Why are THESE laptops dead? (Netbooks)
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- Опубликовано: 8 апр 2024
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Netbooks were quite popular during the late 2000s and early 2010s - so why is there no longer a market for mini-laptops that are primarily focused on online services, seeing as we're so dependent on the cloud these days?
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I remember dad got one of those in 2010 or so on a business trip to video call us. He's like 6'4 and 250lb, looked like Mr. Incredible working at his computer lol.
Lol
Lmao
What the heck is 6'4 and 250 lb? This is literally gibberish. Please use metric system: cm and kg!
@@creounity 193 cm and 113 kg
@@creounity Thanks to Britain's awkward use of metric and imperial, feet and inches (for human height) makes much more sense to me, but I only understand weight in metric form...
They didn't die off, they just evolved into Chromebooks.
And into cheap 11.6 or 14" windows laptops running Intel celeron N series or pentium gold or silver
Or "ultrabooks" that have better specs crammed in the same thin shitty case with poorly designed cooling to overheat and thermal throttle, then because of that offer similar performance as a netbook.
the moment he said that netbooks run on the idea that everything is going to be done on the internet, that's when it clicked in, they're just chromebooks now.
@@re57k Are there any Chromebooks with similarly small screens? I've actually been wanting a low power laptop to run during long power outages.
@@badfeng I'm sure there are many Chromebooks with small screens out there, but one that I've used personally is the HP Chromebook 11 G8 EE.
From past experiences borrowing it during school hours, the battery drops roughly 7% (100 to 93) in 3 hours so I'd say it has a pretty good battery life.
I've never been able to drain it entirely but if the battery estimation is anything to go by, it says it'll last anywhere between 10 - 23 hours on full charge.
I finished my entire Comp Sci degree on my netbook. Little thing did great once I replaced the stripped down Windows with a lightweight Linux distro.
That's literally what were made for
Yup! I loved my netbook, only stopped using it because I got a job, and a few years after that it could barely run a web browser. Now I have a GPC Win Max, which is slightly smaller so it's a bit more cramped than I'd like, but it's *much* faster.
I did side by side comparisons, and found no improvement between linux and windows ce, both ran equally slow
Same. I did pass my 1 years of computer programming on my netbook. Lenovo s20-30 ran debian
Same.
Compiling took forever and a day but programming on it wasn’t bad at all.
Man I sold truck loads of these things. And ONLY really to two types of people students and boomers. They were cheap, small and light and they handled word processing no worries so students loved them. This was also right around the time that boomers started retiring on mass and wanted to travel the world. These tiny laptops were lightweight and small so they fit in luggage easily, didn't tip you over your weight limit and were perfectly suited for checking emails, booking tours/motels/hotels etc and for video calling friends and family while you traveled around.
But smart phones and tablets replaced them.
Its fascinating to hear the real world uses for these, as they always just seemed too compromised to me where just browsing the web was slow as sludge.
I never used one, but they were heavily marketed to students while I was at university, and I saw a lot of them around.
Unfortunately in the race-to-the-bottom on price, many models had mushy keyboards or bad (for the era) LCD panels, making them ill-suited even for word processing.
@@alexatkin I carried one in my work bag. It was perfectly serviceable for plugging into equipment to diagnose and fix problems. Fit in a side pocket and had a full ethernet connection. I was very sad the day it died and I had to start carrying a laptop again.
Retiring Boomer here - bought an HP Stream 11 today and installed Mint XFCS immediately and plan to take it travelling
And better specced similar form factor laptops, like the laptops made by GPD.
I’d argue that Netbooks still live on today, just under a different name: “Chromebook”. While Chromebooks have gotten better, more flexible and powerful in recent years, they certainly started off as glorified netbooks - low spec, cheap, small form factor laptops that basically required an internet connection to do anything half-useful.
This. Chromebooks are the netbooks of our time.
Yeah, but Chromebooks now run normal hardware - that's the Intel Core series, and some even run ARM (and run more than 1 GB of ram - up to 8 GB)
Still have my original EeePC 701!
