Why Netbooks Failed - Modern Retrospective

[@91Tech]

Reminder that with Windows Starter Edition you couldn't change your wallpaper. Has there ever been a more arbitrary limitation in any software than that? The low powered Atom processors and iPad/tablets didn't help Netbooks, but it was clear Microsoft never took them seriously.

[@user-bn8pg7os8d]

cant change /customize win 10 if you dont activate windows , so yea thats still a thing

[@Jferrari427]

They were cheap and were bogged down really quickly with anything more than web browsing. The real purpose wasn’t really clear which lead to their eventual demise. Nostalgic nonetheless.

[@91Tech]

@billy ruiz bit different though because when you buy a laptop or pre-built PC it'll be activated. With Windows Starter you were buying a netbook, and were basically punished for not buying something better. Also it’s now used to try to guilt you into actually buying Windows which is probably fair.

[@agusorellana5551]

At around 2012 I was given my mum's laptop which was a packard-bell easynote with black shiny plastic, it was a full size laptop but it had an awful single core celeron and I barely remember the rest, however it had windows 7 starter and it heated up like crazy. Why 7 starter? no idea at all, but packard-bell was a cheap brand so if it had to be cheap, it had to be completely garbaged out.

[@cherrychuuu]

I still have mine, it’s hardly usable, it’s so slow. The wallpaper thing... we don’t talk about that.

[@amirulgaminghd3278]

netbook has a special place in my heart...it taught me alot about computer and overclocking just to get a playable fps on minecraft

[@wojciechmuras553]

"Playable" as in the number of likes under this comment? Been there ;)

[@FeverDev64]

Same except the overclocking part .man those gmas thernal throttled to 166mhx

[@HyenaFox]

Oh my god, I remember this. I had a netbook from about when I was 7 to when I was like 10, and playing Minecraft on one of those sure was an experience. I learned overclocking basics and more simply by frantically trying every possible trick I could to improve my framerate, I lowered every setting and resolution and overclocked the CPU and allocated more RAM and did all of it and still only got like 35 FPS at the best of times, but I kept playing because I didn't know any better lol. Now I play Minecraft at 60+ FPS at 1080p with shaders on a desktop that I built myself, and I think I have this little netbook thing to thank for my love of tech and stuff. If I was lucky that day, my mom would be off work and I'd be able to play with my mom's work laptop which was a little bit more powerful (at least for gaming) than my netbook. Then I could manage 45-50 FPS.

[@FeverDev64]

@@HyenaFox same bro i had my old dads laptop which could play at better frames

[@davidmussin6872]

@@HyenaFox damn some people live the same lives

[@epifritaxey4376]

I still call Chromebooks "Netbooks" They really are just netbooks but with an operating system the netbook can actually handle

[@coolbean9880]

in conclusion, linux solves everything oh also people are more driven by brand recognition than actually knowing what theyre buying

[@Drawing4Justice]

Linux? Isnt it

[@vullord666]

@@coolbean9880 Well I mean yeah. Just look at Apple (and granted apple products aren't "bad", but easily their success comes from the brand recognition and "if you don't have an iPhone you're poor"). Not to mention Google has pioneered the "non thinking" internet age by controlling search results, ads, and general stimuli exposure. Then there's the rest of the internet and big companies making it worse. Not to mention the education curriculum that's focused on just passing kids and getting them out of school (usually meaning all most people learn anymore is how to follow directions). Brand recognition is the name of a very fixed game right now.

[@youtubeshadowbannedme]

At least a netbook lets you install stuff wherever you want

[@TheTaquitoProject]

@@vullord666 about schools, unfortunately that depends on your teachers. I was lucky enough that almost all of my teachers placed a heavy emphasis on teaching critical thinking, and, in my science classes, experimentally testing the concepts we were learning (including math classes, arguably my best teacher, assigned proofs/fewer but longer form problems for homework as well as some shorter practice). Of course, the one who didn’t (second semester of trig lmao) was awful, and I had to essentially give myself extra homework to actually learn the material.

[@lordlucifer5630]

I was forced to learn how to optimize Windows because of this thing, and that was an amazing learning experience, like a wise man once said "No Pain, No Gain"

[@moonshinepz]

I have one running windows 10 here, you are spot on, chuck out all the bloat and optimize and you get very worthwhile gains.

[@mthf5839]

'optimize windows'? very weird way to misspell 'install linux'.

[@youtubeshadowbannedme]

I was forced to sort of optimise my current gaming laptop because Acer has bad quality control; I regret shopping late during Christmas in 2019 and not going for HP or ASUS when theirs still haven't sold out

[@lunatikantigenztiktokhumor910]

Do you know where your profile pic from?

[@Blox117]

@@mthf5839 you forgot to shave your neckbeard and tip your fedora

[@philm94]

Blaming MS for 'starter edition' is missing the point rather. The netbook started life as a low price machine designed for emerging markets and 3rd world classrooms. The first ones had a disproportionately large battery to last a whole school day, and some even had wind-up charging for markets with no electricity. They were all, as you said, Linux machines, designed to run well on basic hardware. The later ones (still early) had larger screens, and by then had atom processors. They were still sold typically with just Linux (Ubuntu or the custom-made netbuntu) to keep prices low and performance acceptable. Then, people started buying them in the west, and expected a mini-laptop. Sales started ramping up when Dell/Samsung released their versions. Then, returns started flying back in the door. People expected it to "be windows" and didn't understand why they can't run exe files, install word, etc. Starter edition came into being, because when retailers told them "oh you can buy windows for $120 if you don't like Linux" people complained they'd "never had to buy windows before, it was always free" and retailers had customers thinking they were being scammed. If you had the same laptop at two different prices, one Linux, one with windows, people bought the cheaper one anyway and then did all the above anyway, leading to huge piles of returns. Cue, the end of Linux laptops as standard and windows being put on them. Starter existed to stop a Home OEM license being required for each netbook, which would have added more significantly to the cost. You say it was bad, but you don't appreciate how bad consumers are at understanding what an OS is, or why their Ubuntu machine could do more for free. This is all just a way of saying popularity killed the netbook. As soon as mass market appeal happened, the lowest common denominator needed to be catered for, so we got starter. Tablets killed them off, because people could go back to forgetting what an OS is again, and just push buttons.

[@tsubasa83_ch]

Yup. Windows' brand recognition means that anything that isn't Windows (or made by Apple/Google) immediately becomes a strange, alien world. Netbooks' price points relied on Linux being cheap (not just literally being free, but with it being notoriously easy to run on lower-end systems), which Windows' ubiquity quickly killed. Going to what you said about productivity work, had things like Google Docs been more popular earlier, I'd predict netbooks would have at least survived in a better state until hybrids came along.

[@fishyc43sar]

This is one of those persons who actually gets the thing. What's even funnier, is that you can manage Word to get working on a Ubuntu easily, and not on "Starter Edition". Btw, let me share a fact, one company in my country managed to get Win10 Pro with Atom/Pentium for a lower price point than the Win10 Pro Retail license itself, but ofc by 2018, much late to the world of netbooks.

