Sure, but for most people they are functionally equivalent, even more so once they finally get android apps fully implemented. You can also usually install Linux on a chromebook if you really want to.
kidthorazine I'd stick with my £180 Windows and Android tablet with a nice 1080P screen, detachable keyboard, touchscreen, 4GB of RAM and 1.4GHz atom (might not sound so great, but streams 1080P video and plays any android game and some light Windows games)
I used Netbooks as diagnostic tools. They're never going to be a gaming PC, but for Office (I wouldn't do Visio on one, though) or small and light in coffee shops, hotels or comms cabinets connected via serial to a Cisco switch, they definitely had their place as long as you remembered what they were. I last netbook has 8Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD in it and so still runs reasonably.
Looking back, I was glad netbook was a thing. It was never comfortable to type or browse internet with it, but it is a one big step for a cheaper and more decent subnotebooks
Disagree - I had an NB200 for 8 years and even at it's demise, the battery lasted 5 hrs. I brought it around the world with me (literally) and it has been stout and durable. I traded it away to a Cuban for a ride to Holguin instead of paying fare - his son is a teacher and he was thrilled with it. Having said that, I'm pleased with my X230.
@@TheKdrerikCheck out my other channel - The Kombinator, I do all sorts of old AT computer stuff there. But basically, the laptop was with me in France, Poland (probably 20 times at least), Russia (all of it via Trans Siberian), Korea, Japan, China, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand (new years 2014!) all over the former Yugoslav states, Hungary, Germany, the US (NY/OH mostly). Probably a few other places I missed, but I bet it's still around in Cuba, where I left it with a very grateful teacher. It actually ran Windows 7, but I reformatted it with Mint.
I used one for years as my only computer, albeit a rougher time in my life. It is still my favorite though, I sold my original every day driver years ago, but I bought a replacement and still mess with it occasionally, keeping it running. It taught me patience that's for sure. I was using it for torrenting and watching movies lol.
First, I want to thank you for this podcast because it brings my memories back! I loved it and you are absolutely right in every aspect and word. Here is my story: I used Acer Aspire One 751h 2GB, 160GB HDD, Z520 1.33Ghz in 2011 summer. High school life was waiting for me. I bought this (asked my dad of course lol) because I could not use my sister's laptop. It was too much personal for her and it was not like family computer. I bought this cuz I was the smallest in my class and I found this machine suit for me, for my fingers, school bag etc. When I bought this and went to car, waiting my parents coming back from bank, used it and found it soooooooo slow! I could not say anything to my dad because my sister, my dad warned me that "Look, it does not have DVD unit, it is small computer, like really 'small' in every aspect." and lemme tell you that my dad is not using any computer in his life. I knew DVD lifespan was going to end so I really did not care. When we came to home, I told my mom and she was like "I knew it, why you did not listen your sister and father?". WTH! We have tried to refund but of course it is rejected. It was display product by the way and nobody have bought this for a year. The only laptop I loved was this one because it was 11.6" not 10 inch and it was THIN. (Later on Ultrabooks came on with higher specs and higher price and I was sad.) Unfortunately I sacrificed N atom CPU for this big screen, slow netbook. I saw Asus EEE PC on the net and checked all wiki model list sites in 2010 but there was not chance to buy it. A month later, in different tech store, I saw HP DM-1 11.6" minibook and it had better CPU and GPU and it was like real semi-laptop thing. The look and the specs. Gosh I was SOOOOOOO SAD when I saw that! Anyway, I formatted PC to Windows 7 Starter, updated BIOS, it become better. This minibook thought me patient with it's speed and all Windows features, tweaks so I know them like my name right now. I was closing some services and all the other tweaks and it was giving me some speed. Some specific flash player version to run my DDTank, Transformice game smooth, not pepperflash etc. With HTML 5 coming, it become harder to watch RUclips vids since HTML5 was using CPU like hell. But I really loved this netbook for any cost because this was my, FINALLY, first personal computer. I bought this so my sister could not take it from me but it did not change the fact, she took it from me for some months then gave it back. I have tried to use it for nostalgia and due of needing a second computer but CPU was bottlenecking the SSD that I put in. Right now, it sleeps on my right with in the bag forever. I won't sell it in any way, any cost. And I want to add something, In 2018-2019, I was looking for tea cup from Edwardian ages. I was walking in the backstreets of Taksim, Beyoğlu. I saw one semi-café, semi-collectioner old building and the front was like french cafés. There was only one customer in the café side which she was using minibook, can be Asus EEE PC 10 inch, and she was typing in the DOS or something. I found this so excited and at the same time weird because seeing a woman with fashion glass, dress, nails and with a minibook, DOS not a typical/everyday thing. I think she was novel writer because I got that vibe from her and found this very interesting because I have never seen a minibook in real life for past eight years since 2012-ish times.
@@new-lviv I remember texts on the screen. Very big font and plain background with menu bar. It was kind of like TV teletext. There is no way that it can be Linux. It is one of my rare memory that I cannot forget the person nor story.
I think we're kind of seeing them come back in the form of Chromebooks. I do remember them and my wife laughing at them because of their small size. The netbook was also geared more to the student say in elementary. I remember seeing some at one of the schools I worked at as a custodian.
Supportable notebook computers come back every 5-10 years. Let’s just hope that they are not too small and have shitty hardware. An 11 to 14 inch display with decent ram and a decent processor would suffice for such a computer.
I got one of those as my first self-bought computer, an Acer Aspire One 110L that retailed at 229€ in Germany at the time. Had it for four years and still think back fondly. That device got me started in blogging.
the fall of netbooks from my perspective was people expected too much from them because they thought of them as "real" computers. i love netbooks because i know what i can expect to do with it and it does those things great. i still get about 9 hours of worktime on my netbooks original battery. the wintel specification for a netbook was 7"-11.6" screen 1GHz-1.9GHz CPU(as low as 800MHz if delivered with linux) single core (or dual core on later ones) 512MB-1GB RAM(as low as 256MB if delivered with linux) generally upgradeble to 2GB integrated webcam no opticaldrive fully legacy free
That’s a good assessment. As a writer and a student I really only used mine to browse a few sites and to run my office suite and it was perfectly suited for that job. I think anyone who was going to try to do any kind of serious gaming, coding, or rendering would have known better than to try it on a netbook anyway.
My little netbook (that everyone laughed at) helped ship an Xbox 360 software fix. Beta testers were seeing connectivity issues that we couldn't reproduce on the fast corporate network. We were also in the middle of an office renovation/move, so all of our normal PCs were boxed up and inaccessible. All we had was a single conference room with some 360 devkits and shared PCs. I saved the day with my little ASUS eeePC netbook (1Ghz, 2Gb RAM, Ubuntu), because I was able to set it up as a network bridge: devkit > Ethernet > netbook > USB > Palm Pre > 3G. Then I was able to run Wireshark so we could capture and debug network traces. That led to a fix released to unblock the beta testers. BTW, I got 12h+ battery life out of that thing. My tech friends may have scoffed at it, but it was a tank, and my writer friends loved it.
I actually own a netbook and I kind of like and use it! My father bought one about seven years ago but didn't use it. Some years later, I wanted to have a computer I can use to train my programming skills during my summer vacation, where I had no access to my proper PC. I asked him and since then, it's mine. Originally, it had Windows XP installed, but it was absolutely too slow to use. I installed Debian on it, which worked fine and does still. I used it to write some C++ programs for Linux and although the keyboard and the screen are very small (which means that you can only use Gedit and a terminal since an IDE is too big), I got incredible things done. From a technical point of view, this thing is horrible, but when you lower your needs, you can use almost anything, even netbooks!
I have been looking back into netbooks lately, and I love mine. I use it with a Logitech F310 controller and emulate N64, PS1, SNES, etc. with no issues.
OLPC started it all in my opinion. Seymour Papert and Nicholas Negroponte wanted to make an affordable laptop for children to learn. Asus followed soon with their Eee PC which was at first targeted for education but unlike OLPC, Asus went for their distribution channels and succeeded. OLPC you had only an option to donate one and get one for yourself but never as retail. The first generation of netbooks ran on Intel Celeron CPUs or even VIA C6, the Atom came *after* because of the success, also Microsoft didn't want to license XP for new machines as Vista was already out but seeing the success they changed their mind. Linux was preinstalled on all first gen netbooks and some stores had some funny "Attention, Linux!!!" stickers.
I only know that when I was programming and I asked for advice to prof. She did not listen to me, because she was fascinated by the Eee PC, my companions, and I a very common notebook 😔
I never owned a netbook but I have something similar to it , it costed €250 and it had a miserable 2gb of ram and ,stay with me, 64 GB of storage ,that I upgraded to 512 gb, an Intel celeron , obviously, the funny part is that it still is my daily driver 🙂 P.S.=it is a notebook that's why it is similar but not a netbook
Late to the party, but I bought a netbook to complement my PC in 2009 when going to university. An LG X120, it had a "Smart On" feature that was basically a separate power button you could dual boot into a light linux for quick tasks. Used it to take notes, write papers, and watch movies on. Took it apart a while ago, planning on using the screen for pi gaming system. I have fond memories of that little thing.
Chromeboxes are pretty easy to re-flash and run Windows on, if your teacher can get permission to do so. www.reddit.com/r/chrultrabook/ Once converted, a Chromebox is basically just a small form factor desktop PC.
The school I work at school still uses them. In NSW Public schools it was 2009-2013 I was part of the support staff for the roll-out at that time. Tablets iPads and the like are still to expensive for public schools to buy in large numbers and are not subsidised, however windows PC's/Laptops and Mac's are. We get points to purchase them for free every year. Personally I prefer that the students use any kind of computer over a tablet as it develops their computing skills. Hence the netbooks still get used quite a bit. Tablets are excellent but ultimately at some stage they will need to use a computer for work or study and having and understanding of how a desktop OS works is important IMO
I actually had a pre-netbook mini laptop which I bought second-hand in 2000. It was a Compaq Contura Aero 4/33C. A tiny 486 and I used it mostly for university work and screwing around. In 2001 I actually got a PCMCIA 802.11b card for it (WiFi before it was called WiFi) and could use the Internet around my house without cables, so this little thing was really ahead of its time!
I had an EEE 900. Loved that little thing, 8.9" with a Celeron 900 and 1GB of ram running WinXp. It did exactly what I wanted, surfed the web, played older games and was a joy to use. Replaced it with an HP netbook several years later but it just wasn't the same.
Got my hp mini around the beginning of 2011 or so. I still find it very portable and useful to this day. It might not be quick with the atom N455 and 2gb of RAM but its got a 250 gb HDD so I can fit lots of media and other files on it while on the go. Still get up to 5 hrs of battery with it after all this time. Never getting rid of it even though I got a new ultrabook at the beginning of this year . Its been my faithful buddy for too long
Your timescale is a little screwy, by the time netbooks became popular barely anyone was using dialup and more tech oriented people where already getting home wifi. The boom in publicly available WiFi and 4g where what allowed Netbooks to become popular in the first place.
Yea, by the early 2000's I didn't know anyone with a dialup and my parents were on cable since the late 90's.Most business also had WiFI by the early 2000's.
Great topic as always. I've always wondered how popular netbooks were in the US compared to Europe. I think part of the appeal was the fact it was really affordable laptop that was easy to carry around and didn't run Vista. I think they in large part brought affordable mobile computing to people and served as early "look-up devices" you could keep on your coffee table or wherever. Together with USB 3G modems which also saw popularity at the time you could take the Internet with you wherever you went without breaking the bank. My brother used one until 2014 when he inherited a MacBook from me. He used the netbook as a replacement for a Pentium 4 era Celeron desktop. He kept the monitor from desktop, but he really liked how the netbook fit under the display when not in use. I still pick up used ones if I see them really cheap, mainly for the HDDs which are a great fit for compact Windows 98 machines (Win9x doesn't natively support drives larger than 137 GB).
I'd prefer a Windows OS, and you don't see that a lot among the smaller size "netbooks" these days. You either have to get the smallest laptop..which is what, 13 inches? Or buy a Windows Surface, and the price is no where near the old school Netbook entry.
We deployed a lot of them. They were used a lot in business meetings. At the time regular laptops were heavy, bulky, expensive, etc.. Netbooks were small and light. They were great for note taking, or looking things up on the internet.
netbooks are still quite popular among university students in France who cannot afford a macbook air. it makes sense since they use it just for taking notes and they need to carry them around. Also, customers are less prone to changing their hardware in France than in the US.