Exactly Chromebooks are just the modern version of a netbook
quite literally a netbook lol
I still have one and use it actively. I regret their passing as they were genuine x86 PCs capable of all a PC could do, albeit slowly. No jumping through hoops with ARM, no sandbox of Android, just an honest-to-god PC, cheap and small.
still use my Emachines EM250 to write and run table top RPGs with.
Exactly! And with a proper keyboard, instead of a touchscreen.
I installed Arch32 in Dell Mini 9 a couple years ago, for writing my masters on the go. But p@ndem1c came along and I ended up not needing it. I still have it, though.
x86 Windows tablets often fill a similar niche, and the advent of pocket PCs and handheld gaming PCs, such as the ones produced by GPD, means there are still equivalents to the netbook on the market now, it's just a narrower segment produced by niche, newer Chinese manufacturers.
And lightweight still use an hp mini the thing is so light I can just toss it in a backpack and bring it around without really feeling it
"all a PC could do" might be a bit generous, but at least there's no emulation, that's true.
chromebooks are effectifly a brandification and slight scale up of netbooks.
I'm shocked they didn't mention Chromebook. It's the exact same idea.
Chromebooks are such a con, IMO, I thought I could install all Android apps I use on my phone... Nope.
Yes this 100%
HUGE ANIME BREASTS
@@lxyacht Yh I don't get the video. Netbooks still exist.
I actually still have an EeePC 701 4g surf sitting in my drawer, that thing is still alive and in a kinda good condition despite getting abused by young me back then.
Wait 10 years, then eBay it as a retro PC.
Back in 2010 when I had an ISP call center job for a year, I remember customers calling in with these Windows CE based laptops they picked up at CVS. I *hated* those awful things. Never handled WPA quite right and in the end I had to inform customers that while we could use WEP, it was advised against. Of course the customers insisted on WEP.
Yeah I want to my Wi-Fi to be compromised instead of admiting that i got scamed
Good god, I didn't even know that there were consumer machines with Windows CrapEdition on it
I actually used a cheap crap CE netbook as a terminal using a version of Putty.
Netbooks mostly are running Windows XP / Vista / 7 Starter, "laptops" with Windows CE are another genre of computers
Yes and thanks for not bothering to explain what the f stuff like WEP or WPA stand for...
I had an Acer Aspire One that was perfect for college after I upgraded the ram. It worked fine for my college work and in between classes, I was able to emulate games up to the PS1 era. It's such a convenient form factor that even with the battery not being able to hold a charge, I still drop it into my bag whenever I need to travel so I have a laptop on hand if I ever need it for anything.
0.57. Yea, I use an Acer Aspire 5920 with Windows 10. I'm using it right now to convey this reply.
greencell made replacement batteries for these, i got one myself!
Yeah, I miss my HP Mini. I had one towards the end of my law degree. I needed a word processor to type out papers, something that could log on to the college wifi so I could do my research (JSTOR and LexisNexis), and save ripped DVDs to to watch later. It was in a backpack that got stolen while I was on vacation, along with my PSP and my iPod. It was the sum total of my digital footprint back then. Gosh, that loss still hurts!
The HP Minis were pretty neat. Lasted pretty long on battery power too. Unfortunately my HP Mini, even though it had removable RAM, could only use up to 1GB, which severely limited its Windows upgradeability. I'm sure I still have it in storage somewhere.
Loved my HP Mini to death. It could run a web browser and iTunes, and that’s all I needed it to do. Served me well for many years.
I bought a new Netbook just a couple of weeks ago.
Why? because we needed a really small form-factor windows PC for office work on locations without internet.
It's just is to run Office on location and not to be the main machine and it works perfectly for that task.
Funny thing is, when I bought it the sales man questioned me before processing payment to make sure I knew what I was buying.
what model?
@@roads_13 an Asus E210MA. It's amazingly small.
I still have two working Acer Aspire Ones.
My then-girlfriend-now-wife and I used them to take notes in class when we were studying law.
It was the perfect device for watching class and taking notes. I was able to type everything the teacher said, plus the blackboard, plus pay attention to him (I can basically type without thinking about it).