[@DocMalaspeme]

I couldn't have said it better. This video sounds more about saying MS is bad, than understanding what really happened.

[@PeterGriffin-kb2hf]

Sometimes I wonder why some people seem to spend half of their life in a cave and then when they come out tech ads are their only source of info.

[@fharidvalencia2068]

I remember that my first pc was an acer netbook, I hated windows on it so began to search for solutions, a little learning curve and then finally installed Ubuntu on it and the experience was amazing, I can still feel the thrill of the smoothness and responsiveness

[@zidaantumbi8378]

Netbooks exist 2019 Schools - "I'll take your entire stock!"

[@geekygirl2596]

Not sure if its a net book, but my school bought like 34 12 in think pad laptops. I fell in love with ThinkPad then. I still have a refurbished one from 2011.

[@raydai9541]

You mean crappy chrome books?

[@buster_straight_buster]

@@geekygirl2596 ThinkPads are great laptops to be honest

[@Jus-Tin]

@@buster_straight_buster it depends on which ones I worked in a school as IT support before and those thinkpads without SSDs are awfully slow at everything.

[@buster_straight_buster]

@@Jus-Tin my schools did have an SSD

[@Cakebattered]

Netbooks were designed for web browsing. Anything beyond that was just gravy. They weren't even advertised as laptop replacements. "Phablets" and tablets replaced them.

[@blackboxbs8642]

@VeniVidiViral you are dumb, i have 2gb ram netbook and it can run any webpage also with multiple tabs, even discord slack etc. You understimate these things like they are some 90s machines.

[@sagichdirdochnicht4653]

And the usual Nonsense: simple Office Crap, a few Emails, some Music and maybe a Video every now and then. All of those not very demanding tasks run fine enough on those overclocked Toasters. But yeah, Tablets kinda destroyed the Market. They can handle anything a Netbook could do, but faster, better and with a whole lot more tasks they can handle, that Netbooks would have failed. All of this in an almost Idiot Proof format - my mom was able to use a Tablet, and she struggles with absolutely anything tech related. Atlough there is still a Market for extremely small formfactor Laptops, with similar sizes to Netbooks. However, they are usually capable Machines and cost a fortune, so they are pretty damn niche and don't serve the Product Category, that Netbooks used to fill in. Also, there are Chromebooks now. Specs are usually pretty damn underwhelming, but they are cheap and run absolutely fine, because no copy of Windows is running on there.

[@WayneKeen]

@@sagichdirdochnicht4653 The one thing that my Netbook could do (moderately well in fact) that tablets would not let me do was writing technical code - mostly Python, some C++ directly on the machine. Heck, it ran MinGW and Cygwin pretty darn well, enabling a lot of work devlopment and analysis tasks that I could not do on a tablet, much to my frustration. I wasn't until some of the 2 in 1's came out that allowed me to do that sort of thing on a "tablet" type of platform. I know all of the above makes me a 5 sigma case in terms of normal use, so I will go back and sit in my corner case.... -)

[@Cakebattered]

@VeniVidiViral 4k? Netbooks peaked before 1080p streaming video was available. Heck Netflix was still a video rental service.

[@UNSCPILOT]

And now Chromebooks too, except they're locked to a set operating system and heaps of them have already lost all software support. Better to spend a little more for a real laptop, maybe load it with Linux if you loath Windows. I have a Cheap (less that 500 dollars) 17inch HP laptop with a Ryzen 2300u with Vega 6 graphics, that I was able to upgrade with 16 gigs of RAM and add a 1TB M.2 drive, I've installed Garuda Linux on it and it's a genuinely fun device to use that even still has a Disk drive so I can RIP CDs and DVDs to it or replace it with a Blueray drive since video streaming is hella unreliable on my Canadian internet

[@pocketpinguin]

I've had a Eee Pc and it wash kinda trash but I was pretty young and the thing could play KZbin videos and had a fun gardening game...

[@ilikerollercoasters4757]

Dude the eee pc was cool

[@ThePianist51]

The Lamborghini edition with Nvidia Ion 2 was lit ;-)

[@bobtcm2240]

Nicefisher yes and then use one grit to break the clones afterwards

[@Wizza2418]

I’m glad someone made the eeepeecee reference.

[@rustymixer2886]

Watching and typing on my eee pc 1001x with xp ;)

[@richardcutts196]

They failed because of iPad, and android tablets, then the smartphone.

[@callaco3176]

Reverse the order.

[@whee6506]

And 11’ MacBook Air which is unfortunately discontinued

[@nic7227]

TheComputerGamerGuy Those who bought netbooks couldn’t afford a MBA

[@whee6506]

@Nick yea but the MBA 11’ kept having a better cpu, more ram and a faster ssd and the price was almost the same throughout the years and its light and ultraportable just like the focus of netbooks

[@whee6506]

@Nick basically the MBA was one of the first ultrabooks introduced then other OEMs just copied apple around 2012 (bc of Windows 8 maybe) and forgot about netbooks

[@reaper84]

I remember writing my Thesis on a netbook. Was really great, light and portable (for 2008 standards anyway). Kinda miss them.

[@azerua99]

Did the same

[@eduardochavacano]

If its good enough to complete a thesis it cant be bad.

[@LuLeBe]

Yeah, I feel like the 2015 Macbook could have been the successor. If it cost 599 and had a working keyboard.

[@boris2223]

Not to mention that Intel needlessly delayed the industry transition to 64-bit by making their early Atom processors x86.

[@Moskito844]

what do you mean, white fella

[@campkira]

mircrosoft endless update ate up the harddrive.... they did it to surface that they know only had 32 gb.... the rest just junk....

[@boris2223]

@Unknown Nomad Yea the later ones were x64, but the early ones were x86-only, and there were a sizeable number of them shipped, during a time when 64-bit was otherwise cemented across the industry. Intel also pumped out a bunch of 32-bit tablet SoC's. This set the x64 cause back for years, thanks to Intel.

[@jmugurr994]

@@boris2223 yes I still have an atom based purple aspire one that was x86 only and it was horribly slow. I later got another aspire one but with AMD c-60 processor which was a much better experience compared to atom, still slow but better and x64 compatible. I recently installed win 10 x64 on it with ssd and it isn't bad.

[@kofiosei-duah4951]

Truth

[@SilverScarletSpider]

Why netbooks failed: underperforming cpu's that couldn’t keep up as Microsoft’s Windows software intentionally got more bloated every single year. From XP to Vista to 7. It's great to have a small thin and light portable KZbin and Microsoft word machine that you can easily take everywhere. Unfortunately, many netbooks at the time would end up lagging while typing and buffering to load KZbin within a few years. Mandatory Windows updates for “security” that contained more bloat did not help either. Google Chrome would straight up crash on these systems. And only Mozilla Firefox would be light enough to run smoothly.

[@lucius1976]

On the first netbooks i got KZbin wasn´t much of a thing. Can´t remember actually knowing it back in 2007

[@SilverScarletSpider]

lucius1976 Good point. Back in the 2004 - 2006 window many people still didn’t use KZbin. I just remember loving my netbook but then slowly getting disappointed by the poor software optimization and slow speeds.

