Lugging around a big-screen MacBook Pro or other large laptop to the local wireless hot spot may give you a great visual experience on the road, but it is so heavy it could also give you a bad back.
Enough people feel that way that computer makers are sensing a market opening for smaller laptops. A number have jumped in with what they are calling ultraminiature PCs or mininotebooks.
Their creators are hoping to carve out a niche between full-size laptops, which offer much more screen real estate, and smartphones, which are small and convenient but lack many features. Ultraminis can do what any laptop or desktop can do, but they have screens that are not much bigger than a paperback book.
They first gained serious attention last year after Asus began selling its Eee computer. Thanks to that success, several other manufacturers, including Everex, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard, have jumped in, selling mininotebooks ranging in price from $300 to more
than $1,000.
Industry analysts expect mininotebooks to remain a niche category, especially in the United States and Western Europe, where many people can afford to spend a few hundred dollars more for a bigger and speedier laptop, while using a smartphone or other device as an adequate substitute when they don’t have the full-size machine with them.
“This is for people who would have bought a desktop but buy this to save money,” said Leslie Fiering, a vice president at the research firm Gartner.
Indeed, the availability of ultraminis in the United States has left some analysts scratching their heads. “Why would you want a PC with stripped-down features that make it harder to do your work?” said Benjamin Reitzes, a computer industry analyst at Lehman Brothers.
That raises a question: Is cost the only reason to buy this neither-fish-nor-fowl device?
Some people may focus on the weight…