They were light, small, smaller than some books I had to carry at the time, and the battery lasted over four hours, enough for a day of classes.
Outside the classroom, I don't have much use for them anymore due to the small screen. Working as a lawyer nowadays I usually have 2 or 3 screens to do my work.
Use it as a media player in the office. No internet connection needed, and winamp still works.
I had an Acer Aspire One ZG5 in college, it was my main computer.
All I could afford. Put Windows XP on it and did all my work and my art on it. Even ran Secondlife.
It still works as a makeshift security camera DVR. Very power efficient and does what it needs to do.
0.57. Yea, I use an Acer Aspire 5920 with Windows 10. I'm using it right now to convey this reply.
I'd love to throw some kind of SBC in my ZG5; I just took it apart yesterday. Great little machine (because you could lie down and hold it up ;) ).
I still have mine. Put Linux on it.
@@bricktasticanimations4834 >Core 2 Duo not Intel Atom
>15" WXGA screen not 9" 1024x600
>built in DVD
I think that already counts as a proper laptop :3
@@notbfg9000 Thanks. I've got it running Windows 10.
I remember the first EeePC quite fondly. Actually the only product that I ever waited in front of a store for when it launched. An exercise in uselessness as it turned out, but the look on the store clerks face was still priceless. The guy couldn't believe that somebody actually wanted to buy that thing.
However, I was in college back then and bound for an international conference overseas. Suffice it to say, a week later I was more than happy not having to carry around almost 4kg of laptop in the Mexican sun day in and day out. Worth every penny, and not even much of them. 😅
When it was announced at Computex, I knew I had to get one. I ordered mine on Newegg and was so excited when it came. I did not buy it for the savings though-I was a bit of a UMPC enthusiast. I’d best describe the Eee PC as interesting at the time, but it wasn’t very functional given its OS and storage size.
@@KonohasYeIlowFlash Yeah, the storage. That was its main problem, indeed. I remember getting myself one of these nano-USB-drives the same day, also brand new that year. You know, those that were about the size of a thumbnail. No connector housing, thus extremely flat. You could secure them in a little silicone clip inside your shirt's breast pocket. Cool stuff at the time!
It also had only about a GB of storage, I believe. Tiny by today's standards. Got a lot of attention at the conference, regardless.
I bought an Acer Aspire One (~$300) so that I had a computer at work (teaching) and leave my main computer at home. I could write assignments and materials without having to drag a machine around daily. Anyone who was expecting high end was deluding themselves, but anyone accomplishing simple tasks in a small package got what they paid for.
The EEPC where 10 inch right? That is just a bit too small.. Netbooks where 12 inch.. But those are hard to find now.. The small sized notebooks are expensive again..
Video disliked for not flying dankpods back out just to say “eee pc”
Indeed!
A real dingus move not doing it.
thet's kinda haash mate
@@themice42 we here at the LMG comments section take jokes very seriously
100% nugget for sure. Straight to the landfill after a visit to Dr. #1 Grit.
I loved my EeePC 1000H! I got it in 2008 for about £300. It was one of the bigger 10" ones, ran Windows and did everything I needed it to. Battery life was immense for those days too - I could pretty much get a full day on it (my previous laptop lasted about 2 hours with a P4 inside).
Technology always moves on and netbooks are a fondly remembered part of my tech history. They weren't high-powered, but you have to remember that at that time, few people had as convenient a way to get online away from home. I didn't have a phone that could email or get online (aside from WAP websites, which were basically glorified Ceefax) and I had a desktop for heavy lifting. Netbooks came at the right time for me.
That EeePC got my through my final bachelor's year and my masters.
Perfect device for study at the time.
My little netbook did its job well for years, it only died last year...
Wrote my masters thesis on a 7" Eee PC - converted him into a touchscreen linux box after. I miss that little guy 😢
I highly doubt a netbook is interesting enough to write an entire thesis about
🤣 molecular biology thesis. Also, had the little guy driving an external monitor and keyboard. Small but mighty
@@labmeetingthats what happens if people lacking reading comprehension
Wow!