[@ads2711]

My netbook couldn't open chrome

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@lucius1976 I made crappy videos in 2007 :) KZbin ran terribly on these netbooks back in the day because it used Flash to play; HTML5 video playback was still in very early stages and was not widely supported. I remember watching a friend of mine trying to play one of my videos he had appeared in on his Gen1 Eee PC, he got one frame every couple of seconds. I used the HTML5 KZbin beta in 2009 (p sure it was 09) and it did work, and used less CPU than Flash (instead being as much as VLC or QuickTime would take up), but it couldn’t actually do fullscreen (it would fill the browser window instead - you could put the browser in fullscreen viewing mode as a hack though). That was all ironed out by mid to late 2010, though, and Flash quickly died for non-game uses by 2011 or 2012.

[@Ebalosus]

Yeah even with netbook-optimised Linux didn’t help that much.

[@qdllc]

I loved mine. It packed easy on a motorcycle and was cost effective storage for backing up photos from my camera. At the time, the cost to have a portable HDD to backup media on the road would cost about as much and do less.

[@Isaaaaaaac]

I remember my elementary school having some that we could use during indoor recess, it took half of recess just to boot up.

[@ddproductionscanada]

I remember this too, it just reminds me of how much money schools waste on "new tech" which is generally underpowered and cheap. My school had a cart of 30 of them, but only half of them even worked most of the time

[@con1019]

@@ddproductionscanada like my school cheaping out on laptops by buying $100 chromebooks which break by dropping it once

[@nwfyandex]

@@con1019 Our school buys macbooks than always lag.

[@samsunguser3148]

your elementary school is rich lol

[@nwfyandex]

@@samsunguser3148 the macbooks were bad tho, everything our teacher would try to play a video it would say "if video playback.... restart your device." The videos took like 20seconds to load. It is alright now they are getting lenovo notebooks rn

[@othinus]

I was one of the late adopters of Netbooks back in 2012. My mom bought the last emachines model before it was discontinued. 10.1 inch 768p TN display, Atom dual core, a beefy fan that kept it from choking, and for some reason it had 4gb of RAM and Windows 7 Ultimate. We got it on sale for about $150 Brand New. I still use it now with Linux XFCE. It can actually run 720p60 or 1080p30 videos on KZbin. Stay Healthy and Cheers from the Philippines. ⛑️♥️🇵🇭

[@TurboPikachu]

Very impressive specs for a netbook-class PC. I was a mid-gen netbook adopter that came in around December 2010 with HP's Mini 110c-1105DX. At 10.1" with a 1024x600 TN panel, Atom single core-hyperthreaded (said hyperthreading saving it from being awful), decent fan, and 2GB RAM, it was a wonderful little multitasker between web browsing and Winamp audio playback. It started to buckle even under chat clients such as Steam, Windows Live Messenger, and Skype by early 2013, but most websites even around that time still weren't too demanding for it yet. I just wish its charging port didn't quit in 2013, because I would have *loved* to bring it up to Lubuntu 18.04LTS LXQT

[@othinus]

@@TurboPikachu That's one of the downsides of owning a 'dead platform' piece of tech. When sonething does inevitably go wrong, we're out of luck finding parts. My netbook's batteries are completely dead so it's plugged into a wall socket whenever I use it. Goodbye mobility.

[@JustARegularNerd]

I still have my EEE PC 1000H, with a 1.6GHz single core hyperthreaded x86 Intel Atom, 2GB of memory and currently a 250GB SSD (which really didn't help the start times at all anyway lol). What distro are you using on yours? Finding distros that still support x86 is getting hard, and Debian with Xfce is too much for it. Currently I have Slackware x86 on it, and it's """usable""", but if I could find something better, I'd be very interested. I tried Arch 32 and that actually worked, except I hated having to do absolutely everything manually and not being able to figure out certain things like automatically mounting a removable drive.

[@othinus]

@@JustARegularNerd I use Mint XFCE. Linux MATE tends to perform the same, even though it's supposed to be more resource intensive. Puppy Linux might be a better option, based on your netbook's RAM. If your CPU is 64bit you can even install Chrome OS with Google Play Store and OTA update support. It runs on Debian kernel so you can install linux apps through the terminal.

[@othinus]

@BedrockPlayer123 Aye! Sup?

[@smileyeagle1021]

I really liked netbooks, they were a product both ahead of and behind the times. They were trying to solve the problems that tablets solve before tablets were possible. Had they come out a few years sooner, they probably would have been a lot more successful.

[@SupaCLUCK]

Windows 7 netbooks were basically another way of the "Vista Compatible" underpowered XP computers

[@JackMcSomeone]

try using windows 8 on a netbook

[@insanitylol]

BedrockPlayer123 when your on the desktop yes when your on an app or game no

[@jaseaquino]

@BedrockPlayer123 Well, my old Toshiba NB510 can install Windows 10 but installing its Intel graphics driver that are made for Windows 7 can cause a BSOD every time I open Start menu, running Windows 10 UWP app or opening some other elements like Action center, Wi-Fi settings, etc.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

He's not wrong. I have 7 starter Netbook

[@bitelaserkhalif]

Yup, on paper it doesn't work out good I have BenQ Joybook u101 and it's using Windows XP

[@MephistoDerPudel]

Ouh, I remember the EeePC my dad bought just because he found it interesting. We really had no use for it initially, but ultimately, after we converted it to windows xp, we watched a lot of movies on it on school trips. Up to 10 people in front of this tiny little screen, because it was the only laptop anyone had.

[@tylersmith3139]

Chromebooks have essentially succeeded where netbooks failed.

[@sugampathak3854]

Yeah, but they still need to become as cheap as the netbooks,or at least more cheaper IN EVERY DAMN COUNTRY.

[@filmaxx3]

In my country they costs the same as an normal laptop.

[@ipodtouch470]

Can't you get one for like 200? Only problem is I assume they are trash, the specs don't look too good...

[@Dont.do.art.]

But they suck

[@Beyondesp]

I have a chromebook that i spent 300 bucks on a couple years ago that serves its purpose. It even had a decent chip in it that i could setup a linux partition and android apps. And now its a great little laptop to let my son use with a child family account.

[@seanharvey1250]

I’m gonna quote DankPods: *EeePeeCee...*

[@ozi039]

someone's been in here

[@crysiscrysis720]

Eeeeepeeeccee

[@XMANIAFLYYY]

Yup

[@blvrryvhs]

Dank pods is an awesome youtuber

[@SimbianGaming]

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Ceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[@AceOfSevens]

The main thing is the were small. Great for college students with tiny desks who needed to type notes & look at materials. There's nothing in the 10 inch space now & 14 hangs off those desks. I had a eee PC, but switched to Aspire One after about a semester because the former was too limited.

[@mrfathed3129]

The best thing about Netbooks was that in the process of replacing Windows Starter Edition with Linux, I learned I liked Linux.

[@vinyl.croatia]

I like linux too, but still it doesn't have some critical programs for me, so i still didn't entirely switch to it from windows

[@niklasdavind4722]

@Mabel Pines true

[@timurtheterrible4062]

@@vinyl.croatia I assume they don't run with Wine out of the box, but try and find out if there's a path out there to make it run. You might be surprised.

