Archive for May 13th, 2009
Some retailers experienced a 30% netbook return rate
Posted by The Right Guy in Hardware, Intel on May 13th, 2009
Can’t blame anyone but themselves
During an Intel investor meeting Tuesday, the company’s head of marketing said netbooks cost some retailers dearly last summer, as they experienced huge return rates due to misinformative marketing on their part.
“In the first period–June, July, August of last year, there were some in the retail channels that were shipping (netbooks) as notebooks,” said Sean Maloney. “They were running ads that had a continuum of notebooks and had this Netbooky thing in there, it was called a notebook. They had very high return rates and a couple of these guys had return rates in the 30 percent range, which is a disaster.”
So, basically, they were to blame, not Intel. Maloney claims Intel later approached the retail chains and advised them to market netbooks differently, clearly state up front what they can and can’t do, and this seems to have remedied the problem.
More here.
Windows 7 starter and Home likes Atoms
Posted by The Right Guy in Uncategorized on May 13th, 2009
Future ones
Intel has found out that its future generation Atoms will be able to run at least two versions of Windows 7.
We are talking about Pine-Trail M, a single-core Atom with an integrated IGP and Pine-Trail D, a dual-core Atom scheduled for Q4 2009 nettop (small desktop) platform. Pine-Trail M is a new CPU for netbooks and it comes in Q1 2010.
Microsoft and Intel found that Windows 7 starter and Home basic will run well on these two CPUs and the ultra mobile Menlow platform.
Intel still doesn´t know if Windows 7 will officially run on existing Atom CPUs and platforms, probably due to the bad graphics that is part of 945GSE chipset.