Bigger smartphone + Tablet + More portable 11inch-14inch laptops = the death of netbooks.
Also Netbooks were shit because unlike phones, software was not trimmed down to work on potato hardware and servers weren't doing the heavy lifting in the cloud.
And crappy Cromebooks
@@brokeandtired phones are shit in other ways.
BTW netbooks are live and well right now, just look at OMY2s, OMY3s, OGX1, Gpd win mini, Gpd win 2, GPD pocket 2, GPD pocket 3, Chuwi minibook, Topjoy falcon.... The list goes on.
11inch laptops or chromebooks in general are effectively netbooks. Just name change.
I loved my eeePC 700 in college. Never had to fight for an open machine at the computer lab to write last-minute essays right before class
Netbooks disappeared from the market
Chromebook: Am I a joke to you
I has a Netbook in 2010, loved the thing. Small, light, and perfect for taking to school and work.
I still have my Toshiba netbook from 2007. Throw it on every now and then (in offline mode) just to remember how slow everything was back then.
The Dell Mini 1011 was the *perfect* Hackintosh or, as I called it, "Hackintot." The form factor was ideal for grad school notetaking, the minimal size and heft meant it fit great in a backpack, and the battery life was phenomenal, especially as you could buy hot-swappable spares.
The form factor isn't completely dead, btw. Over a decade later, I'm now seriously considering getting a GPD Win Max if I ever need another personal laptop.
The MSI Wind was also the perfect Hackintosh. Basically plug & play. Probably had similar internals to the Dell I guess
Do it. The win max 2 is really good (except the speakers).
I bought it last summer. No regrets, it's amazing.
This is the only comment I've seen actually mentioning the new modern netbooks. There's huge amounts of different models by now.
Still have my EeePC in a drawer. Not usable for much today, but 10 years ago it was an excellent machine for carrying around campus, downloading assignments, typing up papers on the go etc. Decent laptops at the time were back-breakingly heavy, so these were ideal as a light machine for use on the go that was also cheap enough that you could buy one in addition to your primary machine.
Wiped Win7 Starter Edition from the hard drive on day one and installed Linux instead, of course!
I still have my netbook somewhere! I have been meaning to repurpose it into a portable automotive diagnostic machine.
Or just get an OBD2 reader that sends the data to a phone app 🤷♂️
I already have a few OBD2 readers, this will be for accessing digital service manuals, saving data for later, and tuning.
Framework did it in the study with the monkey wrench.
My Acer aspire one netbook served me well enough once I maxed the ram and swapped the hdd with a ssd. I'd love to find a eeepc for portable XP retro gaming
1:59 I guess they have now been overtaken with crappy Chromebook’s or tablets
Much like all laptops since they're inception, there are good and bad Chromebooks. Plus, just about any x86 Chromebook can support Linux distros running kernel 6.25 and up, there's very little reason to avoid them. If you actually look at the specs, it's very common to see the exact same PC in Windows and ChromeOS variants.
My father bought one for me when I was like 13yrs old. I used it a ton for writing stories and texts for school on the go. It was lightweight, compact and did exactly what it was designed for. Lightweight on the go work
It was too slow for fluent internet browsing, too slow for gaming, but that's not the point
Windows 7, 1gb of ddr3(not upgradable), intel atom(no hyperthreading single core) and maybe 2-3hrs of battery life were the downfall
If you can believe it, there are still netbooks being produced as recently as 2023! The HP Stream 11 is an example: it was $150, ran Windows 10, and had 32 GB of storage, making it effectively useless as a computer because of how little space was left for the user... many programs didn't even function due to the lack of storage space. For a while, Gateway also made some.
The HP Stream 11 is the only one that is still sold, however it is already 2 year old and uses old Gemini Lake.. There is new Jasper Lake and also Alder Lake N available.. They could make brilliant Netbooks with these partes..
I've still got 2 of those, upgraded with old 120gb Samsung PRO SSD and Windows 7 Starter, I love them, just right for my use cases. Especially the batteries last more than a month for me.