[@sturm1379]

Yes, the first time I installed a GNU/Linux system if a remember correctly was to improve perfomance in my netbook (a samsung nc 110 with an intel atom n570 with 2 GB of ram). I remember that I tried some distros in it: ubuntu mate, lubuntu and Antix were the ones I use the most. Now i'm using ubuntu mate in it (i don't really remember why I didn't stay with Antix, but i may install it again). Fortunately it's not my main PC anymore. I use a desktop PC (pretty good by the way) and a notebook. The notebook had an amd athlon tf-20 but i replaced it with an turion 64 x2 tl -60 (the best upgrade that i made in my life). Nowdays all the new notebooks come with BGA processors.

[@trailblazercombi]

Linux was what allowed me to use my netbook until mid-2020 At that time though, the pandemic came, and it turns out a single-core Celeron isn't exactly the best for video conferencing...

[@johnsabilla5897]

I had a netbook back in college around 2011-2012. It was serviceable for my use case. Go online, read pdfs, ssh into a more powerful machine. I really loved it. I ended up giving it to a friend who still had a year left of school after I graduated.

[@danamahr3773]

I know I am very late to the party. But as a on-budged student in Switzerland back in the day, the EEe PC from Asus had a special place in my heart. I wrote both my BA and MA theses on this device (and ocassionally played Diablo 2 on it). This small device singelhandedly helped me to get a education.

[@lbsiuk]

If you still have one of these things kicking around then shove a cheap SSD in it and run Lubuntu on it. Upgrade your RAM to 2GB and enjoy.

[@DacLMK]

I think AntiX will do a better job.

[@primusconvoy]

@@DacLMK I run Sparky on mine. Dell Latitude 2120 with 2GB DDR3 and it does pretty good. I can run games like Half Life on it in Steam and they are perfectly playable.

[@alexxx4434]

Ubuntu and its derivatives nowadays are FAT

[@dmitryhetman1509]

@@DacLMK But why not debian or debian oldstable? You can install debian and DWM or Weston with your software. From start it consumes like 100mb, but in fact it should be less if don't count cash. AntiX and PuppyLinux seems to be good option to run from USB drive.

[@mjverostek1278]

Puppy Linux, Slackware base

[@thecodotmo9063]

i remember my acer aspire one's motherboard getting caught on fire while i was charging it *good times*

[@geekygirl2596]

Oh that sounds scary.

[@Pecinta_kaela]

My shop pc went on fire and make a whole desk burn

[@LeDank]

I had an Acer netbook and the build quality was really great actually. I installed Ubuntu on it and it ran awesome for the light programming I was doing. Ah those were the days.

[@joshdove]

I had one for so long in high school and it was amazing

[@rayhanrizvi334]

I used a netbook for my whole elementary years, the screen was small, so i hooked it to a monitor. Still works lol. I think it was not a scam

[@kailer2488]

I have one, running windows 10

[@YaroLord]

put off your rose tinted glasses lol the specs in netbooks were horrible, they were useless for anything beyond basic internet browsing and office software they always packed the poorest, lowest spec CPUs and very little ram... if you like slow computers tho, power to you

[@CoasterMan13Official]

My aunt Kristy had one. That thing was a piece O' crap.

[@rayhanrizvi334]

@@CoasterMan13Official does it still work?

[@joslyntorres8691]

They didn't necessarily fail, they evolved into other markets.

[@RydalS]

Their spiritual successors are definitely Chromebooks.

[@natevemuri9024]

@@RydalS yes

[@KentoCommenT]

Such as the 2 in 1 with detachable keyboard

[@XMANIAFLYYY]

@@RydalS except chromebooks are trash. I know that from experience.

[@kovyvuri]

@@XMANIAFLYYY Not all of them, but I respect your opinion formed by your own personal experiences.

[@alexanderjones9766]

I had a netbook in college, and I still have it. I ran Debian on it and it could handle anything I threw at it: databases, virtual machines, photo editing, even gaming if the game was well-optimized. The latest version of Debian still works perfectly on it. The biggest limitation was perhaps the screen resolution, which was 1024x600. Many apps were and still are designed with a minimum of 1024x768 in mind, meaning that the bottom of the GUI would be cut off.

[@bricegraham8256]

I lowkey thought netbooks were super cool when I was a kid. I remember when my school first got them and we were some of the first few students to use them and I was just fascinated by how nice, clean and small they were.

[@fenn_fren]

There's just something fascinating about small computers.

[@davidlisanjaya5871]

Well ofc you are a kid

[@bricegraham8256]

@@davidlisanjaya5871 I'm 21 bro. Not a child. Well maybe if your like 50 something then I guess I'd be considered a kid to you

[@bricegraham8256]

@@fenn_fren yeah they were. Well back then. They don't really turn my wheels anymore. Except for small 2 in 1s. Those are pretty cool.

[@fenn_fren]

@@bricegraham8256 tbh I'm all over the GPD products right now. A fully equipped Windows 10 laptop that fits IN YOUR POCKET? That is what I find really cool. That and Windows 10 tablets.

[@benb8935]

cough cough- Arent Chromebooks basically Netbooks?

[@domm4633]

No because Chrome OS does way better on limited hardware than Windows does. Plus there's far nicer Chromebooks now with i3, i5, i7 processors and 8 to 16 GB of ram plus back lit keyboards and touch screens. You can run Linux on the newer ones and some gaming services are making their way to the platform. For doing simple things like web browsing or using Android apps a Chromebook is way better than netbooks were.

[@nrbh2078]

And its more lightweight system (Correct me if i am wrong

[@MegaManNeo]

I am pretty sure if they didn't burn the Netbook branding and it wasn't about Google pushing their propaganda on us, these things could just as well be named Netbooks. I mean technically I can turn any laptop into a Chromebook and most recent Chromebooks can run proper Linux distros (and yes, I know Chrome OS is based on Gentoo) or just run its software inside a Debian chroot.

[@SprattyD]

@@domm4633 16gb of ram and an i7 is a tad overkill for a chromebook though

[@domm4633]

@@SprattyD It is but you also have to think about the longevity of the device since newer chromebooks are being supported for 8 years. I have an i3 chromebook with 8gb of ram and its really nice to use.

[@DaveEverett01]

Netbooks were great. I gave presentations with them, wrote software, even ran robots and computer vision with them. They never let me down.

[@dududu5189]

@Dave Everett Yes, my Asus eeepc was reliable too. Sturdy little fukka still boots up today with everything working.

[@EleanorMcHugh]

Bought an MSI Wind and installed MacOS 10.5 then moved to a Dell Inspiron 910 with MacOS 10.6 and a 128GB SSD. Both served well for coding, presentations, working on the move. Cheap enough that if anything had happened to them it wouldn’t have been heartbreaking to replace them.