These new age netbooks still exist. The HP Stream and such. There is now an even stranger middle ground thought, at least by dell. They have there low end 11" and 13' crapbooks with the 32gigs of ECC and 2 gigs of ram. But Also have there lowest end full laptop using a Celeron with slightly more ram and real hard drive but no disk drive that is a 14" laptop. I think the biggest problems with these things is that they are the absolute bare minimum to run what they can run and its simply not enough to ACTUALLY run anything. The Windows XP ones were best due to the fact that XP could run well on 1 gig of ram, Or the option to install a lightweight more user friendly Linux Distro was great. But the actual Linux based models they released were terrible as they stripped down even more because that bare minimum was lower.
The problem with the HP Stream and similar smaller laptops are that they may be non-upgradeable. A netbook could be flipped by swapping the HDD for SDD and then maxing out the RAM to give it untapped power. These modern affordable netbooks usually have soldered in storage and RAM. That and the build quality is absolutely abhorrent.
@@Mageman17 Yes, very true. I liked Netbooks more then I do these modern low cost notebooks. Back when they came out Netbooks did exactly what was expected of them, Web Browsing (in a much less script heavy web mind you) and basic and simple tasks. Ive had people buy these HP streams and want to return them because they can hardly run Windows 10 or updates alone eat the base storage of the machine and now they cant save anything.
I purchased an Acer netbook in 2009 November and my experience was great. I was fascinated to see such small machine run windows XP just like a big computer would. I would download movies, watch RUclips, play some retro games like Mario and it would run all programs that I would want it to. My experience was good enough but you are right that people didn't want to buy netbook as they were apprehensive about its power and capacity. None of my friends bought it even though I told them that it does the job well for our purpose as we didn't have anything heavy to through on it anyway. I still own one very old samsung netbook from 2012. It obviously struggles as per today's demand like zoom, etc.
Before netbooks was “sub-notebooks” like the Toshiba libretto series in the late 90s. I still have mine and use it to interface with my Gameboy Pocket Camera
I still miss my sony vaio 505 and c1... C1 was cute, but I managed real coding on the 505 once I got Debian on it.. Finally got rid of them after not being able to source newer batteries
i once owned a netbook, Asus EEE PC, and even managed to install and run Adobe Creative Suite CS3 on the thing. When my desktop broke down i even managed to complete flash animation on mine. It was fragile but i loved it while it lasted. Managed to become prolific in typing on that keyboard.
I got a netbook in the mid 2000s when I was in middle school. It actually worked pretty great for school and the games I played, but it slowed down VERY fast. I still have it, I'm hoping to restore it to a usable state!
I bought a netbook of the second phase with an Intel N3540 chip, 4 GB RAM and a 500 GB HDD a few years ago. Still using it as my retro gaming device, when I'm not at home and of course for browsing the web. Works fine.
I used my for 8 years, since highschool up to getting degree in electrical engineering. It was compact, and yet real windows computer. With monitor, mouse and keyboard it was fully usable computer. CAD, spice, programming, Word, PDFs, it was good enough.
I still have a Dell Mini 9 with OSX installed. I bought another one for my sister, also running OSX which we used to Skype each other during her pregnancy, back in the day. I seldom ever use the Mini 9 anymore...only to change sounds on my Nord, but it still has a fond place in my heart.
I had an 11.6" Acer Aspire netbook with an AMD C-60 APU - that chip fascinated me and I thought it might enable some light gaming. Alas, the CPU was too underpowered. But I remember having a fantastic experience on it once I installed Ubuntu - it was on that machine that the Unity interface clicked with me. And the HUD feature (being able to search and execute menu commands via keyboard shortcut) was a gamechanger for me. Since I bicycled everywhere at the time, I really appreciated the portability and used it for notetaking during lectures. Keyboard was usable, and relying on keyboard shortcuts, especially with Ubuntu Unity, mitigated issues with small screen and small trackpad as I could focus on the content instead of wasting screen space displaying controls. It appealed to the minimalist in me for sure. One thing I remember fondly was sitting at a Starbucks digging into a new album - I pulled up lyrics on a text based browser via terminal and I was immersed in the music - no ads, flashing graphics, or anything to distract me. Computing on such limited resources was cathartic. Unfortunately, the netbook was stolen from my car, and I never bothered replacing it. I attempted to fill that portable lecture taking niche with a Chromebook (also from Acer), but I rarely use it as, on top the CPU being too limiting, I find Chrome OS to be not as feature complete as I need as a post secondary student. I miss the netbooks.
I have an Asus EEE PC1001PX (10.1') I got second hand broken really cheap (€40) about 5 years ago, I fixed it (faulty WiFi board and cracked shell from being dropped... new WiFi board (€10) and some epoxy for the shell fixed the problems) and downgraded the OS to Windows XP (came with 7), and I still love it to this day for a small thing I can put in my bag that's cheap and simply works great. I was debating about getting one of those glorified tablets with the built in keyboard, but really, for what I use it for and how often I use it, I really can't see the point of spending the money on one. So, I upgraded the RAM on the Asus from the standard 1gb to a 2gb module, and I plan to change the hard drive for an SSD drive and going back up to Windows 7 with it, and that will probably give me another 5 years of use out of it at least for a pretty small investment! Also, being one of the larger size netbooks, I don't find it uncomfortable to use... USB mouse and the keyboard is about 90% the size of a normal keyboard which you get used to no problem. The screen resolution is small nowadays, but at 1024x800 it isn't really that small, and it came with a 160gb hard drive so it wasn't that lacking there either (I'll put a 120 SSD in it). Battery was no good, only lasted an hour max, but replacement batteries are about €25 for it now. I can see why they have phased out due to demands of people that want more, but it doesn't mean I'm going to get rid of mine that quickly!!
Andrea Woodvine I am not sure how great they are, but you can find several $99 Windows 10 or Windows 10/Android Dual Boot tablets on Amazon. That is a Windows license until 2020! And perhaps with a keyboard, you can have your own budget Microsoft Surface. The specs don't seem all that bad, either.
Sincerely, I'm not too hung up on Windows 10, especially for the few things I do on a netbook. And really, I've tried the glorified tablets, and I don't know, they just don't feel the same for some reason, I can't explain it. I have a 7" tablet which I use for other things, and I've tried that with a keyboard and mouse, but it just doesn't feel right, something's off. My Asus has served me well and has been very faithful to me, so I think showing a little appreciation to it would be fine hehehehe Besides, Amazon is hard to find anything at that price that would ship to where I live, it's like they keep the stupid priced things reserved for us "third worlders" xd
Andrea Woodvine Oh, Amazon doesn't fully support your location? That sucks. I do get exasperated with Windows 10 at times, but as a mobile operating system, I try to give it some slack. After all, Android doesn't seem to be any better with intrusive spying or updates. But it comes down to preference in the end. I think that Windows 10 is worse for keyboard and mouse than Windows XP or Windows 7, if that is your preferred method of input. The user interface seems too "chunky", if that even make sense. It's pretty apparent where Microsoft wants it to be touch-optimized. But I'm sure it would be nicer to use a device you worked on rather than something that was just churned out of a factory.
I think there is still some time left in Windows 7, and even when support ends for it, it doesn't really matter, because it all runs down to what I'm using the netbook for really... Windows XP still runs fine on it eventhough there's no support anymore. As for Amazon, the shear number of things I see on it and then comes up "not available in Spain", or "we have it over here at this special price of 300% for your location"... I guess that serves me right for living in the Banana Republic of Europe heheheh
Andrea Woodvine I certainly haven't had any problems with XP yet. As long as I am exclusively browsing RUclips, I should be fine. I don't think that cybercriminals are that interested in encrypting my sample pictures. Anyway, good day.
I bought a Netbook too. It did me for a year in business school. It was lightweight and would run Word and Photoshop. Which was what I needed it for. I sold it on to a family member after the course was finished though and they still use it as their main computer. Though I"ve asked them multiple times to get a new one. I think I bought mine new in 2009 or something like that. They mostly use it for just for surfing the web and watching RUclips and typing up the occasional document. Which is what it's good for.
@@keewanalt It would run much better on linux- my mid range pc from 2007 on linux could play hd video at 30fps with 70% cpu usage with the h264ify extension! I used lubuntu and peppermint os if you were wondering if you could still use it.
My Acer Aspire One 10.1" got me through college getting my CIS degree. Upgraded it to 2GB RAM and it ran all of my programming and office software flawlessly. Loved that machine. Easy to carry to class for notes... much better than paper!
Im the person you hoped didn't still exist! :-P I still have a eeePC 700, but I have "upgraded" it to a Acer Aspire One (ZG5) running with an upgraded 1GB of RAM and a 1TB Seagate Firecuda SSHD. I solely run Linux distro on my netbooks. It's not my daily machine, but I think my netbooks still serve a great purpose as a highly portable and moderatly capable penetration testing machine.
Linux definitely runs better on older hardware. :) I have my dad setup with openSUSE Leap with KDE on a core 2 duo system with 4 gigs of RAM. It used to have 2 gigs, but still ran well enough for his use.
Levi Guiney Oh they do eh? Try running anything except puppy Linux on a Pentium 4. Windows 2000 is still better performance and stability wise than Linux.
I have a second generation 64 bit Atom based netbook (Toshiba NB305) from 2010 that was given to me by my neighbor. I installed a cheap SSD and Arch Linux and it runs well enough to take along on holiday to check email and back up photos. I never worry about theft or breakage with such an old machine so it is a great travel companion.
i do fine with used sub-notebooks rn i am using a thinkpad x220 tablet from 2012, is is quite small with 12" size but still fells rugged, fast enough for the regular browsing and easy to work on. -lara
I was a poor student so when they had a laptop for just 350 euros and it was coming with linux, it was really useful for me. With Xubuntu, the Atom processor was not as bad and I could get a lot of programming work done for my classes. So, I don't remember them as that terrible - without the netbook trend, my computer science career might have gone differently.
It's kind of sad, my EEEpc runs Debian Linux great. The moment you open up a browser the three ring circus of multimedia and JavaScript absolutely slays it. The web needs to be burned down and rebuilt at this point but you'll never get that done because everything is built on it.
When Netbooks were at their "getting cheaper but still pretty relevant" stage I was about ten years old. I was in love with these little machines as by 2009 they all looked very nice. I begged all year "jokingly" to my parents about getting one every time we went past the electronics section of walmart. Eventually to my absolute surprise as we were tight on cash at the time that christmas they got me one. It was a later Asus eee PC and it was just gorgeous and snappy as could be with its atom processor and 4gb of ram. I loved that machine, I've been searching for a lookalike on eBay for a while.
I owned 2 Netbooks and I'll buy a used one sometime again. I Think they're good travel machines for people like m who take a lot of photos. You can store a lot of images, check and do - basic - edits on the go.
Hey Colin. I have a Lenovo S10e. I bought it brand new around the time you bought your first Dell netbook which was around 2009 i guess. It has the Atom 270 CPU. I have just watched this video just after New Years day 2022...and I have to say I still use my netbook! It originally came with 1GB RAM to which I maxed it out to 1.5GB as that is the most the board would take. Its still on the original HDD, a 160GB platter drive. I have long ditched WinXP and I am currently running Lubuntu 18.04 - the last 32-bit build of an Ubuntu Linux distro. Prior to Lubuntu I ran Ubuntu. It does struggle a bit for some tasks but for its current purpose, speed is not a priority. I do like the history you gave here in this video. I dont know how i missed this video but rather late than never! Have a good one Colin...Hope 2022 is good to us all.
I love my Acer netbook. It's small, perfect for carrying around, browsing the web, using facebook, youtube and google properly (I personally don't like touch screens). Just clean install windows 7 and you're good to go. Even in 2017.
I bought myself an MSi Wind U135DX back in 2011. 10.1” netbook with 1GB of RAM, 160GB drive, an Atom N455 CPU, and was running Windows 7 Starter. It was slow, clunky, and underpowered, but I loved it so much. I was using it as a backup machine with Windows on it since my main desktop was a Linux machine, and Windows was definitely holding it back a little. It didn’t take me long to wipe the drive for Linux, as I’ve done for every PC I’ve owned since 2009, and it was so much better after that. I sold it to a friend for cheap in 2015, and didn’t really miss it until a few years ago, when I decided to get myself an Asus Vibobook E203 to get that tiny laptop experience back again, and I loved that thing, too. Slightly bigger at 11.6”, 4GB of RAM, but only 64GB of eMMC storage. It was pleasant to use until the keyboard started failing, and now the flash storage spits out bad sector errors for a large portion of the drive. It still works, kinda, but I already replaced it with a ThinkPad x280, which might just be my favorite laptop I’ve ever owned, and I’ve only had it a month.
