What went so wrong with netbooks?

>super low performance
>low resolution screen
>at best slightly under medicore battery life
>shitty touchpads
>not actually that light

basically if they had a proper dual core processor they could have been more useful but they were phased out by their poor performance within a year. already obsolete right out of the package

>writing office documents on a pda

this. i got an asus eee for college, and listening to music on youtube and writing a paper in word was pushing the thing to its limit.
netbooks were a weird thing. the form factor was great, but they really were too underpowered for anything other than basic web browsing. weirdly enough, now that the fad is long over, there's plenty of properly-powered netbooks now available. more than there were 8 years ago even.

See

Didn't we talk about "light note taking"?

I used an Asus 1000HE on a day to day basis from 2009 until 2016 or so. It was a great machine. The keyboard isn't ThinkPad-tier but it's pretty good, and the touchpad is fantastic. ~8 hour battery life, swappable battery, very easy to disassemble, all the right ports, and I like the size.

I ran Gentoo with openbox+wbar+conky launched via startx instead of a DE, and performance was never an issue, except that it started to have trouble with YouTube in later years. youtube-dl+mpv worked fine in a pinch, but I'd usually just use my phone if I wanted to watch a video.

Its utility lies in typing. Email, programming, note taking, etc. You can't touch type on a phone. If I needed CPU power I could always use my desktop via SSH. I spent a couple of months on a bicycle tour one year and took it with me so that I could write about what I was doing in my spare time. I wrote a website from scratch that I'd add my posts to, hosted it from my home network, and managed it remotely with my EeePC. It was great for stuff like that, which mostly involved vim and ssh.

The problem was quite simply that it couldn't run Windows worth a shit and most people can't install Gentoo. They were replaced by tablets, which people would use with stands and crappy little keyboards. Those tablets were inferior in every way, but their mobile operating systems were usable for normies.

I don't think you could have got something comparably useful for a comparable price in '09, but these days a used ThinkPad does these types of things better, even if they are a little bit bigger and heavier.

On some models they began to solder memory, CPU, or just wouldnt give easy access. Basically killed any real upgrade options annoying many potential and already buyers. Those that you could work with shot up in price fast and soon ran out of stock.

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They had gimped p3s and the weakest of atoms in era of dual cores barely meeting the win7's minimal requirements. The next thing was, very thin network connectivity, till 10's there were almost no public WiFis anywhere, even in the big cities I lived in.

It was a good idea at wrong period of computing.

>Nowadays, dumb peasants pick schools for their kids by wifi quality rather than their educational merit

Some models were absolute crap, with keyboards that would bend when you typed on them, etc, but others were great. The same thing is true of laptops in general. With netbooks, though, the difference between a bad one and a good one was $50, rather than hundreds.

Underpowered pieces of shit.

Using an Atom n570 netbook.

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I'm kinda sad they don't make new versions of these anymore, they make great remote desktop terminals with amazing battery life. Still using an Asus 205ta just for that.

Any recommendations for a new ultra light laptop with great battery?

The soldered memory and ssd meme sadly made these things obsolete way too soon

this was perfect

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Netbooks are a remnant of a past era in computing. Remember Negroponte’s OLPC? Back then we all thought that smaller, cheaper laptops were the way to popularize computing.
Then, one sunny morning in California, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone and it was all over.

There are some netbooks based on arm SoC boards. Check Pinebook for example.

In terms of computing power they were years behind. They were roughly equivalent to Pentium Ms, which were showing their age when the decline of Netbooks started around 2009/2010.

Most of them ran XP because they couldn't run Vista well. Later ones were shipped with a crippled version of 7, and they ran like shit.

Things might've improved, but in 2010 the iPad came along, so that was it for Netbooks.

Downside of those SOCs is that they don't run windows, sadly Microsoft s remote desktop is by far the most comfy.

They are better now

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Too few people got interested in it, smartphones can be used to do most stuff you'd do with a netbook, they are smaller and most of the time cheaper.

I like netbooks tho, their batteries last longer and they feel somehow comfy to carry and use IMHO.

>€2000 for an intel celeron

Software.

its a 5y75 and costed me ¥66,000

>$600
How?

i have this very netbook, OP. they're fine for offline shit, just as long as you have realistic expectations.

they were waay ahead of their time
ultra-shitty cpu+small slow hdd+ultra-shitty battery+2gigs of ram (at best?)
Truly, a shitshow

anandtech.com/show/12146/intel-launches-gemini-lake-pentium-silver-and-celeron-socs-new-cpu-media-features

Nothing wrong with netbooks, if they use modern Atom CPU, it's fully usable

>one of the few 16:10 devices on the market, 1920x1200 IPS display
>10" yet still has a respectable selection of ports
>solid build quality
>converts into a tablet
>looks incredible

>What went so wrong with netbooks?

nothing, I have an EEE600 that I used the shit out of for years as my main PC. It came with Xubuntu I believe which I replaced with ultralight Windows XP.

I breathed new life into it a few years ago with Puppy Linux.

I still have it and it'll be my 4-year-old's first computer when the time comes. It's unironically the longest-lasting computer I've ever owned, I've been through 5 or 6 desktop computers in that time and this great little machine is still kicking. And you can still buy them on craiglist for like 25$. Great great little computer, unironic 10/10 from me.

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you are thinking of chromebooks

Wholesome post.

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nothing
they filled a niche, until tablets became popular and phones got better

No, I meant how did you get it for $600? I'd buy it instantly at that price.

Well the one he posted is the RZ4, it's a few models old

What else do you use a laptop for?

I have cfax2. Just shy of 200.

Look up dell e4200.
Works for me.
C2D cpu, up to 5gb of ddr3, nice touchpad, 12inch 1280x800, weights 1kg
Only catch is it only accepts 1.8 inch usata ssd but you can put mstata through adapter aswell.
Oh, and the speaker is terrible.

That's definitely going to be my new laptop

Basically they were scooters, but people thought they were pickup trucks.
So you have faggots trying to load refrigerators onto their scooters.
Scooters are fine and dandy, but can't carry fridges.

So people bitched.

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1024x600 was too small
And there was no gui scaling in win xp.

they were shit, but i liked the fact i could at least swap out the HDD in my eee 1000.
i reckon they are about to make a comeback, at least amongst enthusiasts

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>at best slightly under medicore battery life
The device pictured could reach 10 hours of video playback. In what world is that mediocre? Fuck, for months I used an EEE PC as my main daily driver, stop using bloated software.

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The will when GPD finally got their shit together and sells devices that don't break all the time.

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Ugh guys, netbooks still exist and are being sold. They're just usually not called netbooks anymore. Most chromebooks/androidbooks, macbook air, hp streams, etc.

yahoo auctions

Toshiba NB series were pretty good once you upgraded the RAM and put Linux on them.

>Toshiba NB series
highly aesthetic

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I like the 6W Celeron line, although better has come out since then like N4/5000 and the newer gen Ys.

If I wanted to do heavy shit I would do it on my desktop. They're perfect as thin clients and the battery lasts for ever.

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