I put a Linux distro and a decent ssd, didn't really need it, but it was a good fixer upper
I bought an EeePC 1005 in 2009 because I couldn't afford a laptop to replace my previous one. I used it for 2 years, it was kind of practical but I abandoned it when the HDD broke due to a bad fall (and got a corp laptop at the same time).
A 9-10" EeePC today with borderless screen and nvme storage and an intel n95 or equivalent would be a really nice device if under 1lb :D
i have never been able to use my net book, the harddrive was 32 gb and windows took up 28 of those gb. but it did lead me down a road of learning about computers.
Same here. We had one at work. But then there was a Windows update, which, for some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to program Windows to use 100% of the storage capacity this bricked the netbook. Netbook company said it wasn't their problem, and windows said it wasn't their problem. Never again
Is it. 2.5"? Couldn't you upgrade the storage to something much bigger?
I've bought RAM and SSD for an old laptop which I'll install Linux Mint do it'll run smoothly.
@PhilipMarcYT we really couldn't do that. My tech guy was saying that the storage was hard soldered to the board itself, and the only storage upgrade was a small SD card slot. Windows was stuck in a loop where it wanted to uncompress the update and it would run out of space there was no way to tell it to use the SD card because of the windows version there was no way to roll back the update at the time( a stripped down Windows Vista for netbooks)
same situation, Intel Classmate with 8 gb semi-proprietary SSD, barely can put Windows 7 Embedded here (with 600 mb left only), it's my daily-driver in 2024 cause my proper laptop died
I've never seen windows take up *that* much space, but I did see a 16gb netbook before and holy crap was it worthless because of the drive situation
When I was riding the bus to and from work, my PC Eeee 1000HE was the perfect size. Performance was OK for the text and light programming I used it for. It still has great battery life. I check it every 5 or 6 weeks, battery life is better than my HP 15CL notebook.
I loved my MSI Wind back in college. Put an extended battery on it and was the first laptop I had where I didn't need to carry a power brick. Maybe with the pivot to ARM desktop computing we could see similar devices make a comeback.
I remember running MacOS on an EEE PC! Good times
I need to get hold of an old Eee PC again to use as a little Linux terminal.
Chromebooks are like the evolution of netbooks.
I was at university in that era. Many teachers had one, but the students all had traditional laptops. The main reason is that that was Computer Science and a netbook wouldn't be powerful enough to do what we needed to do
I used to have an EEE Pc, which was wonderful for the time. Worked wonderful for wardriving among normal tasks as well.
I still remember trying to pick between an Eee PC, Acer Aspire One, and MSI Wind for my college laptop. I loved that Wind so much. I wrote so many papers on it that it was difficult to go back to full sized keyboards. I think it was also the first computer I installed my own upgrades for.
I rescued a Dell Latitude 2110 from one of my last jobs to experiment with finding the right Linux distro to recycle it
I have a Toshiba netbook from 2011 that still works to this day, what really impresses me every time I take it out to test it is that the battery still lasts just about the same time it did back in the day, is like the opposite of every other electronic device I ever owned. Also that thing has the most comfortable small keyboard I ever used, it's genuinely great for typing.
I had an Eee PC. One of the ones that came with a cutdown version Windows Vista(?) which I recall downgrading to XP, and it then ran flawlessly. Loved that little guy. Used to take him to and from University for coursework, as well as internet, media/anime and video games (for some reason I very specifically remember playing Cave Story on it) in a way I decidedly do not with my smartphone.
I think that sort of experience with a portable device has been missing since my Eee PC died: Even with an ultralight HP Elitebook (+ a laptop pocket in my backpack to fit it) a 14" laptop is still too big/heavy/cumbersome to jam in my bag and head out the house anywhere with, and perhaps due to having used a netbook I never got used to smartphones for being too locked down (also that touchscreens are awful/Blackberries aren't around anymore). There are certainly small/er PC models available today, like the HP Dragonfly- which I genuinely considered buying just to shave off that extra +1" vs my Elitebook, but perhaps I should be looking at one of those GPD mini laptops instead and/or a Samsung Fold (and then try to find a touchpad/keyboard combo that doesn't suck).
watching this on my 11 in Lenovo and i love it for travel.