[@TurboPikachu]

I adored my HP Mini 110c I bought used in December 2010. The previous owner even slapped Win 7 Ultimate on it before selling it for about $240. It was the first PC I owned for myself, and despite the Atom and 2GB RAM, it was phenomenal for light web browsing (for circa 2011-2013 web), Winamp music-playback, and Genesis/SNES emulation throughout its 2 years with me before its charging/AC port quit. It also helps that Win7 was the best experience I've ever had in my now 21-year history with Windows. I've since moved on to much more powerful/interesting hardware, such as a 17" Core-i7 laptop in 2013 and an 11" convertible tablet-laptop in 2013 (both laptops being Windows 8), building myself a PC in 2017 (with Windows 10), a series of iOS devices throughout 2014 - present, and lastly getting my first Macbook in 2018. But none of my experiences with any of these computers were as fun or stress-free as my time with that Windows 7 netbook. Learning MacOS on the Macbook Pro (though fine enough) is still a learning process, and as such, is filled with lots of little roadblocks. Windows 8 on the two laptops was fine enough but something always felt 'off' about 8. And while I adore my tiny 2017 ITX beast I built, Windows 10 has made my experience on it just miserable over the past 3 years; Windows 10 is the worst experience I've had in my 21 years of working with Windows - I'm just waiting until the Linux community's Proton project reaches close to 80%/90% compatibility with Steam's library of games and then I'm moving the PC to Linux (likely Ubuntu or Mint) and will likely do the same for my two remaining Windows 8 laptops when Win8's End-of-Life comes about in 2023. Linux will be another challenging learning process for me, even moreso than MacOS; But I've had all I can tolerate of Windows 10 and need an OS that's not constantly flaunting its worst traits as features.

[@Windows7Pro2009]

TurboPikachuX which 17 inch Core i7 laptop is it?

[@TurboPikachu]

@@Windows7Pro2009 HP Envy DV7-7250US (2012) 17.3" @ 1600x900 Intel Core i7-3630QM 2.4GHz (3.4GHz iTB) Intel HD Graphics 4000 8GB DDR3-1066 RAM 5400RPM 1TB HDD

[@Windows7Pro2009]

@@TurboPikachu Does HP have an option for a dedicated GPU?

[@TurboPikachu]

@@Windows7Pro2009 HP did offer about 3 other configs of the Envy DV7 that had an Nvidia GeForce 650M, but the only model I could find at my Office Depot and Best Buy locations was the integrated-only 7250us. That said though, Intel's HD 4000 from May 2012 was so much closer to the performance of Nvidia's GeForce 6xx-series laptop GPUs from March 2012 than any of Intels future iGPs would ever get against proper laptop GPUs. I mean, considering intel's 2019 Iris Plus iGP can't even output 1/3 of the performance of 2016 laptops with GTX 1050m graphics, I struggle to believe that the upcoming "Iris Xe" iGPs will catch up to AMD's Polaris-based Vega and Navi-based RX5000M-series, or Nvidia's Pascal-based GTX10M-series and Turing-based GTX16M-series/RTX20M-series I was actually quite impressed back in 2013 that the HD 4000 iGP could run late-generation PS3/360 titles like Sonic Generations GTA V at medium settings/30fps at native 900p, and even ran some current-gen titles such as Rocket League and Warframe at resolutions and frame rates above that of the Nintendo Switch's. But ultimately once I built my gaming PC in January 2017 (i5-6400, RX480-4GB, 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM, roughly around Xbox One X spec and above-spec of the PS4 Pro and upcoming Xbox Series S), I stopped laptop-gaming altogether, as moving the PC from a 60hz 1920x1080 TV to an ultrawide 2560x1080 75hz FreeSync monitor in April 2019 really killed my interest in anything laptops had to offer

[@Windows7Pro2009]

TurboPikachuX Thanks for the info, as I’ve been looking at used laptops with dedicated GPUs. But now I am stuck with a Core 2 Duo T7200 with 2GB RAM and Windows 10 ;-;

[@ahlalkubur]

hey, the netbook's slow processor's speed made me realize that to increase the PC's specs you can't just download some random program online, lol.

[@birger315]

I had a friend, who is a doctor, send me his old Dell netbook that I sold him over 10 years ago for $50. He has been continually using it and finally it hit a snag. He spent $40 sending it to me after he spent over $100 for some tech to say "You got an old piece of crap not worth fixing." It was a software malfunction on Win7 starter and I fixed it and sent it back to him. He plans on using it indefinitely because it has a bunch of GB in his music library and he uses it for his daily devotions. He says "When I turn it on, I just go make a cup of coffee and wait and it eventually boots up." He has taken it all over the world (and had those who saw it probably snickered). But it still meets his needs.

[@hermanwooster8944]

Hopefully he has a USB flash drive or something to back up his music so he doesn't lose it all in a hard drive failure.

[@pakolorente7423]

Idea was pretty cool, but in Europe was too expensive vs "normal" size laptop. So every choosing normal laptop

[@ErkanMehmedali]

Exactly. Always told my friends to by the normal ones. Bigger screen, but better specs and overall better cooling.

[@cire1963]

Basically a chrome book in 2020.

[@LambdaMiscellaneous]

Much better

[@callaco3176]

Lambda Gaming Worse.

[@LambdaMiscellaneous]

Munchacho nope

[@DrSwoose]

@@callaco3176 trust me, the chrome books are way better. Most netbooks could hardly handle youtube at the time.

[@LambdaMiscellaneous]

OwenBland Chrome OS is Linux based,you can’t make an OS out of a web browser

[@yusefinc1096]

I sold a lot of netbooks running a pawnshop for years 😂 some were decent. HP and Acer made decent netbooks. Windows starter edition was okay. Basic web browsing. Basic word processing.

[@philipbridler]

Wondering what you find so funny about your own comment. Explain.

[@yusefinc1096]

Wondering why you wasted your time typing this dumb ass comment. Explain.

[@GarbanzoBeansFan]

when i hear EEE PEE CEE i just think of DankPods 🤣🤣🤣

[@szecsiadam2228]

Me too xd

[@LarisB]

Me too! I will always associate that name with him 🤣

[@Lightning2011]

Lol ikr

[@ozi039]

someone's been in here

[@greyfiveys]

*ITS A NUGGET*

[@Vienna3080]

I grew up in a poor family and my family used a shitty 2008 Netbook for so many years, so that thing was my childhood

[@9852323]

My childhood was a crappy desktop with windows 95

[@ripp3rjak934]

if it worked it worked. i had a shitty dell pc.

[@serang]

@@9852323 you must be old 🙄

[@andeleon6838]

Awww same here :) my Intel Celeron/1GB ram netbook lasted 10 years! We also had desktop which lasted about the same time, this one had Pentium 3/2GB ram, I used it only when I needed to do anything heavier like render videos but it still took a looong time. Even our internet at the time was only 1mbps 😅 the struggles of long loading time for everything lol. Sucks but definitely made me more patient and made me plan things better in advance. Just thinking I was still lucky to have that. Other kids my age could only afford to rent PC at internet cafes for an hour or two. But times have changed for the better, the smartphone is technically an entry level computer now and is more accessible to everybody.