Mine was extremely useful, and actually replaced the Dell laptop it was supposed to compliment. I quite enjoyed the challenge of getting the most out of it's meagre abilities. It was particularly useful as a system to use when working on others, very light, and portable. I think they're irrelevant nowadays when I can buy an older ultra book like the one I'm using now, refurbished for netbook money.
I had an Aspire One (can't remember the exact model). i loved that little thing. slow, very compared to today. thanks for posting (even if i'm a few years late lol)
Great podcast man. I remember when I purchased my first and only netbook, I loved it but again it was limited . My Netbook was an Acer one aspire blue, great machine I used this device for 4 yrs
I've just always been a fan of Lenovo's X series line with their 12 inch display and full mobile CPUs they really are the best you can get in a computer that small... i still use my x220
The X's were (are?) nice machines. Though not currently in use, my X60 still worked, when I last tried booting it a few months ago. And though specs obviously moved on, the design and build is still nice 🙂
I have an HP Mini. I didn't actually have to pay the full cost on it. I walked into a cellphone store one day, and they were having a netbook promotion! The Mini came equipped with a cellular modem, (it had a SIM card slot behind the battery). The cost was subsidized with what I was paying for the data plan. Despite it's shortcomings, I liked that it came equipped with full range of ports (2 or 3 USB ports, SD card slot, VGA, and Ethernet). This one came with a mechanical hard drive, which was a pretty generous 160 GB (there's still 20-30 GB of space)! This one came with Windows 7 on it. I also remember that it had very poor battery life. It didn't take long until it completely refused to charge. It then became dependent on being plugged in whenever I had to use it. Then the power jack became defective. I ended taping the plug into place for a while until I finally got sick of it, opened up the computer and soldered a pigtail with a new DC jack onto it. I used it for many years as a travel computer, as it so much nicer having a moderately sized keyboard versus poking away at the tiny smartphone touchscreen. It also worked well for DJing, and it's most recently been used as a hard disk audio recorder by connecting a USB lapel mic to it. The power supply stopped working a few months ago. It's now sitting on my bench awaiting service...
i got an EEEPC 1215B, it's kind of technically a netbook (and it is a EeePc) but it has a 12" screen, upgradable RAM and HDD, and an AMD E450 APU, it's been great for many years, the APU could run actual 3D games to some extent and everything, and it was 330€new... but now? finding a cheap 12" laptop with ok performance for that price? i just don't see it anywhere and that sucks :/
I still have my hp mini 311 netbook I purchased when I was in college. I love the little thing, I bought it back when I was in college for taking notes but now I just keep it loaded with retro games to play on the go. Well let me expand my story, the netbook was purchased around 2009 when I was a freshmen in college. By this time I was tired of lugging around my old 15in laptop during high school, so I decided to purchase a light weight laptop for college. I bought the hp mini 311 netbook because it fit my needs perfectly. It was very light (relative to the time), it had sufficient power for what I needed for taking notes and browsing the web (and with nvidia ion it could play HD video, starcraft, and retro games quite well). I bought the thing fully aware of the limitations of the device, but for my needs those specifications were acceptable, and the netbook has served me well since what I needed it for did not demand more than what it was capable of.
You make it sound as if there is no middle path - running Windows on a Chromebook. There is, and it describes the machine I'm using right now. *Chrultrabook* is a really stupid name, but that's what they're called.
It runs exactly like a standard laptop of the same specs. The only sacrifice is having to use Search as an overlay key because Chromebooks are missing some keys like Insert/Delete and PgUp/PgDn and F11 and F12. Battery life is fairly acceptable for running a "heavyweight" OS, about what you'd expect from a native Windows laptop of the same age and size. If it's a bit sluggish at times, which it can be, that's on the Celeron 2955U. It does pretty well on average though. The SSD that it came with was plenty fast, like 400 MB/s both ways. The problem is that it was a 16 GB SSD, and while it is possible (just) to install Windows 10 on a 16 GB drive, it is quite difficult to keep it operating properly for the long haul. After paying $91 for the C720, I had to drop another $80 for a 250GB SSD - and it just happens to have the fastest disk transfer speeds I've ever gotten from a SATA interface. That includes my desktop PC and its Samsung 840 EVO. My little Chromebook's disk speed eclipses that. Right now running Windows does require the use of unsigned drivers for some of the hardware (thus testsigning has to be turned on), but that is because certification of drivers costs money and they want to make sure they get it right the first time. It would be fair to call the process of converting an amenable Chromebook to a Windows capable machine mature, but not yet polished. (Not every machine is amenable, and the developers don't bother with the impossible while there's remaining low-hanging fruit.) If Windows Experience Index scores hold any meaning for you: Processor: 5.7 Memory (RAM): 5.9 Graphics: 5.1 Gaming graphics: 9.9 Primary hard disk 7.5 Yeah, I'd say it runs really well. No /s.
Scott Sakurai "gaming graphics: 9.9" I haven't used Windows experience that much but I would hope that isn't supposed to be on an out of 10 score :P I can't imagine chromebook integrated graphics being a "9.9 out of 10" for gaming. Unless the benchmark game is Minesweeper haha
Wrote my PhD-Thesis on a Dell Inspiron Mini Netbook using Slackware Linux, LaTeX and the Vim editor. Worked like a charm. Cannot understand folks who complain about "lack of performance". Nowadays I use a Intel-Celeron Thin-Client PC for my creative work, running the FreeBSD operating system. I love how silent it is (all passively cooled). It is all about the tools you choose.
In the late 90s my buddy had a 128 kbps ISDN line that his dad had installed for work so we would always go to his house to download stuff and use Napster. I was on a 56K modem at the time but I remember very vividly petitioning my parents to get DSL by the year 2000 and that was 1.5 Mb per second down which was a game changer obviously. I love how you describe what it was like to be a consumer using the Internet during this era because many people don’t realize that it was like that it really did require some commitment on your part, you weren’t just connected 24 seven you had to put in some effort and sacrifice to do a “session“ online but those were some of my most productive times using the Internet because of that very fact.
I bought an Acer Aspire One in November of 2008 for using in college during class. I used it off and on up until a couple years ago when I gave it to some friends for their young son to use and learn computers. I started a mini-trend with that machine as I was the first person at my college to have a netbook. I was taking a couple IT classes at the time and the instructors and other students were very interested in the idea of a cheap, mini laptop.
I'm watching this in July, 2023 and not only do I still have a Netbook (Toshiba NB305), I still use it and it runs brilliantly. It's running Windows 7 Home Premium and I maxed out the RAM (2GB LOL) and put in a SSD. The OEM battery is one of the most impressive batteries I've ever seen in a portable device. I've had it since 2009 and it still holds a charge and when shut down completely, will stay charged for literally months. It's still my go-to computer when I travel due to its size and weight.
+Y4123 Then find me a Netbook that can handle 8GB of DDR3L RAM like my Lenovo Thinkpad X131e Chromebook, or one that has a 6th gen Intel Core i5 CPU that's 64bit like the Google Chromebook Pixel, most netbooks where 32bit Intel Celeron, or VIA C7 machines that could only take upwards of 2GB of RAM, with the rare exception of 4GB of ram with only 3.5GB showing as usable due to 32bit limitations. I'll take a modern Chromebook any day of the week over a slower netbook, as with a lot of Chromebooks I can still install Linux, or even in some cases Windows on them if I need to do as such, plus I have a bigger screen size, bigger keyboard, bigger trackpad, or in the case of my Lenovo the famous trackpoint, more modern features like USB 3.0, N/AC WiFi, and HDMI(most netbooks did not have HDMI but only VGA, or DVI outputs). Also if you want to talk about netbooks having more storage you are wrong I currently have a 2.5in WD Blue 500GB HDD in my Lenovo Thinkpad X131e Chromebook, and I could get a 1TB drive if I ever need it, and my Lenovo also full gigiabit Ethernet, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, 3.5mm audio, 720p screen(most netbooks had 1024x768 screen rez), and an SD card slot. So think again when you claim Netbooks are more powerful then Chromebooks. Typed from my Lenovo dualbooted into Linux Mint just because I felt like running LinuxMint XFCE today instead of ChromeOS.
+Y4123 at least learn to spell Crap correctly before trying to troll, and mine is plenty fast for what it is, You may have only used models wit lower end ARM CPU cores, and 2GB of RAM, but compared to devices that run Windows 8, or 10 with around the same specs they are much faster, and more secure. So do some research, and learn before saying all of something is crap, just because you used a lower end model.
My first gen Acer Aspire One did Plex server duty until last week. Running Lubuntu with a 650 gb hdd swap. As long as it could stream without transcoding, it worked fine. Now it is just a print and file server. It's great! Built in UPS, and adequate to run a pair of printers and backs up files on a small home network.
A friend of mine used to have one. I think it too was one of these Asus models but after a year or two it broke and he took it apart. Before that he used to use it as an experimental plattform and even played some games on it. Older PC titles like Shogo or some DOS games. He even had it connected to a bigger monitor via VGA out. it was nice. That thing was quiet, had low power consumption and was small. After it was broken i suggested refurbished Thinkpad laptops to him. I personally have an X200s myself because i needed something that is small but not too crippled. Aside from the missing optical drive (due to it's small formfactor) it is just what i need. A powerful enough compact machine that is capable of running my stuff and that i can use to browse the web. Because THAT is something i just can't do on tablets or smartphones. These devices just suck at browsing. Smartphones even more due to the small screens and flimsy touch screen crap.
I had one. It was my first device with a webcam, and I loved the battery life. After a year or so it suddenly got super slow. I saw a lot of my fellow college students using them. It was a secondary device for me though. I had my primary laptop and used this for taking out with me for light work. My partner dearly misses her eepc. I could have seen being happy to have one in grade school.
I still have mine from 2008 or 2009, I got it as a second PC, and I didn't get it because anyone told me. I write code, and netbooks are adequate for what I do when I don't want to be cooped up. It's sad that netbooks haven't advanced much in 10 years.
I realize this is a year ago, but I just discovered the channel and figured I would comment. I run a small business where all our invoicing and estimates are on site, in people's homes. I started to use a netbook because of the low cost, and small form factor. It would fit in my small briefcase quite comfortably. I upgraded it in 2016 with 2 gigs of ram, 128 gig ssd, and win 10. It's not the snappiest thing going, but it gets the job done. Recently we changed our POS program and went with a tablet as our new mobile POS. I still have the netbook, but it doesn't get much use these days. I only use it to backup my main desktop, simply because I have it, and my backup drive crashed.
I was in university (for the first time) when netbooks became a thing. They made a bit of a splash among students at the time, really so they could get work done on campus and take notes in class. In my circles, the people who bought them were more the tech enthusiasts who had a powerful, self-built PC at home, and just wanted a secondary device. For this purpose, I think they made sense. But, they did just kind of suck too much. Smartphones and tablets hit their stride pretty quickly, and regular laptops, while more expensive, were just so much more functional. I'd argue the most tangible lasting legacy of Netbooks these days is really in Chromebooks. Hell, I seem to remember early Chromebooks being directly related to a few Netbook product lines of the time. Chromebooks seemed to take the basic idea, but threw in an operating system that was much more optimized for the weak hardware, made internal storage basically not matter by assuming you'd be working out of the cloud anyway, and made sure to get the core experience just that bit better to actually be useable (big enough screen with enough resolution, normal keyboard, normal touchpad, etc.)
I'm staring to become nostalgic for these things but they where really bad i blame windows vista and windows xp they where poorly optimized windows 10 is not great but its smooth i think these things would be great with modern tech but most people will just get a lame smartphone or tablet
Don't put windows 10 on a computer from 2007 i ment that windows 10 works well with recent low end hardware compared to windows xp when windows xp came out you could not even run it on a 3000$ computer from 4 years earlier (1997) but windows 10 can run on computer from 2007 and earlier that is like running xp on a 386 computer from 1993
Linux would definitely be better. :) You'll want to look for a distro that's designed for older hardware though. Something like either Lubuntu, or Puppy Linux come to mind.
I bought a netbook in 2009 because I was traveling and my *really* old ThinkPad died. I needed something cheap and light, and it was really the best option for me. I still have it, and it still works. BTW, my girlfriend in college had that Dell at 8:28, and it was always terrible. Thanks for the flashback.