I do remember my blue gateway netbook was a beast back in the day also lol
My Asus eeePC was great for taking to classes at university. Once I ditched Win and threw Linux on there, that is.
It's so laughably CPU-bound in Windows that throwing an SSD in it gave no load time boosts over its original HDD.
I got this one I love, its 10 inch display is 1080p, looks so crisp, even with that 1GB of RAM, tethered it to my phone for both power and internet on long train rides, still works like a charm for the regular stuff.
What device is that? I mean 10" Display with 1080p? That sounds incredible. Please tell me I wanna know more about that.
I remember wanting a netbook SO bad. The idea of having a full blown computer in such a small form factor was awesome to me. Plus there were some cool hackintosh systems you could make, but boy did they all feel so plasticy and cheap. The whole era of smaller everything with phones, computers, etc. was fun but hilariously non-ergonomic.
Couldn‘t the 2015-2017 MacBooks (non-Pro/Air) be considered as a netbook because of their small size and light weight and m5 processors?
No. Netbooks aren't just small and lightweight.
They were also super affordable 😅
The 12-inch MacBook was definitely not cheap
Most Chromebooks today are the true netbooks successor. MacBook Airs, thanks to their cost, never truly competed in the same product segment.
However, the sub $200 Walmart special Chromebooks definitely fill the same niche that netbooks once did. Poor specs, often a small screen, but lightweight, offers good battery life, and can work for people mainly looking to use a few tabs.
Well, when the first MacBook Air was released, plenty of people called it a netbook, but expensive. Fun times.
Damn, the netbook days were dark times. My mom was still using one a few years ago and it was painfully slow. She's now using a notebook we gifted her which is faster, has more storage, is quieter, thinner and lighter.
I remember when these things failed and then within 2 years we started seeing schools buying Chromebooks which are just netbooks but running a purpose built operating system
I once saved up for an Aspire One 11.6 with an AMD C-60 processor as my first computer I could call my own. Holy cow that thing was miserable. It once took 15 minutes to print a single page! Taught me a lot about the importance of value though - sometimes paying a little bit more gets you a much better end product.
Basically they were rubbish! End of story !
I had a netbook to take me through all school :) I still use it sometimes to ssh to other machines
I ordered a brand new one that’s like a netbook coming soon, the MNT Pocket Reform. Totally open source project and I can even install a cell modem too, had a mechanical keyboard and trackball mouse too.
For myself and basically everybody else I knew in university, we didn't buy netbooks because of the size. They were so small that typing on them all day was highly uncomfortable. They tended to have a smaller, condensed keyboard that felt cramped.
I had an EeePC 900 running Xantos Linux. First I used to watch series on the way back from off-site work or on longer train trips, then I started experiment with different operating systems. I started to learn writing scripts to reinstall drivers after each install, I was too lazy to do everything manually. Once I played Starcraft for 3.5 hours on battery and it still had juice when I turned it off. Had no bad experience.
The linux distro was Xandros. The sales office was in midtown Manhattan and the programmers were in Ottawa, Canada. I was the pre-sales engineer for Enterprise accounts in 2006. Unfortunately, it was a short-lived career choice, but at least I could give my youngest daughter an eeePC to learn basic computing on.
Netbooks had 2 major selling points: price and portability.
In terms of price, they made regular laptops cheaper, we finally started seeing regular laptops under $1000 or even under $800, so the price advantage shirked.
In terms of portability, in 2008 Apple came with its MacBook air and Lenovo with its equally thin and light Thinkpad X300, both very expensive, but they started the "ultrabook" trend, and prices of MacBook Air and Windows ultrabooks went down to little more than $1000 in the early 2010s, so more and more people who wanted portability more than a very low price adopted the ultrabook trend.
I still have my little red EeePc 1005peb. That's the computer that got me through college it had a ridiculous like 12 hour battery, and was really easy to haul around. It was the one I really learned about computers on. Ran my first VMs, learned some java, learned how to tweak windows 7, dual booted my first Linux distros, first machine I did hardware upgrades to. I love that thing. Sometimes I watch those PCBway commercials and fantasize about putting a modern SBC with a custom adapter board, and a modern OLED in it.