[@KokoroKatsura]

A N I M E N I M E

[@AlgoCurioso2.0]

Wait! Netbooks? I always thought they were called Notebooks and I used to have one HP with touchscreen and a pen, the screen rotate 180° so you can use the pen comfortable. Can’t remember the name, but it was very small

[@CoasterMan13Official]

Notebooks are 14 inchers, while netbooks were 6-11.

[@theunreal_TOEBEANS]

Was it spiral bound?

[@absalomdraconis]

"Notebook" is just a synonym for Laptop, just as Netbook is a (low-end with built-in networking) Laptop. Marketers like to differentiate things to increase sales & excitement, but there's rarely anything important behind their PR.

[@youtubeshadowbannedme]

Laptops with rotating touchscreens are called ultrabooks

[@Matthy63]

I had the HP one that rotated 180° but wasn't touchscreen circa 2012, the hinge was absolute garbage, my dad must have slapped gorilla glue on it like 20 times. IIRC the power supply or the hard drive or something gave out a couple of months in and it had to go back to hp to get fixed. Then against my better judgment I replaced it with another HP netbook circa 2015 which was at least durable but only by virtue of being so laughably underspecced that it would never wear out. I think I payed like 300 euros for it and probably most of that was the SSD at the time. Actually no, I had forgotten about the time a whole column of the keyboard just gave up working like 2 months in when I was in a foreign country and couldn't easily send it back to get it fixed. So as a student I was pasting in characters to write essays, it was wild. Speaking of the SSD it was 32Gb, so more like 28, and the OS alone took up 20 of that. You could not change or upgrade the SSD or RAM because both were soldered to the motherboard (2Gb RAM in 2015 was already low and borderline inappropriate for Windows). That one actually would have done quite well with Linux but I never bothered. As someone old enough to remember computers where everything was modular this rubs me the wrong way. You'd buy a shitty "cheap" computer yes and then when you could afford it you upgraded parts, that's how it always used to work. Like the only difference in design between this laptop and the 500€ one is that you could actually change the parts when technology and your budget got to that point. Like, I did buy these laptops for a reason because I was a broke student, and the joke *is* on me for actively buying HP a second time after swearing to myself I never would. But when what you're selling is that arbitrarily shitty (see Windows Starter) it ends up feeling like a slap in the face.

[@seanng33]

I had a Toshiba Netbook back in 2011 (when I was in High School). Upgraded the RAM to 2gb, was one of the best purchases I made then.

[@lucius1976]

Used my Eee pc a lot before the Pad era for surfing the internet in bed. They were lightweight. Still working with some flaw. Recently installed Puppy Linux on it.

[@internetusernumber501]

seeing that wavy plastic brought back many, many frustrated memories. they were the bane of my existence back when we had them in the classrooms!

[@robertavery152]

My Eee pc got me into Linux, grateful for that ;)

[@RuruFIN]

I remember my ex having one, damn those Atoms were SLOW..

[@AshenTiger]

I'd leave someone if they used a netbook too 😂

[@rustymixer2886]

@@AshenTiger maybe he left her cuz she was too fast with too many, get it 😆

[@lifeisshørt_420]

Mac Gyver LOL

[@pilotavery]

Mine with the dual core atom was alright. Slow but fine with Windows 7 for word processing.

[@rustymixer2886]

@@pilotavery would be faster just xp

[@mynameis9683]

I used a netbook between the third year of my undergrad and second year of my PhD. Wrote my undergrad dissertation, my master's thesis and most of my research notes for the PhD on the same machine + used it as my TV for a year between degrees. No freaking idea how I managed that, looking at it now it's so tiny

[@samt6788]

I had one from my grandma it was called an Eee Pc made by ASUS with windows 7, and it took 50 years to do anything. We won't talk about what happened when it upgraded to windows 8.

[@fenn_fren]

My friend had an Eee PC and when he updated it to 8 it would just crash on startup.

[@core36]

@@fenn_fren my mom also had an asus eee pc, same experience, but we never upgraded to windows 8. Anti-virus software was the biggest performance killer. She gave it to me and now it has an ssd and Linux mint and now it boots within 10-20 seconds and I can actually use it. On a side note, without the hdd, the screen is to heavy for the eeepc so it won't stand correctly. I was lucky I had an old ssd that was as heavy as the hdd that was in the eeepc.

[@Windows7Pro2009]

There were some 11.6 inch netbooks that actually came with Core i5 and Core i7 ULV processors like the Acer TimelineX 1830T, although it costed $699 when it came out.

[@NedTheUndead]

"We'll never see something like netbooks again" he said, after discussing Chromebooks, their direct replacement.

[@VanBourner]

He probably meant it more as a proof of concept turned into mass consumer/marketing hysteria turned into almost oblivion in such a short span of time. I remember forst Eee coming out and the next year you've had everyone making them. They were ever present in every shop. Tablets did that too to be fair right after and are bow pushed away by large screen phones/phablets. Chromebooks were more of a sidestep really, they still hang around but have very limited use. Netbook with light/common linux distro liku Ubuntu (can't do that on tablet/chromebook) was actually quite capable. I still use one of them in my homelab as they are absolutely amazing to run debian and replace a need for rpis for me (and their ARM CPUs make them unable to run proper x86 stuff anyway). The only recent device that shook up the world of tech like netbooks but actually suceeded would be smartphone spearheaded by iphone at the very similar time. And IMO smarthphones were also very much responsible for killing netbooks. Most people had netbook to check mails, watch a movie and then maybe play a simple game. Smartphone let you do all that with better portability and battery life. Only thing you could not do is writing a thesis on it realistically.

[@KoopaKid660]

@@VanBourner you can run linux on chrome os though.

[@meljoe13]

I still have a HP Mini working as a local media server in my home.

[@MarcinKralka]

I have been experimenting some time ago with running Minecraft Server on a netbook on Linux (running from usb drive because (of course) drive have failed), it was pretty OK for at least 2 people playing simultaneously.

[@Phantomwise2]

I loved my netbook in high school because it was so easily-portable. I'd pull it out whenever I had time and work on my projects anywhere.

[@supercintanegra]

X2

[@LuLeBe]

For a friend in school, the Acer Aspire A110, a 9 inch netbook for 160€, was his first PC. It was affordable, and it allowed him to run the Lego mindstorms software, he built his first website on it etc. He's a Google engineer now, and likely wouldn't be if that thing hadn't forced him to be productive instead of playing games.

[@RamLaska]

Don’t forget the OLPC. That was the inspiration for the netbooks.

[@WagesOfDestruction]

Loved it. It was small, fitted great in my suitcase or carry bag and so I took it over the world. The problem was that it could not take much damage, so it broke and then I never replaced it.

[@markogre9126]

I once had an Aspire One D255e. Not even half a year later, I decided to bring it to a technician and install a pirated Windows 7 Ultimate. It's still alive and usable today and I use it basic document writing and printing since it still runs MS Office 2013, and it is compatible with my printer

[@stephen-lt9ei]

I remember my first ever laptop was a 2010 netbook with Windows 7 Stater. It was slow for basic web browsing even in 2010. Even my 9 year old self wondered why I couldn't change the wallpaper for FREE. Also, I remember it could not handle Windows Update and it would freeze halfway through updates almost every time.