Love these longer length videos. Full histories. Really love playing them in the background while I clean my house. I always learn really cool things. :)
I've used a Dell Inspiron Mini 9,I enjoyed using it,but not around 2008-2009,when I've used it again around 2013-2014...even around 2012,interesting to see a video about these netbooks coming from a respectful chanel like this one.
My 2009 era Acer Aspire One first-gen Netbook is still chugging along, but as a small, cheap print/media server. Mine came with a 160gb conventional hard drive and I swapped it for a 650gb drive I had lying around. I installed a lightweight Linux on it, loaded it with a bunch of stuff, put the Plex server on it, installed drivers for my printers on it, and stashed it in a corner closet with the printers. As a Plex server, it's OK. Updating the library takes a very long time, but it serves content over the LAN without any problem as long as it can play directly. It WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE transcode video. At least not fast enough that you could ever watch something. But it's small, uses almost no power, and has a built-in UPS, so as a little file and print server, it's actually pretty great.
One thing I think you might have overlooked is how easy it is, now, to get a good refurbished machine. About a year ago, I bought a 4-year old laptop with 8 gigs of RAM, a 3.2 GHz Dual-Core i5, and a 128 GB solid-state hard-drive for less than $270. Considering that almost everything was up-gradable and it was business class, it wasn't a bad purchase. After needlessly putting some more RAM in, putting new cooling paste on the processor, and switching to Linux, I was very happy with it.
Yep, I still own and use a netbook daily. I got it in 2011. It is an Acer Aspire One 722-0473. It has the AMD C60 Dual Core processor, 4 GB ram (I upgraded it from 2), AMD Radeon 6290 HD onboard video graphics, a 360GB HD and HDMI out with an 11.6"" screen. I have it connected to a larger monitor so I run it at 1600x900, built in is 1366x768. It came with Windows 7 Home Premium, which I have since upgraded to Windows 10. I have used it for a wide variety of tasks - of course browsing, reading books using Kindle for PC and Overdrive, playing older games (surprisingly it does run a lot of them including many indie games), watching videos, office and minor photo editing, connecting to a tv to watch video, music (I do have a fan with speakers as the built in speakers are atrocious, but also use HDMI sound depending upon what I am connected to). The fan fits the tablet perfectly and isn't too big on it's own, so it is quite portable. I do also have an Asus tablet, as well, which I use much less frequently, except for android apps that are unique to android and I have a full home-built tower pc, as well. I believe it was $249 new, so I've definitely gotten my bang for the buck. When and if Microsoft ages support for it out for Windows 10, I will throw Linux on it, if it is still kicking.
I've had experience with both incarnations of netbooks: I had a Samsung one in the mid-2000s, which was OK, until the screen cable broke (this was a known problem with that particular model). It took me years to get round to buying a replacement cable (which probably shows how little I used the thing; I came to much prefer my "proper" laptop, an Acer Aspire). Then I got an HP Stream 11 as mentioned in the video. It was OK under Windows 8.1, but after I upgraded to 10, it began to run into major storage problems to the extent that it wouldn't install the Anniversary update, at least not without some major tweaking that I really didn't have the inclination to do. So I ended up buying a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad, which was much better for work (even if it was a lot heavier), and using my tablet for day to day browsing etc. So pretty much bearing out what you said in the video.
Hey Colin, I have a Dell Inspiron Mini 1011 sitting in a closet somewhere. I came with Windows XP but I upgraded it to Easy Peasy, an Ubuntu-based netbook distro. I used it when traveling for my job at the time and it worked well enough for that. A couple years ago we needed a laptop for my wife, so we got an Acer Aspire ES1-111, an 11" laptop that I consider to be part of the "next generation" of netbooks. I upgraded it with more RAM, a 32 GB SSD, and a 2x2 Wi-Fi card. It's been working well enough for her needs but lately the reliability has been a little flaky. I am looking to replace that with an HP 14-an013nr, which again is a low-cost laptop that's got a lot of room for upgrades. I'll be installing a 120 GB SSD as a second drive and taking the RAM up to 4 GB, for around $300 all-in. These machines are all in the same vein of low-cost, low-end, small form-factor notebooks that serve a few particular purposes: browsing the web, paying bills, and writing office documents. The idea hasn't gone away, but it's certainly become less prominent over the past ten years.
I got a Samsung netbook in 2009 for around $300 mainly to use for taking notes in college since my full laptop which I'd bought earlier the same year was heavy and had limited battery life. Originally came with Win 7 "Starter", a special netbook Windows that only allowed 3 applications to run at once. Around 2011 I replaced it with Xubuntu in a desperate attempt to get better performance. In 2012 I started shifting most of my usage to a Nexus 7 tablet, but continued using the Samsung off and on until 2016 when I replaced it with a Chromebook. (Earlier in 2017 I replaced my laptop with a Surface Pro, so even the Chromebook is quickly becoming irrelevant). Ultimately the great thing about it was that it was small, lightweight, silent, cheap, and had quite a good battery life (often 5-6 hours of taking notes in one day), at a time when a decent laptop cost over $700, was heavy, noisy fan, heated up, and only lasted 2-3 hours on the stock battery. I never expected to get great computing power out of it, but continued to throw it in my bag whenever I was going somewhere that might require extensive note taking.
Responding to the last question, nah, I've retired the netbook years ago when youtube abandoned flash. I had a Gateway lt3103u. I chose this one because it wasn't constrained with the low res screens of the time, it came with a 1366x768 display and an AMD L110, a single core 1.2 ghz cpu, I did everything I could to make it a bit faster, learned it was socketed and in 2010 I upgraded it to a 1.6 tf-20, and it wasn't enough, then I overclocked it to 1.91 and it wasn't enough. Then in 2014 the L310 dual core 1.2 that was available only it in the EU stock became available on ebay for 3 dollars, gave it a try, same thing. Today my mobile pc is an HP 2570p, purchased used for $130 with the i5 3360m. Modern ultrabooks with their fancy 15w CPU's still don't compete.
I had an original EeePC in college. It ran Ubuntu and actually I really liked the thing. It was great for just shoving in a bag and taking to class for notes. Aside from that it could actually browse the internet. 8GB of storage was enough for note taking and it was I believe 1GB of RAM in it as the previous owner had upgraded it before selling. It was a cute lil thing and actually went across the country with me and served as my main form of internet access for a good few months. Around this time I was also looking to upgrade my aging gaming PC and Dell had just come out with their Vostro series and was giving out HUGE discounts. I ended up buying a Vostro 1500 with a GeForce 8600GT (Still have that PC) for under $900 and that served as my main computer up until around 2011/12 when I built another gaming PC. The netbook sat around for a while and eventually I sold it on for like $100 to someone. Great little PC though for its time. There wasn't anything like it and all of my tech friends were really impressed with it's size and such and the battery was plenty good to go almost a whole day of classes without needing a charge. I think having Linux on the thing helped as it wasn't as resource hungry as XP was back then. It was a was light Ubuntu install and I never had many of the issues that XP netbooks had because of that.
I purchased a netbook back in 2012, It is a Samsung NC215S Which is the only Solar laptop I have really ever seen that was sold to the general consumer market. It came with a 320GB HDD and 1GB of ram, before it even left the shop it was upgraded to 2GB of ram which maxed out the built in atom processor which runs at 1.66Ghz (dual core, plus Hyper threading, total of 4 threads). I am still using this netbook however I have upgraded the 320Gb HDD to a 250GB Kingston SSD (UV100 i think it is, so not a speed demon). It runs Windows 7 and windows 10 quite happily considering its specs. I still use it today however not on a daily basis but it comes in handy as a computer that can display a document that I can refer to when im working on my main laptop (Macbook Pro Mid 2012 non Retina, 2.4GHz i7, 16GB ram, 2TB Samsung 850EVO SSD). The keyboard on the netbook is quite usable and the battery life is amazing, (lasts 10 hours) so when I am away from power for long periods of time, this couples with the solar makes it last even longer however the solar is pretty pathetic with it being rated as 2 hours in the sun = 1 hour of charge.
I loved my Gateway Atom N450 with included Windows 7 Starter. Dropping an SSD into it really breathed new life into it and made it useable. Purchasing the available massive 9-cell battery upgrade put its battery life way up there to over 12 hours with light use. I loved being able to upgrade the RAM to 1 GB and the network card to a dual-band 5 GHz compatible one. Great low power, always-on server with a built-in low-resolution screen. You could pretty much forget about watching any H.264-encoded videos above 480p on it, however.
I had been using a Toshiba NB550D during my university time (about 3-4 years), because I couldn't afford any high-end models at the time. But it was easily the best 300 bucks I spent for a laptop-type device, it was such a compact piece of hardware and I REALLY liked the keyboard on it. We sure went through a lot... It still works but the LCD screen is glitchy and sometimes displays weird colors, but I'm trying to get it working correctly again!
I remember applying to work at Staples in 2006-ish, and them asking me what I would recommend to someone who just wanted to browse the internet and work on some documents. My response was that I would ask them for more detail about what they needed. The interview ended there because they said that I should have brought them over to the netbooks.
The mod scene for the Eee PC was quite amazing. People were swapping out the hard drive or limited flash ram, add Bluetooth and other features.
You mean Eee Pee Cee?
I had an EeePC, and I loved it. Used it primarily for taking notes in class in college.
And it could play NES/SNES games like a pro.
@B3ro1080 SNES9X, I think. It's been like ten years lol
Netbooks still exist. They're just tablet/laptop hybrids now.
And also Chromebooks, which are pretty much slightly bigger netbooks.
Cody Smith There is a difference, in that today's netbooks are actually decent in performance for netbook-y things.
Sure, but for most people they are functionally equivalent, even more so once they finally get android apps fully implemented. You can also usually install Linux on a chromebook if you really want to.
kidthorazine I'd stick with my £180 Windows and Android tablet with a nice 1080P screen, detachable keyboard, touchscreen, 4GB of RAM and 1.4GHz atom (might not sound so great, but streams 1080P video and plays any android game and some light Windows games)
For the same low price?
I used Netbooks as diagnostic tools. They're never going to be a gaming PC, but for Office (I wouldn't do Visio on one, though) or small and light in coffee shops, hotels or comms cabinets connected via serial to a Cisco switch, they definitely had their place as long as you remembered what they were.
I last netbook has 8Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD in it and so still runs reasonably.
Looking back, I was glad netbook was a thing. It was never comfortable to type or browse internet with it, but it is a one big step for a cheaper and more decent subnotebooks
Disagree - I had an NB200 for 8 years and even at it's demise, the battery lasted 5 hrs. I brought it around the world with me (literally) and it has been stout and durable. I traded it away to a Cuban for a ride to Holguin instead of paying fare - his son is a teacher and he was thrilled with it.
Having said that, I'm pleased with my X230.
Netbooks were awesome about battery life and portability. But I really wish my x230 could last 5hr without having to carry a huge battery.
@@jedits1988 woww, i'd really like to hear your story dude
@@TheKdrerikCheck out my other channel - The Kombinator, I do all sorts of old AT computer stuff there.
But basically, the laptop was with me in France, Poland (probably 20 times at least), Russia (all of it via Trans Siberian), Korea, Japan, China, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand (new years 2014!) all over the former Yugoslav states, Hungary, Germany, the US (NY/OH mostly). Probably a few other places I missed, but I bet it's still around in Cuba, where I left it with a very grateful teacher. It actually ran Windows 7, but I reformatted it with Mint.
I used one for years as my only computer, albeit a rougher time in my life. It is still my favorite though, I sold my original every day driver years ago, but I bought a replacement and still mess with it occasionally, keeping it running. It taught me patience that's for sure. I was using it for torrenting and watching movies lol.
First, I want to thank you for this podcast because it brings my memories back! I loved it and you are absolutely right in every aspect and word. Here is my story:
I used Acer Aspire One 751h 2GB, 160GB HDD, Z520 1.33Ghz in 2011 summer. High school life was waiting for me. I bought this (asked my dad of course lol) because I could not use my sister's laptop. It was too much personal for her and it was not like family computer.
I bought this cuz I was the smallest in my class and I found this machine suit for me, for my fingers, school bag etc. When I bought this and went to car, waiting my parents coming back from bank, used it and found it soooooooo slow! I could not say anything to my dad because my sister, my dad warned me that "Look, it does not have DVD unit, it is small computer, like really 'small' in every aspect." and lemme tell you that my dad is not using any computer in his life. I knew DVD lifespan was going to end so I really did not care.