I think the conclusion ist wrong.
They never vanished, they just got rebranded to Chromebock.
Still got my EeePC 1005HA in a shelf somewhere. It was extremely cheap, ran well enough with Windows and was easy to lug around to school. Was able to play some simple or retro games as well.
I owned a few netbooks. They were super handy. My first one was actually pretty bad, but I managed to fix one of its biggest issues with an add-on card that handled video processing and made videos on RUclips play better. That was an interesting time.
I still have one of these. An Acer Aspire One with Atom N270, 2gb ddr2, Intel GMA 950, 160gb hdd.
The cpu's so underpowered that installing a SSD didn't make it noticeably faster.
I actually had two, one from Acer on which I installed WinXP and a few years later a Lenovo S100 that came with Win7, my then girlfriend gave it to me when my main laptop bit the dust, it carried me through a three year period connected to a 17 inch monitor. I still have it somewhere, actually.
I DESPERATELY want to be able to fill the shell of my Acer Aspire ONE ZG5 (the one with the space between the monitor and keyboard parts you could put your fingers through) with something modern. I absolutely love that form factor.
Really cool that you guys are able to use clips from your back catologe now that you have that AI sorting/tagging thing. Looking forward to a video on it!
I had one of those netbooks running MeeGo and it was SO perfomant I am so bummed that distro is gone
I worked in a computer store at the time. These things were so slow, they made my job even more of a pain. Had to reset each laptop and netbook every morning, since customers the day before would've essentially destroyed the OS somehow.
got a netbook still, its in pieces but still boots up and runs, only takes 100 years to load up chrome now (its 11 years old)
Had one of those netbook successor back in 2016 (acer one with intel celeron). Had a blast with those thing when i had business trip since it was so small and has nice battery hour. Then at the end of the year i upgrade the ram to 6 gb and install ssd, then give it to my cousin.
He still use it at 2024 with linux, the battery indeed need replacement but for light office it still work.
My netbook was a godsend in college (I commuted).
It was a higher-end Asus N10Jh with an Atom N280 and optional discrete GPU Geforce 105M that could be switched off to save power (from about 4h of normal use on battery).
I can't wait to get one of them pocketable clamshell PCs.
Man, I wish they also did SIM and camera, I'd rather have a true all-in-one device...
My first laptop was a netbook (norhtec gecko, the one with the five inch screen and internal battery). I did my programming on a math notebook during the two hour commute to work. Getting a cheap laptop that just has to be windows compatible so it can run company softtware worked for me.
That EEE PC was my oldest niece's first computer. I got it for her 7th birthday and my brother was probably the happiest about it, as it meant his laptop was back to just being "dad's computer."
My 2009 Acer Aspire One refuses to die. and the battery still works and holds it for 3-4 hours. It used to do 12 hours.
My first laptop was a netbook. I got it around the time that they first iPad came out. I found it to be a way more versatile device for getting work done than an iPad which actually cost more and was really just a big iPod, with no multitasking or proper file management system.
I've used HP mini 5102 for a few years as a field engineer. Great little machine that was.
I worked on the OS for the EeePC, it was fun taking it on the train in 2007 as there was nothing else like it at the time.
I had an Acer EeePC 1025C, one of the fastest of them. Modded it to use 4 GB of memory, upgraded the HDD to an Samsung EVO 740 128 GB, that was at the time almost as expensive as the netbook it self, running Debian 32-bit and had a spare 6-8 hour battery. Only have to shutdown replace battery and up and running again. I used it untill 2022, when it was replaced by the Microsoft Laptop Go 1st gen at the outlet. It's so sad they don't produce them anymore...
still got my eeepc in the trunk of my car for whenever i do night shift, with a lightweight linux distro and a battery 3.5 times bigger than stock it last for 14h with screen on,
and it's still plenty enough to browse youtube, watch a movie, and even windows 98/dos era retro gaming.
I still have my Acer Aspire One, it's running Windows XP and I even skinned it. I mostly keep it near the router bridge for the rare time I need to log into it, it's only accessible via directly plugging into it.
