Hold that netbook purchase, study says you’ll regret it

In the great next hope for the PC industry, the darling netbooks are evoking an unfriendly response from users. The study, performed by Biz360, says netbook owners are increasingly unhappy with their purchase citing multiple reasons for their dissatisfaction. Many of these points are trade-offs to get the price low enough to spark buyers to buy.

This is how you study?

Biz360 culls their data from reviews left on websites, such as Best Buy, CNET, Newegg, PC World, Amazon and other large retailers. It might be interesting to note that most of these sites do not enforce a policy that only actual product owners can submit reviews. This leaves the door open to potential unsavory reviews by competing companies (now called, “pulling a Belkin“).

Getting what you asked for

Topping the list of unsavory elements is performance. The study theorizes that years of desktop PC experience has set netbooks up for failure but cites “performance” mentioned predominately negative.

“The results of the social media analysis indicate that there is a lot of opportunity for improvement across the board for Netbook products. Netbook manufacturers also face a significant challenge with consumers whose expectations are based on years of desktop pc usage,” said Stephen Foster, senior director of analyst services at Biz360.

The study says based on its evidence, netbook owners are unhappy with their netbook’s overall performance.

Flawed thinking?

Those darn reviews. Everyone that has ever left a comment somewhere at one time thought, “but what do I know?” Indeed, many of us rely on these indicators to make purchasing decisions. We’ll toss out the ones where the writer was clearly motivated by Apple-fanboyism or had an axe to grind for one reason or another, but many we’ll take at face value.

This study simply measures those indicators many of us use to make purchasing decisions. That doesn’t mean it is any more reliable than any of those comments though. So take this with a grain or two of salt. Flawed data will lead to flawed conclusions.

If manufacturers are following this advice, it might explain why what we thought was the core component of the netbook category (cheap) is being dropped and more $500+ models are coming down the line. They simply want to plug this performance “issue”.

Read: [Study based on hearsay]