don't have to worry about the industry bottoming out because of the Eee. False advertising and abusive trialware, however, are different stories entirely.

 

Permalink | from Engadget

ER: my take is that while its understandable for Sony to say such things about eeePC,

its the change of Consumer PC market

1. Its our 2nd PC: we all have at least one Primary PC already, likely 2, one in Office and one at home
2. We all had Too much power.  Let's face it, we all had more CPU power than we need.  I don't see any reasoning for anyone to invest in Quad-CPU for ordinary Word type app
3. Wireless world: the need for something between office and home, or short travels.
• Most people are getting a Smartphone or Blackberry for when you are not in the office
• I use a iPhone and the IMAP mail works fine for me
• however, there are times when i need to sit down to do a bit more than a iphone can handle
4. Some Simple task like below that fits a eeePC use well:
1. to change a PPT before a presentation,
2. do some simple if-then on a Spreadsheet model,
3. Review a contract
4. watch a movie on a plane,
5. Sling at Starbucks, (yes, Sling on eeePC Linux is ready, more on it in another blog)
6. Write a Blog Flocking around
7. do a decent Search on Solving a Problem

Now, my eeePC is in the Car all the time. in between meetings, i can do some of the above easily at a Shopping Center. Wifi at McDonald or using USB Smartone-Vofafone's HSDPA at Home, i had a Vaio or Macbook with enough power to handle my HD editing.. which i had no intention to do at Starbucks.. I don't think any Sony Vaio that's on the market fits this category well.

• the UX screen is not a lot larger than my iPhone
• the thin TZ is not small itself, and cost 4 times the eeePC

The advantage of eeePC:

• Cost + Size, the price feels cheap and Size is small = i feel comfortable throwing it around
• All-in-one, Linux+OpenOffice+some simple free software
• Power works ok for a few hours work
• Powerful enough for all the task i need on the road
• Small enough to carry but large enough for PPT, Excel editing

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