I started working for an airline in 2008, which meant lots of travel, so I got a netbook running good old XP and it was great. I got a gaming laptop a little while later and gave the netbook to my brother, who promptly started plugging it into unprotected outlets. Of course it got fried. I miss that thing. It represents a unique time in my life that'll never come back again, so I keep it as a glorified paperweight.
I remember having a handfull of these in my 7th grade social studies class so we could take turns researching stuff. I remember they all had Atom professors, Windows, and were almost unusable. None of us had ever used anything other than a full-sized keyboard so we took forever to type anything
i really liked my 10" winxp eee pc. bought it when i sold my old laptop and was waiting for my new one (took a month or 2) in 2009 and used it for different things like printing tickets till around 2018. sometimes i think about buying a tablet nowadays and then i'm basically looking for a netbook with removable screen. the keyboard is fine for typing, way better than using a display and it also protects the screen when put in a bag but those kinda devices seem rare today :-/
these were great as a college student, just working on school work, though the ultra book class became popular while i was still in school and i moved to that.
The first laptop in my family was a Toshiba Mini NB205-N210 netbook in 2009. After it quit working, my parents gave it to us kids to use as a pretend computer. Then, in 2022, my dad managed to get it up and running again. The battery might not work anymore and the bezels might be falling off, but it still works to this day.
I remember trying to use a friend's netbook. It was so very limited. Kind of like using a chromebook today
Got a Compaq netbook and it served me for many years before I upgraded with a hand-me-down office laptop from my Dad.
I remember when I brought an Asus EEE PC netbook on campus back when they were first launched and everyone was enthralled with it. It was like having an iPhone in 2001, tons of people stopped by and asked about it. One of my professors ended up getting one cause he saw me using it.
I still miss my hand-me-down netbook I tried using for grad school. Went two weeks before just buying a new laptop
Had lots of fun putting Win XP, Win 7 beta, and even attempting to put Mac OS X on my MSI Wind U100 from 2009 with 2gb of ram and a 320gb hdd, a higher end netbook during this time. My friend still has a working one passed down and was in use in 2021 for online school 😅
I had an Asus 2 in 1 tablet thingy that ran windows back then, it was like a hybrid between a netbook (which is what it as marketed as) and a tablet, since the keyboard was absolutely rock solid by 2012 standards - pretty much the same as a mid tier laptop. That thing was freaking awesome.
I remember the computer shop I worked in at the time selling them and hardly any of them sold.
One of the biggest uses for them was as a disposable screen to connect hard drives to on deployment.
Most of my creative output around them was on an Acer Aspire One netbook. I still keep a desktop around running 32-bit Windows so I can run all my old apps.
I had the Packard bell dot zg1 on 2008. 8 inch screen, full 512mb of RAM. What a machine!
I had a Samsung NC10 that I upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 2GB and installed a touchscreen on. I was surprised to find it was capable of running Vista and Aero quite well. The keyboard was actually pretty decent, and the battery life was awesome given the size of the machine (and that was without the extended battery you could slot in).
I was given a high end Toshiba netbook from circa 2012. I upgraded the memory to 2GB and added an SSD, it runs Manjaro KDE Linux and I still use it daily as my portable computing device.
i had 11" netbook in 2009-2010 from asus, needed windows on the go, was quite slow and screen was too small size and resolution, but did the job. replaced later with 15.6 laptop.
I picked up an Asus eepc and did research. Got one with 512mb and 64gb hdd at 5200rpm running xp in 08/09. I swapped ram for 2gb, and hdd for 256gb 7200rpm and installed Win7 32bit. It was a feisty machine for web browsing and basic word processing in college.
I had a little Eeeee PC something, and didn't really like it in use. I think the incurable problem was that there's a limit to how far you can shrink the keyboard + screen form of the laptop; also, they weren't that thin. Hence the success of the iPad (when it was launched, there was a lot of doubt about its success), and the tablet + really thin keyboard; these are a lot bigger in surface area, and screen size, than the netbooks, but so slim they are really portable.