When we came to home, I told my mom and she was like "I knew it, why you did not listen your sister and father?". WTH! We have tried to refund but of course it is rejected. It was display product by the way and nobody have bought this for a year. The only laptop I loved was this one because it was 11.6" not 10 inch and it was THIN. (Later on Ultrabooks came on with higher specs and higher price and I was sad.) Unfortunately I sacrificed N atom CPU for this big screen, slow netbook. I saw Asus EEE PC on the net and checked all wiki model list sites in 2010 but there was not chance to buy it. A month later, in different tech store, I saw HP DM-1 11.6" minibook and it had better CPU and GPU and it was like real semi-laptop thing. The look and the specs. Gosh I was SOOOOOOO SAD when I saw that!
Anyway, I formatted PC to Windows 7 Starter, updated BIOS, it become better. This minibook thought me patient with it's speed and all Windows features, tweaks so I know them like my name right now. I was closing some services and all the other tweaks and it was giving me some speed. Some specific flash player version to run my DDTank, Transformice game smooth, not pepperflash etc. With HTML 5 coming, it become harder to watch RUclips vids since HTML5 was using CPU like hell. But I really loved this netbook for any cost because this was my, FINALLY, first personal computer. I bought this so my sister could not take it from me but it did not change the fact, she took it from me for some months then gave it back.
I have tried to use it for nostalgia and due of needing a second computer but CPU was bottlenecking the SSD that I put in. Right now, it sleeps on my right with in the bag forever. I won't sell it in any way, any cost.
And I want to add something, In 2018-2019, I was looking for tea cup from Edwardian ages. I was walking in the backstreets of Taksim, Beyoğlu. I saw one semi-café, semi-collectioner old building and the front was like french cafés. There was only one customer in the café side which she was using minibook, can be Asus EEE PC 10 inch, and she was typing in the DOS or something. I found this so excited and at the same time weird because seeing a woman with fashion glass, dress, nails and with a minibook, DOS not a typical/everyday thing. I think she was novel writer because I got that vibe from her and found this very interesting because I have never seen a minibook in real life for past eight years since 2012-ish times.
@@new-lviv I remember texts on the screen. Very big font and plain background with menu bar. It was kind of like TV teletext. There is no way that it can be Linux. It is one of my rare memory that I cannot forget the person nor story.
Great read!
Great story for sure!
She was probably using WordPerfect. It's popular with some writers because if it's simplicity.
I think we're kind of seeing them come back in the form of Chromebooks. I do remember them and my wife laughing at them because of their small size. The netbook was also geared more to the student say in elementary. I remember seeing some at one of the schools I worked at as a custodian.
Completely agree. In fact I was actually about to comment about how Colin should do a follow-up video and talk about the Chromebook trend.
Supportable notebook computers come back every 5-10 years. Let’s just hope that they are not too small and have shitty hardware. An 11 to 14 inch display with decent ram and a decent processor would suffice for such a computer.
but of course the iPad and Android tablets have replaced this niche.
I got one of those as my first self-bought computer, an Acer Aspire One 110L that retailed at 229€ in Germany at the time. Had it for four years and still think back fondly. That device got me started in blogging.
the fall of netbooks from my perspective was people expected too much from them because they thought of them as "real" computers.
i love netbooks because i know what i can expect to do with it and it does those things great. i still get about 9 hours of worktime on my netbooks original battery.
the wintel specification for a netbook was
7"-11.6" screen
1GHz-1.9GHz CPU(as low as 800MHz if delivered with linux) single core (or dual core on later ones)
512MB-1GB RAM(as low as 256MB if delivered with linux) generally upgradeble to 2GB
integrated webcam
no opticaldrive
fully legacy free
That’s a good assessment. As a writer and a student I really only used mine to browse a few sites and to run my office suite and it was perfectly suited for that job. I think anyone who was going to try to do any kind of serious gaming, coding, or rendering would have known better than to try it on a netbook anyway.
9 hours? what type of damn nuclear battery do you have lmao
@@no-vo1em exactly. unlikely
> as low as 256 mb with linux
ugh! **shudders**
It pisses me off oems nerfed the specs on these machines.
Milhouse: hey Bart remember Netbooks? they're back in Cloudbook form!
My little netbook (that everyone laughed at) helped ship an Xbox 360 software fix.
Beta testers were seeing connectivity issues that we couldn't reproduce on the fast corporate network. We were also in the middle of an office renovation/move, so all of our normal PCs were boxed up and inaccessible. All we had was a single conference room with some 360 devkits and shared PCs.
I saved the day with my little ASUS eeePC netbook (1Ghz, 2Gb RAM, Ubuntu), because I was able to set it up as a network bridge: devkit > Ethernet > netbook > USB > Palm Pre > 3G. Then I was able to run Wireshark so we could capture and debug network traces. That led to a fix released to unblock the beta testers.
BTW, I got 12h+ battery life out of that thing. My tech friends may have scoffed at it, but it was a tank, and my writer friends loved it.
I wish this was an actual podcast I could listen to on the go...great content
I actually own a netbook and I kind of like and use it! My father bought one about seven years ago but didn't use it. Some years later, I wanted to have a computer I can use to train my programming skills during my summer vacation, where I had no access to my proper PC. I asked him and since then, it's mine. Originally, it had Windows XP installed, but it was absolutely too slow to use. I installed Debian on it, which worked fine and does still. I used it to write some C++ programs for Linux and although the keyboard and the screen are very small (which means that you can only use Gedit and a terminal since an IDE is too big), I got incredible things done. From a technical point of view, this thing is horrible, but when you lower your needs, you can use almost anything, even netbooks!
"Who bought these things?!" Immediately tells us about 2 times when he bought a netbook.
I have been looking back into netbooks lately, and I love mine. I use it with a Logitech F310 controller and emulate N64, PS1, SNES, etc. with no issues.
OLPC started it all in my opinion. Seymour Papert and Nicholas Negroponte wanted to make an affordable laptop for children to learn. Asus followed soon with their Eee PC which was at first targeted for education but unlike OLPC, Asus went for their distribution channels and succeeded. OLPC you had only an option to donate one and get one for yourself but never as retail. The first generation of netbooks ran on Intel Celeron CPUs or even VIA C6, the Atom came *after* because of the success, also Microsoft didn't want to license XP for new machines as Vista was already out but seeing the success they changed their mind. Linux was preinstalled on all first gen netbooks and some stores had some funny "Attention, Linux!!!" stickers.
gentuxable That's exactly how I remember it.
gentuxable @
He totally forgot about that. OLPC came and other manufactures saw a market for it. He should have mentioned it.
@@magoid Maybe he didn't know 🤷
I only know that when I was programming and I asked for advice to prof. She did not listen to me, because she was fascinated by the Eee PC, my companions, and I a very common notebook 😔
I still like those kind of computers...
Your profile picture is perfect for your comment.
same
My computer i use every day is a Packard Bell netbook with 1gb ram an Intel atom 1.6 ghz!
yeah but they were just to slow
I never owned a netbook but I have something similar to it , it costed €250 and it had a miserable 2gb of ram and ,stay with me, 64 GB of storage ,that I upgraded to 512 gb, an Intel celeron , obviously, the funny part is that it still is my daily driver 🙂
P.S.=it is a notebook that's why it is similar but not a netbook
Late to the party, but I bought a netbook to complement my PC in 2009 when going to university. An LG X120, it had a "Smart On" feature that was basically a separate power button you could dual boot into a light linux for quick tasks. Used it to take notes, write papers, and watch movies on.
Took it apart a while ago, planning on using the screen for pi gaming system. I have fond memories of that little thing.
In Australia from 2007-2012 every school had netbooks, but they eventually all got replaced by tablets.
Chromeboxes are pretty easy to re-flash and run Windows on, if your teacher can get permission to do so.
www.reddit.com/r/chrultrabook/
Once converted, a Chromebox is basically just a small form factor desktop PC.
Joe my school replaced most of the desktops with Chromebooks (dog turd slow computers)
***** we have Dell Chromebook 11s
***** not surprised that my schools got those then
Southeast Michigan schools don't have much funding at all
The school I work at school still uses them. In NSW Public schools it was 2009-2013 I was part of the support staff for the roll-out at that time. Tablets iPads and the like are still to expensive for public schools to buy in large numbers and are not subsidised, however windows PC's/Laptops and Mac's are. We get points to purchase them for free every year. Personally I prefer that the students use any kind of computer over a tablet as it develops their computing skills. Hence the netbooks still get used quite a bit.
Tablets are excellent but ultimately at some stage they will need to use a computer for work or study and having and understanding of how a desktop OS works is important IMO
I actually had a pre-netbook mini laptop which I bought second-hand in 2000. It was a Compaq Contura Aero 4/33C. A tiny 486 and I used it mostly for university work and screwing around. In 2001 I actually got a PCMCIA 802.11b card for it (WiFi before it was called WiFi) and could use the Internet around my house without cables, so this little thing was really ahead of its time!
I had an EEE 900. Loved that little thing, 8.9" with a Celeron 900 and 1GB of ram running WinXp. It did exactly what I wanted, surfed the web, played older games and was a joy to use. Replaced it with an HP netbook several years later but it just wasn't the same.
Yeah...The websites and the softwares are not the same ,neither do we(=_=)
I still use that now but a white 900a
Got my hp mini around the beginning of 2011 or so. I still find it very portable and useful to this day. It might not be quick with the atom N455 and 2gb of RAM but its got a 250 gb HDD so I can fit lots of media and other files on it while on the go. Still get up to 5 hrs of battery with it after all this time. Never getting rid of it even though I got a new ultrabook at the beginning of this year . Its been my faithful buddy for too long
Your timescale is a little screwy, by the time netbooks became popular barely anyone was using dialup and more tech oriented people where already getting home wifi. The boom in publicly available WiFi and 4g where what allowed Netbooks to become popular in the first place.
Yea, by the early 2000's I didn't know anyone with a dialup and my parents were on cable since the late 90's.Most business also had WiFI by the early 2000's.
xMusicx I knew people as late as 2008 were still using dial up
Around 20% of U.S. households are on dial-up because they have no access to broad-band.
4g wasn't even a thing back then, most service providers only went up to 3g
xMusicx, maybe you didn't use dial-up, but in the early 2000s to around 2004, a lot of people still used AOL as their ISP.
Great topic as always. I've always wondered how popular netbooks were in the US compared to Europe. I think part of the appeal was the fact it was really affordable laptop that was easy to carry around and didn't run Vista.
I think they in large part brought affordable mobile computing to people and served as early "look-up devices" you could keep on your coffee table or wherever. Together with USB 3G modems which also saw popularity at the time you could take the Internet with you wherever you went without breaking the bank.
My brother used one until 2014 when he inherited a MacBook from me. He used the netbook as a replacement for a Pentium 4 era Celeron desktop. He kept the monitor from desktop, but he really liked how the netbook fit under the display when not in use.
I still pick up used ones if I see them really cheap, mainly for the HDDs which are a great fit for compact Windows 98 machines (Win9x doesn't natively support drives larger than 137 GB).
They never left they evolved into tablets, chrome books, and ultra books
though I would say devolved in certain ways such as no longer having a proper hard drive.
@@philby1 why would you want a hard drive when u can have an ssd 🤪🤪🤪
I'd prefer a Windows OS, and you don't see that a lot among the smaller size "netbooks" these days. You either have to get the smallest laptop..which is what, 13 inches? Or buy a Windows Surface, and the price is no where near the old school Netbook entry.
Philby1
excuse me what? ultrabooks? are you sure?
@@joslyntorres8691 Most have shitty eMMC which is often even worse than HDD, while not being upgradeable.
We deployed a lot of them. They were used a lot in business meetings. At the time regular laptops were heavy, bulky, expensive, etc.. Netbooks were small and light. They were great for note taking, or looking things up on the internet.
netbooks are still quite popular among university students in France who cannot afford a macbook air. it makes sense since they use it just for taking notes and they need to carry them around. Also, customers are less prone to changing their hardware in France than in the US.
Loved my tiny netbook when I was was still in college. Was excellent for note typing and internet playing.
These new age netbooks still exist. The HP Stream and such. There is now an even stranger middle ground thought, at least by dell. They have there low end 11" and 13' crapbooks with the 32gigs of ECC and 2 gigs of ram. But Also have there lowest end full laptop using a Celeron with slightly more ram and real hard drive but no disk drive that is a 14" laptop. I think the biggest problems with these things is that they are the absolute bare minimum to run what they can run and its simply not enough to ACTUALLY run anything. The Windows XP ones were best due to the fact that XP could run well on 1 gig of ram, Or the option to install a lightweight more user friendly Linux Distro was great. But the actual Linux based models they released were terrible as they stripped down even more because that bare minimum was lower.
