- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
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For a hot minute, I had a 9-inch screen Dell laptop that could barely run Windows 7.
These small form factor PCs were pretty cool at the time, I remember loving the little thing.
A good stepping stone product, but netbooks weren’t destined to last long. Beyond the rosie tint of nostalgia, it was a pretty impractical device. Good enough display for DVD video, but no dvd drive or enough onboard storage to handle a selection of movies (at an acceptable encoding for the time, at least). Big enough to require a flat surface or a lap to type on but not powerful enough to justify it, and a very cramped typing surface at that.
Eventually they got replaced by tablets/convertibles, large phones, and ultrabooks. And all much better platforms in all ways, IMO.
I think you’re missing the key thing that netbooks did. Specifically: new, cheap, low power, and mobile cheap computing.
It didn’t matter how underpowered it was. Prior to the original netbook, the ASUS EEE 7", the alternative cheapest new computer you could buy was $600-$700. There was second hand computers cheaper, but they were a grab bag of reliability or results of abuse from the previous unknown owner.
These days that same niche is filled with $100 smartphones and $25 SoC comptuers like Raspberry Pi, but back then the EEE was a game changer for buying a computer, any computer, new for cheap.
Many of those other devices you mentioned had a market because the cheap netbook proved the market existed and was under served.
I was writing up a pretty similar comment at the same time… I totally agree here.
I’d say they were more killed by Chromebooks than anything else. They were both cheap, generally small, and fulfilled approximately the same use cases. Chromebooks basically just did what ASUS was trying to do but better, and with more choices in models.
The one thing is finding 7 inch Chromebooks was harder, they landed more around 10 or 11 so they were more after the larger EEEs, but IMO that was what killed them.
I’d agree with most of this, but I don’t think I’d argue they were ever replaced by anything else, just that the use case is too narrow.
Tablets are generally larger, have flappy keyboards if keyboards at all, are way more expensive, don’t have a built in mouse and often don’t support mice well, and they run a mobile OS, not a desktop OS. They are very different products solving very different problems. If you argue netbooks were just for playing movies, sure, but that’s not how I viewed them at all, especially since there were portable DVD players in the same form factor available for many years before netbooks existed. If that was the use case, there’d be no reason to run windows or have a keyboard.
I don’t see how they replace a large phone at all - a large phone is a much smaller screen and fits in your pocket. And makes calls. And is a touch screen. And has mobile internet access. They’re no where near the same thing.
Ultra books I think is the closest “replacement” here, but I’d argue it’s more of an evolution and/or a hybridization with a regular laptop.
I’d actually argue Chromebooks were the killer here. They still take notes well, are portable, cheap, have first party mouse support, are generally smaller and lighter weight, and are more type-able than both netbooks and tablets.
I hated mine, just to balance the prior comment.
At the time there was no other way to get on the internet on the move than this except laptops which were really expensive then. This thing with a USB UMTS modem was just the coolest shit.
Lol, Dell had a tiny laptop in the late 90’s,was pretty slick. External CD and floppy. Ran NT4 great, and Win2k pretty well from what I recall.
HP had their “book” series then (850/650?), with a pop-out mouse. LOVED that thing. Ran 95, I think. Two PCCARD hot swap bays, double stack, so you could run 2 hard drives.
I remember the loud as fuck little fans and the barely running windows 7
I still have my Eee 901 sitting around with my collection of old tech. It actually booted up a couple years ago when I last checked it! Used the crap out of it back in college for computer science classes, since all I really needed was a terminal.
The netbook era was right when I was getting into PC tech stuff. Had a dell mini 10 hackentosh/windows dual boot setup. Also remember trying to run the web version of Minecraft on it and needing to stick the netbook into my mini fridge freezer to precool it for longer playtimes before it would thermal throttle. What a weird time.
My 12’’ was the great computer that was with me most of the time I was in university. Great little machine and portable as fuck.
I was the build engineer that assembled the OS for these things between 2008-2010. It was a Debian based Linux distro with a custom built desktop and other custom built software, and it my memory serves my right, it was using the IceWM window manager.
I loved my eee 1000. For about a year it was my only computer after my desktop died. It didn’t run Windows very well but Arch (btw I don’t use arch anymore) ran great with Xfce. But a 3lb laptop with 6 hour battery life was unheard of at the time.
I think it’s important, that these machine existed when they did, but they were so awful. My mom had an ASUS S6, which was basically an EeePC but with a fancy shell, and it was embarrassingly underpowered for the chassis it was in
My 701 with 2gb ram and extended battery still works. I used to go wardriving with that thing!
I still have one of those in the basement. No idea if it works, though. It was really awesome in its day.
I wish these would come back. I loooove tiny PCs, and use the smallest everything I can get almost everywhere. Small phones, Small cars, Small computers.
The GPD Win has everything I want, but I can’t afford the $1400 they want for the 10". I miss these being available for the $100-$200 mark.
Try AliExpress.