[@lewos2795]

my grandma had one

[@ameenie]

Nice

[@mmrw]

That seems very much like a grandma thing to have

[@MichaelDavis-on7os]

69

[@ameenie]

@@MichaelDavis-on7os 420

[@msbhicks8358]

nice pfp

[@iandoesallthethings]

I honestly loved my Acer aspire one. It got me through college from 2009 to 2013. It definitely slowed down near the end, but for working on campus when I was away from my gaming PC at home, it was really perfect.

[@jayb8934]

I had a netbook around 2010-2011. Really wasn’t so bad. I found it more useful than an iPad of that era, and it cost like half as much. Also, I found a 3rd party application that let me change the wallpaper on Windows 7 Starter.

[@lukebodden8618]

i had 4 netbooks and i liked them. they were all i really needed at the time and they had good battery life, and i didnt care about anything else. they fit my needs back then and its really interesting to learn more about why they failed

[@manamaster6]

Back in 2009 my father allowed me to use his netbook for my programming project and I was surprised it was able to compile a Visual Studio project. It helped me to finish the project a few minutes before the final presentation. After my father died a few months ago we finally sent the netbook to the recycling center, as it stopped working last year after at least 3 resurrections in a decade.

[@nitrax8629]

Got a Compaq Mini 110 running XP on clearance in early 2009 - I appreciated the portability and battery life on several trips abroad, and it never felt too unbearably slow. I eventually invested in a HD video decoder card - seeing KZbin play back 720p video via Flash Player on such a small machine was an amazing feat! Sadly the internet became way too much for the processor to handle around 2013 or so and shortly after Microsoft killed XP support. It had a good run, and served its purpose well.

[@TheSektorz]

I fondly remember the Asus EEEeEeeeeeEeeeEEeE It was kinda cool at the time for its smallness but here I am now using a tablet to write this

[@tungus-]

The SektorZ EeePeeCee

[@BilisNegra]

The eeePC would have frozen just trying to load this video, so, of course, you don't have to swear you're not writing your comment using it...

[@sethbrown9246]

Right, I used a Dell Mini 9 for 8 years as my MAIN system. It was indestructible. I took it in my backpack on my motorcycle everywhere. I boosted its RAM to 2GB, added a 16GB SD Card, and installed Slackware with ratpoison on it. Yes, it was slow, but still serviceable. Fantastic for debugging network issues, jack it in, run 'ping', 'traceroute' & Bob's your uncle. Eventually replaced it with a Lenovo 11e, which is still working great after 5 years hard use. The good thing about the Mini is that it came with an SSD drive which is why it was so rugged. A hard drive would have died with all the abuse I gave it. People used to laugh at me but I just booted it up and fixed their problems anyhow. Wrote oodles of software with it too, mainly PHP and Python. Speed isn't everything. Portability & ruggedness count, too.

[@realMrVent]

I really like your video style. It's clear, concise, and reasonably paced. Great work!!

[@chandagautam1149]

This video should be named, -"How notebooks were killed" I am glad to know this part of netbook historyof tech.

[@CathrineMacNiel]

I was so grateful having an netbook during my university, because before that I had a super clunky heavy gateway notebook. I used the eeePC 1001-ha for the entire curriculum, from programming, graph theory and notekeeping. It was good.

[@alexandredevert4935]

I still have one around from 2012. I put Arch Linux (32 bits variant) with a very light weight environment (stock DWM with a few patches), beefed the RAM. I still use it for recreational/exploratory coding and as a serial terminal when hooking it to hardware. It's good enough to edit code, and the slow CPU is a motivation to use simple tools and good algorithms.

[@JasonWaden8r]

I can speak to this in some cases on netbooks from my personal experience. The HP Mini 210 and 311 models are decent in terms of performance. Put an SSD in, Upgrade the RAM to about 4-5GB and put Windows 7 Professional and it becomes quite the capable machine.

[@MightyRob1]

Survived on a blue Acer Aspire One for almost two years before it went to that Ebay farm upstate; It served me well as I knew what it was limited too and I had a desktop at home for “real’ work. For you younger gens, use an inflation calculator for 2008-2009 when that recession hit, even an iPod Touch was a major purchase during the holidays, so a laptop for under $300 was quite a bargain.

[@numberyellow]

When i needed something small, and capable for work, i picked up a 2nd-gen Acer Aspire one. I maxed out the RAM, replaced the HDD with a faster one, and loaded Win7 pro. it was a damned good little machine.. hell, i still is. while it doesn't see nearly as much use as it used to, i still use it for jobs, once in a while. For the kind of work i bought it for, tablets were worthless, and full-sized notebooks were just too big to be lugging around in the field.

[@lahynatorcz8971]

10:03 I'm Czech and I thought that there is an add. ty :)

[@vojtacihelka337]

češi jsou prostě všude xDD

[@webmasale]

What

[@jakubcenek9591]

@@webmasale The advertisment in the video with Chuck Norris is in Czech. :) Cool!

[@moonshinepz]

I'm actually watching this in my workshop on an old acer ES1-111 vintage 2009 netbook, with windows 10 installed, whilst working on an HP Elitebook that replaced the netbook to run a cutting machine in the shop. So the old netbook still gets used - most of the time for youtube and video-calls - Runs windows 10 fine though, which still surprises me. Definitely still have their uses. Got an eMachine DS620 on Vista running another one. It's like a crappy Poundland version of the Borg ship in here 🤣 I take the old acer on bike trips with me camping. Definitely don't regret dragging it back out from "the cupboard of discarded tech" last year.

[@Tempora158]

4:05 Web sites back then were a lot more "simple", not "simplistic". "Simplistic" is not a synonym or interchangeable with "simple".

[@Huyderman]

I had a eeePC with Linux, and I loved it. It was lightweight and worked well to write on. It filled a niche for me that tablets or a laptop don't really do.

[@CreepyBlackDude]

I had an Asus Eee PC back in the day for college. My sister bought it for me for my birthday, and I upgraded the RAM and the OS to regular Windows 7 (because honestly, not being able to change the wallpaper was legitimately unacceptable to me). Problem is, even with more RAM, it just wasn't meant to run full Windows 7, and it pretty much died. That was the only laptop I ever owned until I got my Surface Pro this year.

[@theboredprogrammer1114]

When my netbook was one of the reasons my college studying was more bearable. I miss the early 2010s.

[@TheBoostedDoge]

The late 2000s and early 2010s will always have a special place in my heart

[@stanleysmith7551]

Same here. Bought one in 2010 just so I could write assignments uninterrupted.

[@dellawrence4323]

I still use my netbook, just max out the RAM and put an SSD in them and they still work well.

[@MikaMizell]

Same here. Have a white Acer Aspire One (the newer model with smooth lid instead of the rippled lid shown here. It looked really futuristic when it released.) Came with Win XP Home, 256Megs of RAM, and a 256G Spinning HDD. Considering I was moving up from a 2001 year model Celeron D Processor, the Intel Atom core flew. I cloned my Need For Speed games, The Sims 2, SimCopter, and various emulators onto it. It literally never left my side. My mother sold it off after I moved to College, but I managed to find a similar one in Blue. Upgraded the RAM on it. It's my go to Game Console now. Still use the little guy for games that don't run on my modern Gaming PC. I also frequently carry a Jailbroken iPad 2 3G. Guess I'm a sucker for old gadgets lol.