DarkMastaC crapbook😂😂😂😂😂😂
I downgrade them to Windows 7 and they run blazing fast.
The problem with the HP Stream and similar smaller laptops are that they may be non-upgradeable. A netbook could be flipped by swapping the HDD for SDD and then maxing out the RAM to give it untapped power.
These modern affordable netbooks usually have soldered in storage and RAM. That and the build quality is absolutely abhorrent.
@@Mageman17 Yes, very true. I liked Netbooks more then I do these modern low cost notebooks. Back when they came out Netbooks did exactly what was expected of them, Web Browsing (in a much less script heavy web mind you) and basic and simple tasks. Ive had people buy these HP streams and want to return them because they can hardly run Windows 10 or updates alone eat the base storage of the machine and now they cant save anything.
I purchased an Acer netbook in 2009 November and my experience was great. I was fascinated to see such small machine run windows XP just like a big computer would. I would download movies, watch RUclips, play some retro games like Mario and it would run all programs that I would want it to. My experience was good enough but you are right that people didn't want to buy netbook as they were apprehensive about its power and capacity. None of my friends bought it even though I told them that it does the job well for our purpose as we didn't have anything heavy to through on it anyway. I still own one very old samsung netbook from 2012. It obviously struggles as per today's demand like zoom, etc.
Before netbooks was “sub-notebooks” like the Toshiba libretto series in the late 90s. I still have mine and use it to interface with my Gameboy Pocket Camera
Still have my ThinkPad 240z too!
I still miss my sony vaio 505 and c1... C1 was cute, but I managed real coding on the 505 once I got Debian on it..
Finally got rid of them after not being able to source newer batteries
i once owned a netbook, Asus EEE PC, and even managed to install and run Adobe Creative Suite CS3 on the thing. When my desktop broke down i even managed to complete flash animation on mine. It was fragile but i loved it while it lasted. Managed to become prolific in typing on that keyboard.
Ahhh Loved my 8.9" Asus EEE 900 with 2GB and Upgraded SSD (32gb Runcore) was a lovely little machine... oh well...
My main laptop is a asus u31sd from 2011
I really like it 😀
But sadly im soon buying a new laptop 😦
But its not really a netbook tho
I got a netbook in the mid 2000s when I was in middle school. It actually worked pretty great for school and the games I played, but it slowed down VERY fast. I still have it, I'm hoping to restore it to a usable state!
I bought a netbook of the second phase with an Intel N3540 chip, 4 GB RAM and a 500 GB HDD a few years ago. Still using it as my retro gaming device, when I'm not at home and of course for browsing the web. Works fine.
I used my for 8 years, since highschool up to getting degree in electrical engineering. It was compact, and yet real windows computer. With monitor, mouse and keyboard it was fully usable computer. CAD, spice, programming, Word, PDFs, it was good enough.
I had an Eee PC 701 (aka 4G) back in the day. It did its job fine 11 years ago :)
I still have a Dell Mini 9 with OSX installed. I bought another one for my sister, also running OSX which we used to Skype each other during her pregnancy, back in the day. I seldom ever use the Mini 9 anymore...only to change sounds on my Nord, but it still has a fond place in my heart.
16:00 there you go!
I have an Acer Aspire one still working great from 2011. Use it all the time. Came with Win 7 500GB hdd 4GB ram.
I had an 11.6" Acer Aspire netbook with an AMD C-60 APU - that chip fascinated me and I thought it might enable some light gaming. Alas, the CPU was too underpowered. But I remember having a fantastic experience on it once I installed Ubuntu - it was on that machine that the Unity interface clicked with me. And the HUD feature (being able to search and execute menu commands via keyboard shortcut) was a gamechanger for me. Since I bicycled everywhere at the time, I really appreciated the portability and used it for notetaking during lectures. Keyboard was usable, and relying on keyboard shortcuts, especially with Ubuntu Unity, mitigated issues with small screen and small trackpad as I could focus on the content instead of wasting screen space displaying controls. It appealed to the minimalist in me for sure. One thing I remember fondly was sitting at a Starbucks digging into a new album - I pulled up lyrics on a text based browser via terminal and I was immersed in the music - no ads, flashing graphics, or anything to distract me. Computing on such limited resources was cathartic. Unfortunately, the netbook was stolen from my car, and I never bothered replacing it. I attempted to fill that portable lecture taking niche with a Chromebook (also from Acer), but I rarely use it as, on top the CPU being too limiting, I find Chrome OS to be not as feature complete as I need as a post secondary student. I miss the netbooks.
I have an Asus EEE PC1001PX (10.1') I got second hand broken really cheap (€40) about 5 years ago, I fixed it (faulty WiFi board and cracked shell from being dropped... new WiFi board (€10) and some epoxy for the shell fixed the problems) and downgraded the OS to Windows XP (came with 7), and I still love it to this day for a small thing I can put in my bag that's cheap and simply works great. I was debating about getting one of those glorified tablets with the built in keyboard, but really, for what I use it for and how often I use it, I really can't see the point of spending the money on one. So, I upgraded the RAM on the Asus from the standard 1gb to a 2gb module, and I plan to change the hard drive for an SSD drive and going back up to Windows 7 with it, and that will probably give me another 5 years of use out of it at least for a pretty small investment! Also, being one of the larger size netbooks, I don't find it uncomfortable to use... USB mouse and the keyboard is about 90% the size of a normal keyboard which you get used to no problem. The screen resolution is small nowadays, but at 1024x800 it isn't really that small, and it came with a 160gb hard drive so it wasn't that lacking there either (I'll put a 120 SSD in it). Battery was no good, only lasted an hour max, but replacement batteries are about €25 for it now.
I can see why they have phased out due to demands of people that want more, but it doesn't mean I'm going to get rid of mine that quickly!!
Andrea Woodvine I am not sure how great they are, but you can find several $99 Windows 10 or Windows 10/Android Dual Boot tablets on Amazon. That is a Windows license until 2020! And perhaps with a keyboard, you can have your own budget Microsoft Surface. The specs don't seem all that bad, either.
Sincerely, I'm not too hung up on Windows 10, especially for the few things I do on a netbook. And really, I've tried the glorified tablets, and I don't know, they just don't feel the same for some reason, I can't explain it. I have a 7" tablet which I use for other things, and I've tried that with a keyboard and mouse, but it just doesn't feel right, something's off.
My Asus has served me well and has been very faithful to me, so I think showing a little appreciation to it would be fine hehehehe
Besides, Amazon is hard to find anything at that price that would ship to where I live, it's like they keep the stupid priced things reserved for us "third worlders" xd
Andrea Woodvine Oh, Amazon doesn't fully support your location? That sucks. I do get exasperated with Windows 10 at times, but as a mobile operating system, I try to give it some slack. After all, Android doesn't seem to be any better with intrusive spying or updates. But it comes down to preference in the end. I think that Windows 10 is worse for keyboard and mouse than Windows XP or Windows 7, if that is your preferred method of input. The user interface seems too "chunky", if that even make sense. It's pretty apparent where Microsoft wants it to be touch-optimized. But I'm sure it would be nicer to use a device you worked on rather than something that was just churned out of a factory.
I think there is still some time left in Windows 7, and even when support ends for it, it doesn't really matter, because it all runs down to what I'm using the netbook for really... Windows XP still runs fine on it eventhough there's no support anymore.
As for Amazon, the shear number of things I see on it and then comes up "not available in Spain", or "we have it over here at this special price of 300% for your location"... I guess that serves me right for living in the Banana Republic of Europe heheheh
Andrea Woodvine I certainly haven't had any problems with XP yet. As long as I am exclusively browsing RUclips, I should be fine. I don't think that cybercriminals are that interested in encrypting my sample pictures. Anyway, good day.
I bought a Netbook too. It did me for a year in business school. It was lightweight and would run Word and Photoshop. Which was what I needed it for. I sold it on to a family member after the course was finished though and they still use it as their main computer. Though I"ve asked them multiple times to get a new one. I think I bought mine new in 2009 or something like that.
They mostly use it for just for surfing the web and watching RUclips and typing up the occasional document. Which is what it's good for.
Literally watching this on a netbook since my family refuses to get an actual computer.
How does that thing run RUclips?
@@cdos9186 It did. Barely, but it did. At least I have a half decent laptop now lol
@@keewanalt Did you have to buy it yourself? What laptop do you use now?
@@keewanalt It would run much better on linux- my mid range pc from 2007 on linux could play hd video at 30fps with 70% cpu usage with the h264ify extension! I used lubuntu and peppermint os if you were wondering if you could still use it.
My Acer Aspire One 10.1" got me through college getting my CIS degree. Upgraded it to 2GB RAM and it ran all of my programming and office software flawlessly. Loved that machine. Easy to carry to class for notes... much better than paper!
Im the person you hoped didn't still exist! :-P I still have a eeePC 700, but I have "upgraded" it to a Acer Aspire One (ZG5) running with an upgraded 1GB of RAM and a 1TB Seagate Firecuda SSHD. I solely run Linux distro on my netbooks. It's not my daily machine, but I think my netbooks still serve a great purpose as a highly portable and moderatly capable penetration testing machine.
Linux definitely runs better on older hardware. :) I have my dad setup with openSUSE Leap with KDE on a core 2 duo system with 4 gigs of RAM. It used to have 2 gigs, but still ran well enough for his use.
Danielle Satterfield 1gig ram 😂😂
Levi Guiney Oh they do eh? Try running anything except puppy Linux on a Pentium 4. Windows 2000 is still better performance and stability wise than Linux.
Thing is, puppy linux (as well as other distros) are still supported. windows 2000/xp are not.
Also, My dad runs opensuse with kde on a core2duo machine with no issues. Not the fastest thing in the world, but it does what he needs it to.
I have a second generation 64 bit Atom based netbook (Toshiba NB305) from 2010 that was given to me by my neighbor. I installed a cheap SSD and Arch Linux and it runs well enough to take along on holiday to check email and back up photos. I never worry about theft or breakage with such an old machine so it is a great travel companion.
i do fine with used sub-notebooks
rn i am using a thinkpad x220 tablet from 2012, is is quite small with 12" size but still fells rugged, fast enough for the regular browsing and easy to work on.
-lara
I was a poor student so when they had a laptop for just 350 euros and it was coming with linux, it was really useful for me. With Xubuntu, the Atom processor was not as bad and I could get a lot of programming work done for my classes. So, I don't remember them as that terrible - without the netbook trend, my computer science career might have gone differently.
It's kind of sad, my EEEpc runs Debian Linux great. The moment you open up a browser the three ring circus of multimedia and JavaScript absolutely slays it. The web needs to be burned down and rebuilt at this point but you'll never get that done because everything is built on it.
When Netbooks were at their "getting cheaper but still pretty relevant" stage I was about ten years old. I was in love with these little machines as by 2009 they all looked very nice. I begged all year "jokingly" to my parents about getting one every time we went past the electronics section of walmart. Eventually to my absolute surprise as we were tight on cash at the time that christmas they got me one. It was a later Asus eee PC and it was just gorgeous and snappy as could be with its atom processor and 4gb of ram. I loved that machine, I've been searching for a lookalike on eBay for a while.
I owned 2 Netbooks and I'll buy a used one sometime again. I Think they're good travel machines for people like m who take a lot of photos. You can store a lot of images, check and do - basic - edits on the go.
try a thinkpad transformer (x200t, x201t, x220t or x230t). 12" ips screen plus wacom stilus allow for all kinds of edits, not just "basic".
Hey Colin. I have a Lenovo S10e. I bought it brand new around the time you bought your first Dell netbook which was around 2009 i guess. It has the Atom 270 CPU. I have just watched this video just after New Years day 2022...and I have to say I still use my netbook! It originally came with 1GB RAM to which I maxed it out to 1.5GB as that is the most the board would take. Its still on the original HDD, a 160GB platter drive. I have long ditched WinXP and I am currently running Lubuntu 18.04 - the last 32-bit build of an Ubuntu Linux distro. Prior to Lubuntu I ran Ubuntu. It does struggle a bit for some tasks but for its current purpose, speed is not a priority.
I do like the history you gave here in this video. I dont know how i missed this video but rather late than never! Have a good one Colin...Hope 2022 is good to us all.
I love my Acer netbook. It's small, perfect for carrying around, browsing the web, using facebook, youtube and google properly (I personally don't like touch screens). Just clean install windows 7 and you're good to go. Even in 2017.
