this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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A good stepping stone product, but netbooks weren’t destined to last long. Beyond the rosie tint of nostalgia, it was a pretty impractical device. Good enough display for DVD video, but no dvd drive or enough onboard storage to handle a selection of movies (at an acceptable encoding for the time, at least). Big enough to require a flat surface or a lap to type on but not powerful enough to justify it, and a very cramped typing surface at that.
Eventually they got replaced by tablets/convertibles, large phones, and ultrabooks. And all much better platforms in all ways, IMO.
I think you're missing the key thing that netbooks did. Specifically: new, cheap, low power, and mobile cheap computing.
It didn't matter how underpowered it was. Prior to the original netbook, the ASUS EEE 7", the alternative cheapest new computer you could buy was $600-$700. There was second hand computers cheaper, but they were a grab bag of reliability or results of abuse from the previous unknown owner.
These days that same niche is filled with $100 smartphones and $25 SoC comptuers like Raspberry Pi, but back then the EEE was a game changer for buying a computer, any computer, new for cheap.
Many of those other devices you mentioned had a market because the cheap netbook proved the market existed and was under served.
I was writing up a pretty similar comment at the same time... I totally agree here.
I'd say they were more killed by Chromebooks than anything else. They were both cheap, generally small, and fulfilled approximately the same use cases. Chromebooks basically just did what ASUS was trying to do but better, and with more choices in models.
The one thing is finding 7 inch Chromebooks was harder, they landed more around 10 or 11 so they were more after the larger EEEs, but IMO that was what killed them.
I'd agree with most of this, but I don't think I'd argue they were ever replaced by anything else, just that the use case is too narrow.
Tablets are generally larger, have flappy keyboards if keyboards at all, are way more expensive, don't have a built in mouse and often don't support mice well, and they run a mobile OS, not a desktop OS. They are very different products solving very different problems. If you argue netbooks were just for playing movies, sure, but that's not how I viewed them at all, especially since there were portable DVD players in the same form factor available for many years before netbooks existed. If that was the use case, there'd be no reason to run windows or have a keyboard.
I don't see how they replace a large phone at all - a large phone is a much smaller screen and fits in your pocket. And makes calls. And is a touch screen. And has mobile internet access. They're no where near the same thing.
Ultra books I think is the closest "replacement" here, but I'd argue it's more of an evolution and/or a hybridization with a regular laptop.
I'd actually argue Chromebooks were the killer here. They still take notes well, are portable, cheap, have first party mouse support, are generally smaller and lighter weight, and are more type-able than both netbooks and tablets.
I think we only liked them as enthusiasts, but for the general public (say a student) they were very bad because being cheap meant they had crappy hardware just like modern Chromebooks. In fact, I’ve been interested in having a Chromebook lately that could run Android apps, but quickly realized a good one is as expensive as a good laptop in Brazil.
I hated mine, just to balance the prior comment.
At the time there was no other way to get on the internet on the move than this except laptops which were really expensive then. This thing with a USB UMTS modem was just the coolest shit.
It's good with lightweight Linux distro and SSD. Still can't do much beside the basic stuff, but much better than the Windows on HDD counterparts.