[@joylox]

My mom has something that's still called a Netbook from 2012 or 2013, but it had the normal Windows 7, and was a bit larger. It currently runs Linux Mint decently. I think it was just a way to get in on the netbook thing rather than saying "really cheap laptop for $400." Where I currently have a mobile workstation, which is the opposite end of the "laptop" scale, being larger, capable of up to 3 HDDs or SSDs, a ton of ports, and so far it's only needed a battery replaced, but they're expensive. I'm glad it's lasting well.

[@joylox]

Update, I guess it's a "notebook" not a "netbook" that my mom has. Either way, low end, not good for much other than Netflix and Solitaire.

[@sanvicthen00b]

I just found old Nokia netbook and I was confused of Windows 7 starter then I saw your video

[@achaycock]

I found this interesting. I bought the first netbook - actually had it shipped directly from Taiwan directly as they were not sold in my country yet. It was perfect - an ultra small computer that I could throw in a bag. It would allow me to connect to the internet when I would otherwise be without, I could ssh onto my servers and RDP onto others and manage systems remotely without being burdened by a large, clunky laptop. I did buy a newer Atom powered netbook, which was OK. It was though a greater disappointment. It was bigger, yet not as robust and I found that I still used my original EeePC just as much. This second machine I must have sold at some point. I remember writing the odd document on it, but I found the original netbook more useful and so I still have that but not it's successor. I certainly noticed that a lot of people used these instead of a laptop and it was obvious that they were going to be disappointed. These were in reality a niche product and this was just not a good use for them - and Windows just seemed pointless on them. So yeah, I get why they died. I was sad to see them go, but tablets definitely replaced them wholesale and with very good reason.

[@Ryan_Parmelee]

My first laptop was the exact one shown in the video. It was given to me as a gift for Christmas of 2011. Sure it wasn't great but as a kid I didn't know better and I was happy with it.

[@MrNotgoth]

Damn I had that Acer aspire one...started me through my first half of college, but it was ALWAYS slow. It was horrible

[@XDboyLolz]

what's the model of it?

[@vulc1]

@@XDboyLolz Acer Aspire One 722

[@NyxTheNerd]

I had that one. It's broken now, busted screen. I learned how to manually optimize games using it. (Getting a playable FPS on Skyrim and World at War).

[@rhianneaina2657]

I still have it. Very slow and battery's crap. edit: screen's also glitching, lol.

[@bjdejaresco]

the eeepc 701 was my first laptop and it got me through college! I got the Linux version and eventually installed xp. it was actually faster than most cheap full sized laptops because of the SSD. I'd say it was the precursor to the the modern Chromebook in terms of use case (at least for me)

[@dustytin]

I had a netbook, and I loved it - perfect for an unemployed person who just needed something very cheap to write CVs and cover letters. Worked amazing.

[@Nugromant]

I actually would like to see another netbook era, with chips getting smaller at 7nm or less in the next years, more efficient and decent APU graphics.

[@aaronevans4660]

Issuing them with S Mode on default (which only allows Windows Store downloads) would be a bit of a disappointment.

[@TheMysteryDriver]

Wouldn't a large phone and a keyboard basically equal a netbook?

[@cobracommander8133]

Isn’t that basically a tablet with a keyboard?

[@inwencja2009]

@@TheMysteryDriver Not exactly. Mobile phones don't have upgradable RAM, swappable SSDs, a proper operating system or enough USB ports.

[@TheMysteryDriver]

@@inwencja2009 I don't think you remember netbooks or their purpose

[@TheMadisonHang]

I remember going through snes and nes emulation. It’s all we needed anyway

[@jamesperih9658]

I was an on-site technology consultant; my netbook was invaluable for research, live invoicing, some basic troubleshooting, and let me tell you -- often faster than a client's PC. It was Acer, it ran Windows XP.

[@CaptainBeardsome]

Let's not forget that every company and their mother started getting into the netbook game. Sylvania comes to mind.

[@moochincrawdad]

OMG! Literally the night before I typed this comment and watched this vlog, I dug out my old netbook from 2009, swapped out the HDD for an SSD and installed Linux Mint 32bit on it! With 2gb of ram and that weedy single core Intel atom processor even budget smartphones will outclass it in terms of power but it kinda has a charm with its tiny keyboard and screen plus it works like a charm - it's a keeper! 🤗

[@vanskis7618]

Swapping the hdd with ssd on some slow ass pc or laptop makes it feel like a 2031 computer

[@notion8759]

My dad has a netbook and still uses it til this day, It was running Windows 7 (not the starter one) and I updated to windows 10 (he was pretty happy with it)

[@smack5472]

I had one of the later Asus netbooks that had one of the first AMD APU's in it. I upgraded the ram and thing was a little powerhouse. Was great for just tossing in my bag to take anywhere. I'd love to see a modern netbook sized device with a current gen AMD CPU.

[@youtubeshadowbannedme]

That wouldn't be possible due to costs

[@ChrisTechmp3]

Hello! How are you doing Josh?

[@91Tech]

Doing quite well thank you, how about yourself

[@ChrisTechmp3]

91Tech Nice to hear! I’m doing great myself!

[@rustymixer2886]

@@91Tech great video, typing from my eeepc1001x with winxp btw ;)

[@jahjoeka]

Everybody doing great! (We all like to lie when answering that question)

[@BastardVilleda]

I still have my netbook from 2011 and is my computer for traveling. It is ono HP, I installed Debian (Linux) on it and it worked really good, I used it for all grad school and I finished my tesis on it and wrote all the code that I needed.

[@RagingInsomniac]

omfg i remember i had one of those acer aspires. someone broke into my house and stole it though. it was the aspire one as shown in the video.

[@jeschinstad]

There were a wide range of them. I had a fairly expensive Aspire 1810tz, which was really great for its time. Then it fell to the floor and the screen broke and by that time, replacing the screen would cost more than buying another laptop, so. Still useful as a server though. :)

[@zeliph]

I remember playing Runescape and Habbo Hotel on the Eee PC. Good times.

[@veloxsouth]

I loved my Samsung N120. Most of the work I did at the time was staring at a screen, thinking, and typing. I needed something that could last 12+ hours a day and do it on a budget fit for a ramen diet and netbooks delivered. Chromebooks really don't fill that role left by netbooks. They often come locked down and unable to run what I needed. I miss the freedom and accessibility of a cheap, long battery life device with a fully capable OS.

[@thomaswolf1771]

They didn't "fail" at all. They had their legit time window before smartphones took over. I truly loved them. It took the PC industry much too long to figure out that CPU power and RAM size isn't everything and that not every customer was keen to spend a fortune for some device to surf the web and type some mails with.

[@elimalinsky7069]

I think netbooks had to happen as a proof of concept that the public needed cheap and basic laptops. We now have cheap laptops with capable hardware thanks to that market race to introduce great value in the traditional and familiar laptop form factor.