I bought myself an MSi Wind U135DX back in 2011. 10.1” netbook with 1GB of RAM, 160GB drive, an Atom N455 CPU, and was running Windows 7 Starter.
It was slow, clunky, and underpowered, but I loved it so much. I was using it as a backup machine with Windows on it since my main desktop was a Linux machine, and Windows was definitely holding it back a little. It didn’t take me long to wipe the drive for Linux, as I’ve done for every PC I’ve owned since 2009, and it was so much better after that.
I sold it to a friend for cheap in 2015, and didn’t really miss it until a few years ago, when I decided to get myself an Asus Vibobook E203 to get that tiny laptop experience back again, and I loved that thing, too. Slightly bigger at 11.6”, 4GB of RAM, but only 64GB of eMMC storage. It was pleasant to use until the keyboard started failing, and now the flash storage spits out bad sector errors for a large portion of the drive. It still works, kinda, but I already replaced it with a ThinkPad x280, which might just be my favorite laptop I’ve ever owned, and I’ve only had it a month.
I still consider my Surface as a netbook. It's just nomenclature, in the end.
More like, almost everything under 13" IS a netbook.
But they're not cheap and I think that's what defines a netbook.
Unless we're talking about the older Surfaces such as the RT and non-pro 3.
There are also cheap ones. Not all netbooks were cheap. Nokia's one was 800 euros here.
Even the older Surfaces were not cheap. I got a Surface 2 (RT) that cost over $700. Netbooks shouldn't cost more than $400-500.
How about Android tablets?
No, there are many fast 12.5" and 11.6" laptops.
Mine was extremely useful, and actually replaced the Dell laptop it was supposed to compliment. I quite enjoyed the challenge of getting the most out of it's meagre abilities. It was particularly useful as a system to use when working on others, very light, and portable. I think they're irrelevant nowadays when I can buy an older ultra book like the one I'm using now, refurbished for netbook money.
I had an Aspire One (can't remember the exact model). i loved that little thing. slow, very compared to today. thanks for posting (even if i'm a few years late lol)
I had one too. It could even run Vice City relatively well
Great podcast man. I remember when I purchased my first and only netbook, I loved it but again it was limited .
My Netbook was an Acer one aspire blue, great machine I used this device for 4 yrs
I've just always been a fan of Lenovo's X series line with their 12 inch display and full mobile CPUs they really are the best you can get in a computer that small... i still use my x220
The X's were (are?) nice machines. Though not currently in use, my X60 still worked, when I last tried booting it a few months ago. And though specs obviously moved on, the design and build is still nice 🙂
@@dossen were. Definitely were. A x280 and newer have soldered memory etc
I have an HP Mini. I didn't actually have to pay the full cost on it. I walked into a cellphone store one day, and they were having a netbook promotion! The Mini came equipped with a cellular modem, (it had a SIM card slot behind the battery). The cost was subsidized with what I was paying for the data plan. Despite it's shortcomings, I liked that it came equipped with full range of ports (2 or 3 USB ports, SD card slot, VGA, and Ethernet). This one came with a mechanical hard drive, which was a pretty generous 160 GB (there's still 20-30 GB of space)! This one came with Windows 7 on it. I also remember that it had very poor battery life. It didn't take long until it completely refused to charge. It then became dependent on being plugged in whenever I had to use it. Then the power jack became defective. I ended taping the plug into place for a while until I finally got sick of it, opened up the computer and soldered a pigtail with a new DC jack onto it. I used it for many years as a travel computer, as it so much nicer having a moderately sized keyboard versus poking away at the tiny smartphone touchscreen. It also worked well for DJing, and it's most recently been used as a hard disk audio recorder by connecting a USB lapel mic to it. The power supply stopped working a few months ago. It's now sitting on my bench awaiting service...
cheap small laptops were awesome, it's too bad that they don't exist anymore with better CPUs than the pathetic Atom of most netbooks .....
i got an EEEPC 1215B, it's kind of technically a netbook (and it is a EeePc) but it has a 12" screen, upgradable RAM and HDD, and an AMD E450 APU, it's been great for many years, the APU could run actual 3D games to some extent and everything, and it was 330€new...
but now? finding a cheap 12" laptop with ok performance for that price? i just don't see it anywhere and that sucks :/
why would you try to play 1080 videos on a non-HD 10" screen though :D
Mine could do only do 360P.
Atoms have gotten SO much better lately. Same with Celerons.
Intel atom is dead. It's still gonna be here in the form of other intel product lines more or less
I still have my hp mini 311 netbook I purchased when I was in college. I love the little thing, I bought it back when I was in college for taking notes but now I just keep it loaded with retro games to play on the go.
Well let me expand my story, the netbook was purchased around 2009 when I was a freshmen in college. By this time I was tired of lugging around my old 15in laptop during high school, so I decided to purchase a light weight laptop for college. I bought the hp mini 311 netbook because it fit my needs perfectly. It was very light (relative to the time), it had sufficient power for what I needed for taking notes and browsing the web (and with nvidia ion it could play HD video, starcraft, and retro games quite well). I bought the thing fully aware of the limitations of the device, but for my needs those specifications were acceptable, and the netbook has served me well since what I needed it for did not demand more than what it was capable of.
I blame Jobs for the downfall of the netbook. When he announced the MacBook Air, he said that netbooks are a POS which are slow and can't do anything.
cicada Which is true :P I would rather use a Chromebook than a netbook tbh and I'm not even a big fan of chromebooks...
You make it sound as if there is no middle path - running Windows on a Chromebook. There is, and it describes the machine I'm using right now. *Chrultrabook* is a really stupid name, but that's what they're called.
Scott Sakurai Yeah, i bet it runs really well /s
It runs exactly like a standard laptop of the same specs. The only sacrifice is having to use Search as an overlay key because Chromebooks are missing some keys like Insert/Delete and PgUp/PgDn and F11 and F12. Battery life is fairly acceptable for running a "heavyweight" OS, about what you'd expect from a native Windows laptop of the same age and size. If it's a bit sluggish at times, which it can be, that's on the Celeron 2955U. It does pretty well on average though. The SSD that it came with was plenty fast, like 400 MB/s both ways. The problem is that it was a 16 GB SSD, and while it is possible (just) to install Windows 10 on a 16 GB drive, it is quite difficult to keep it operating properly for the long haul. After paying $91 for the C720, I had to drop another $80 for a 250GB SSD - and it just happens to have the fastest disk transfer speeds I've ever gotten from a SATA interface. That includes my desktop PC and its Samsung 840 EVO. My little Chromebook's disk speed eclipses that.
Right now running Windows does require the use of unsigned drivers for some of the hardware (thus testsigning has to be turned on), but that is because certification of drivers costs money and they want to make sure they get it right the first time. It would be fair to call the process of converting an amenable Chromebook to a Windows capable machine mature, but not yet polished. (Not every machine is amenable, and the developers don't bother with the impossible while there's remaining low-hanging fruit.)
If Windows Experience Index scores hold any meaning for you:
Processor: 5.7
Memory (RAM): 5.9
Graphics: 5.1
Gaming graphics: 9.9
Primary hard disk 7.5
Yeah, I'd say it runs really well. No /s.
Scott Sakurai "gaming graphics: 9.9" I haven't used Windows experience that much but I would hope that isn't supposed to be on an out of 10 score :P I can't imagine chromebook integrated graphics being a "9.9 out of 10" for gaming. Unless the benchmark game is Minesweeper haha
Wrote my PhD-Thesis on a Dell Inspiron Mini Netbook using Slackware Linux, LaTeX and the Vim editor. Worked like a charm. Cannot understand folks who complain about "lack of performance". Nowadays I use a Intel-Celeron Thin-Client PC for my creative work, running the FreeBSD operating system. I love how silent it is (all passively cooled). It is all about the tools you choose.
I am disappointed by this video. I think it had almost no research and wholly based on personal experience which goes against the title of the video.
In the late 90s my buddy had a 128 kbps ISDN line that his dad had installed for work so we would always go to his house to download stuff and use Napster. I was on a 56K modem at the time but I remember very vividly petitioning my parents to get DSL by the year 2000 and that was 1.5 Mb per second down which was a game changer obviously. I love how you describe what it was like to be a consumer using the Internet during this era because many people don’t realize that it was like that it really did require some commitment on your part, you weren’t just connected 24 seven you had to put in some effort and sacrifice to do a “session“ online but those were some of my most productive times using the Internet because of that very fact.
Picture yourself watching RUclips on Dial-Up. That would be expensive!
I bought an Acer Aspire One in November of 2008 for using in college during class. I used it off and on up until a couple years ago when I gave it to some friends for their young son to use and learn computers. I started a mini-trend with that machine as I was the first person at my college to have a netbook. I was taking a couple IT classes at the time and the instructors and other students were very interested in the idea of a cheap, mini laptop.
I think like in 2008, netbooks probably had the specs equivilant to about a 2003 to 2004 PC.
I'm watching this in July, 2023 and not only do I still have a Netbook (Toshiba NB305), I still use it and it runs brilliantly. It's running Windows 7 Home Premium and I maxed out the RAM (2GB LOL) and put in a SSD. The OEM battery is one of the most impressive batteries I've ever seen in a portable device. I've had it since 2009 and it still holds a charge and when shut down completely, will stay charged for literally months. It's still my go-to computer when I travel due to its size and weight.
The Chrome book took over, along with smartphones and tablets. They were more powerful as well.
5argeTech /\ yup
5argeTech /\ Netbooks are more powerful than Chromebooks
+Y4123 Then find me a Netbook that can handle 8GB of DDR3L RAM like my Lenovo Thinkpad X131e Chromebook, or one that has a 6th gen Intel Core i5 CPU that's 64bit like the Google Chromebook Pixel, most netbooks where 32bit Intel Celeron, or VIA C7 machines that could only take upwards of 2GB of RAM, with the rare exception of 4GB of ram with only 3.5GB showing as usable due to 32bit limitations. I'll take a modern Chromebook any day of the week over a slower netbook, as with a lot of Chromebooks I can still install Linux, or even in some cases Windows on them if I need to do as such, plus I have a bigger screen size, bigger keyboard, bigger trackpad, or in the case of my Lenovo the famous trackpoint, more modern features like USB 3.0, N/AC WiFi, and HDMI(most netbooks did not have HDMI but only VGA, or DVI outputs). Also if you want to talk about netbooks having more storage you are wrong I currently have a 2.5in WD Blue 500GB HDD in my Lenovo Thinkpad X131e Chromebook, and I could get a 1TB drive if I ever need it, and my Lenovo also full gigiabit Ethernet, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, 3.5mm audio, 720p screen(most netbooks had 1024x768 screen rez), and an SD card slot. So think again when you claim Netbooks are more powerful then Chromebooks. Typed from my Lenovo dualbooted into Linux Mint just because I felt like running LinuxMint XFCE today instead of ChromeOS.
Commodorefan64 the Chrapbooks I've used are ridiculously slow
+Y4123 at least learn to spell Crap correctly before trying to troll, and mine is plenty fast for what it is, You may have only used models wit lower end ARM CPU cores, and 2GB of RAM, but compared to devices that run Windows 8, or 10 with around the same specs they are much faster, and more secure. So do some research, and learn before saying all of something is crap, just because you used a lower end model.
My first gen Acer Aspire One did Plex server duty until last week. Running Lubuntu with a 650 gb hdd swap. As long as it could stream without transcoding, it worked fine. Now it is just a print and file server. It's great! Built in UPS, and adequate to run a pair of printers and backs up files on a small home network.
Actually Netbook still exist, those Chromebook and Celeron N Series / AMD A4 cheap notebook. pretty popular in my country.
A friend of mine used to have one. I think it too was one of these Asus models but after a year or two it broke and he took it apart. Before that he used to use it as an experimental plattform and even played some games on it. Older PC titles like Shogo or some DOS games. He even had it connected to a bigger monitor via VGA out. it was nice. That thing was quiet, had low power consumption and was small. After it was broken i suggested refurbished Thinkpad laptops to him. I personally have an X200s myself because i needed something that is small but not too crippled. Aside from the missing optical drive (due to it's small formfactor) it is just what i need. A powerful enough compact machine that is capable of running my stuff and that i can use to browse the web. Because THAT is something i just can't do on tablets or smartphones. These devices just suck at browsing. Smartphones even more due to the small screens and flimsy touch screen crap.
This video is *_so_** mint* because I can always point to it and say to my IT friends:
_See? I told you so!_
I had one. It was my first device with a webcam, and I loved the battery life. After a year or so it suddenly got super slow.
I saw a lot of my fellow college students using them. It was a secondary device for me though. I had my primary laptop and used this for taking out with me for light work.
My partner dearly misses her eepc.
I could have seen being happy to have one in grade school.
They where replaced by Chromebook....
were*
I'm a PC Tech and I have Netbooks everywhere. They are totally useful even in 2017.
I love my netbook though.....
I still have mine from 2008 or 2009, I got it as a second PC, and I didn't get it because anyone told me. I write code, and netbooks are adequate for what I do when I don't want to be cooped up. It's sad that netbooks haven't advanced much in 10 years.
I realize this is a year ago, but I just discovered the channel and figured I would comment.
I run a small business where all our invoicing and estimates are on site, in people's homes. I started to use a netbook because of the low cost, and small form factor. It would fit in my small briefcase quite comfortably.
I upgraded it in 2016 with 2 gigs of ram, 128 gig ssd, and win 10. It's not the snappiest thing going, but it gets the job done.
Recently we changed our POS program and went with a tablet as our new mobile POS. I still have the netbook, but it doesn't get much use these days. I only use it to backup my main desktop, simply because I have it, and my backup drive crashed.
Every fucking video on RUclips says something on the lines of "Hey guys, how's it going?". How original!
I was in university (for the first time) when netbooks became a thing. They made a bit of a splash among students at the time, really so they could get work done on campus and take notes in class. In my circles, the people who bought them were more the tech enthusiasts who had a powerful, self-built PC at home, and just wanted a secondary device. For this purpose, I think they made sense. But, they did just kind of suck too much. Smartphones and tablets hit their stride pretty quickly, and regular laptops, while more expensive, were just so much more functional.
I'd argue the most tangible lasting legacy of Netbooks these days is really in Chromebooks. Hell, I seem to remember early Chromebooks being directly related to a few Netbook product lines of the time. Chromebooks seemed to take the basic idea, but threw in an operating system that was much more optimized for the weak hardware, made internal storage basically not matter by assuming you'd be working out of the cloud anyway, and made sure to get the core experience just that bit better to actually be useable (big enough screen with enough resolution, normal keyboard, normal touchpad, etc.)
I'm staring to become nostalgic for these things but they where really bad i blame windows vista and windows xp they where poorly optimized windows 10 is not great but its smooth i think these things would be great with modern tech but most people will just get a lame smartphone or tablet
betarage Never speak I'll of XP. It is a God tier OS. It is the SNES of OS' lol
betarage I put WIN10 on mine and it runs just as bad
Don't put windows 10 on a computer from 2007 i ment that windows 10 works well with recent low end hardware compared to windows xp when windows xp came out you could not even run it on a 3000$ computer from 4 years earlier (1997) but windows 10 can run on computer from 2007 and earlier that is like running xp on a 386 computer from 1993
betarage Oh. Would I be better off installing a Linux based OS? Cause I still kinda wanna find a purpose for it. It's insanely slow tho
Linux would definitely be better. :) You'll want to look for a distro that's designed for older hardware though. Something like either Lubuntu, or Puppy Linux come to mind.
I bought a netbook in 2009 because I was traveling and my *really* old ThinkPad died. I needed something cheap and light, and it was really the best option for me. I still have it, and it still works.
BTW, my girlfriend in college had that Dell at 8:28, and it was always terrible. Thanks for the flashback.
Love these longer length videos. Full histories. Really love playing them in the background while I clean my house. I always learn really cool things. :)
I've used a Dell Inspiron Mini 9,I enjoyed using it,but not around 2008-2009,when I've used it again around 2013-2014...even around 2012,interesting to see a video about these netbooks coming from a respectful chanel like this one.
My 2009 era Acer Aspire One first-gen Netbook is still chugging along, but as a small, cheap print/media server. Mine came with a 160gb conventional hard drive and I swapped it for a 650gb drive I had lying around. I installed a lightweight Linux on it, loaded it with a bunch of stuff, put the Plex server on it, installed drivers for my printers on it, and stashed it in a corner closet with the printers. As a Plex server, it's OK. Updating the library takes a very long time, but it serves content over the LAN without any problem as long as it can play directly. It WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE transcode video. At least not fast enough that you could ever watch something. But it's small, uses almost no power, and has a built-in UPS, so as a little file and print server, it's actually pretty great.
One thing I think you might have overlooked is how easy it is, now, to get a good refurbished machine. About a year ago, I bought a 4-year old laptop with 8 gigs of RAM, a 3.2 GHz Dual-Core i5, and a 128 GB solid-state hard-drive for less than $270. Considering that almost everything was up-gradable and it was business class, it wasn't a bad purchase. After needlessly putting some more RAM in, putting new cooling paste on the processor, and switching to Linux, I was very happy with it.
Yep, I still own and use a netbook daily. I got it in 2011. It is an Acer Aspire One 722-0473. It has the AMD C60 Dual Core processor, 4 GB ram (I upgraded it from 2), AMD Radeon 6290 HD onboard video graphics, a 360GB HD and HDMI out with an 11.6"" screen. I have it connected to a larger monitor so I run it at 1600x900, built in is 1366x768. It came with Windows 7 Home Premium, which I have since upgraded to Windows 10.
I have used it for a wide variety of tasks - of course browsing, reading books using Kindle for PC and Overdrive, playing older games (surprisingly it does run a lot of them including many indie games), watching videos, office and minor photo editing, connecting to a tv to watch video, music (I do have a fan with speakers as the built in speakers are atrocious, but also use HDMI sound depending upon what I am connected to). The fan fits the tablet perfectly and isn't too big on it's own, so it is quite portable. I do also have an Asus tablet, as well, which I use much less frequently, except for android apps that are unique to android and I have a full home-built tower pc, as well.
I believe it was $249 new, so I've definitely gotten my bang for the buck. When and if Microsoft ages support for it out for Windows 10, I will throw Linux on it, if it is still kicking.
I've had experience with both incarnations of netbooks: I had a Samsung one in the mid-2000s, which was OK, until the screen cable broke (this was a known problem with that particular model). It took me years to get round to buying a replacement cable (which probably shows how little I used the thing; I came to much prefer my "proper" laptop, an Acer Aspire). Then I got an HP Stream 11 as mentioned in the video. It was OK under Windows 8.1, but after I upgraded to 10, it began to run into major storage problems to the extent that it wouldn't install the Anniversary update, at least not without some major tweaking that I really didn't have the inclination to do. So I ended up buying a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad, which was much better for work (even if it was a lot heavier), and using my tablet for day to day browsing etc. So pretty much bearing out what you said in the video.
Hey Colin,
I have a Dell Inspiron Mini 1011 sitting in a closet somewhere. I came with Windows XP but I upgraded it to Easy Peasy, an Ubuntu-based netbook distro. I used it when traveling for my job at the time and it worked well enough for that.
A couple years ago we needed a laptop for my wife, so we got an Acer Aspire ES1-111, an 11" laptop that I consider to be part of the "next generation" of netbooks. I upgraded it with more RAM, a 32 GB SSD, and a 2x2 Wi-Fi card. It's been working well enough for her needs but lately the reliability has been a little flaky.
I am looking to replace that with an HP 14-an013nr, which again is a low-cost laptop that's got a lot of room for upgrades. I'll be installing a 120 GB SSD as a second drive and taking the RAM up to 4 GB, for around $300 all-in.
These machines are all in the same vein of low-cost, low-end, small form-factor notebooks that serve a few particular purposes: browsing the web, paying bills, and writing office documents. The idea hasn't gone away, but it's certainly become less prominent over the past ten years.
I got a Samsung netbook in 2009 for around $300 mainly to use for taking notes in college since my full laptop which I'd bought earlier the same year was heavy and had limited battery life. Originally came with Win 7 "Starter", a special netbook Windows that only allowed 3 applications to run at once. Around 2011 I replaced it with Xubuntu in a desperate attempt to get better performance. In 2012 I started shifting most of my usage to a Nexus 7 tablet, but continued using the Samsung off and on until 2016 when I replaced it with a Chromebook. (Earlier in 2017 I replaced my laptop with a Surface Pro, so even the Chromebook is quickly becoming irrelevant).
Ultimately the great thing about it was that it was small, lightweight, silent, cheap, and had quite a good battery life (often 5-6 hours of taking notes in one day), at a time when a decent laptop cost over $700, was heavy, noisy fan, heated up, and only lasted 2-3 hours on the stock battery. I never expected to get great computing power out of it, but continued to throw it in my bag whenever I was going somewhere that might require extensive note taking.
There are Intel Pentium Netbooks which can handle the video editing very easily and Yoga Book is the recent Netbook which is amazingly fast
Responding to the last question, nah, I've retired the netbook years ago when youtube abandoned flash. I had a Gateway lt3103u. I chose this one because it wasn't constrained with the low res screens of the time, it came with a 1366x768 display and an AMD L110, a single core 1.2 ghz cpu, I did everything I could to make it a bit faster, learned it was socketed and in 2010 I upgraded it to a 1.6 tf-20, and it wasn't enough, then I overclocked it to 1.91 and it wasn't enough. Then in 2014 the L310 dual core 1.2 that was available only it in the EU stock became available on ebay for 3 dollars, gave it a try, same thing. Today my mobile pc is an HP 2570p, purchased used for $130 with the i5 3360m. Modern ultrabooks with their fancy 15w CPU's still don't compete.
I had an original EeePC in college. It ran Ubuntu and actually I really liked the thing. It was great for just shoving in a bag and taking to class for notes. Aside from that it could actually browse the internet. 8GB of storage was enough for note taking and it was I believe 1GB of RAM in it as the previous owner had upgraded it before selling. It was a cute lil thing and actually went across the country with me and served as my main form of internet access for a good few months. Around this time I was also looking to upgrade my aging gaming PC and Dell had just come out with their Vostro series and was giving out HUGE discounts.
I ended up buying a Vostro 1500 with a GeForce 8600GT (Still have that PC) for under $900 and that served as my main computer up until around 2011/12 when I built another gaming PC. The netbook sat around for a while and eventually I sold it on for like $100 to someone.
Great little PC though for its time. There wasn't anything like it and all of my tech friends were really impressed with it's size and such and the battery was plenty good to go almost a whole day of classes without needing a charge.
I think having Linux on the thing helped as it wasn't as resource hungry as XP was back then. It was a was light Ubuntu install and I never had many of the issues that XP netbooks had because of that.
I purchased a netbook back in 2012, It is a Samsung NC215S Which is the only Solar laptop I have really ever seen that was sold to the general consumer market. It came with a 320GB HDD and 1GB of ram, before it even left the shop it was upgraded to 2GB of ram which maxed out the built in atom processor which runs at 1.66Ghz (dual core, plus Hyper threading, total of 4 threads). I am still using this netbook however I have upgraded the 320Gb HDD to a 250GB Kingston SSD (UV100 i think it is, so not a speed demon). It runs Windows 7 and windows 10 quite happily considering its specs. I still use it today however not on a daily basis but it comes in handy as a computer that can display a document that I can refer to when im working on my main laptop (Macbook Pro Mid 2012 non Retina, 2.4GHz i7, 16GB ram, 2TB Samsung 850EVO SSD). The keyboard on the netbook is quite usable and the battery life is amazing, (lasts 10 hours) so when I am away from power for long periods of time, this couples with the solar makes it last even longer however the solar is pretty pathetic with it being rated as 2 hours in the sun = 1 hour of charge.
I loved my Gateway Atom N450 with included Windows 7 Starter. Dropping an SSD into it really breathed new life into it and made it useable. Purchasing the available massive 9-cell battery upgrade put its battery life way up there to over 12 hours with light use. I loved being able to upgrade the RAM to 1 GB and the network card to a dual-band 5 GHz compatible one. Great low power, always-on server with a built-in low-resolution screen. You could pretty much forget about watching any H.264-encoded videos above 480p on it, however.
I had been using a Toshiba NB550D during my university time (about 3-4 years), because I couldn't afford any high-end models at the time. But it was easily the best 300 bucks I spent for a laptop-type device, it was such a compact piece of hardware and I REALLY liked the keyboard on it. We sure went through a lot... It still works but the LCD screen is glitchy and sometimes displays weird colors, but I'm trying to get it working correctly again!
I remember when I had a netbook back around 2008, it was like my first computer and I was around 5 yrs old. Aah nostalgia.
I remember applying to work at Staples in 2006-ish, and them asking me what I would recommend to someone who just wanted to browse the internet and work on some documents. My response was that I would ask them for more detail about what they needed. The interview ended there because they said that I should have brought them over to the netbooks.