The Rise and Fall of Netbooks | This Does Not Compute Podcast #48

They were small laptops meant to usher in a new era of Internet connectivity...so where are they now?

Image credits, in order of appearance:

Inspiron 600m mage courtesy Dell.
Inspiron Mini 9 image courtesy Dell.
Steam 11 image courtesy HP.

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This Does Not Compute
PO Box 131141
St. Paul, MN 55113

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Music by Joe Bagale.

[Sparkfist]

The mod scene for the Eee PC was quite amazing. People were swapping out the hard drive or limited flash ram, add Bluetooth and other features.

[edmac]

I had an EeePC, and I loved it. Used it primarily for taking notes in class in college.

And it could play NES/SNES games like a pro.

[codyssmith]

Netbooks still exist. They're just tablet/laptop hybrids now.

[JonThysell]

My little netbook (that everyone laughed at) helped ship an Xbox 360 software fix.

Beta testers were seeing connectivity issues that we couldn't reproduce on the fast corporate network. We were also in the middle of an office renovation/move, so all of our normal PCs were boxed up and inaccessible. All we had was a single conference room with some 360 devkits and shared PCs.

I saved the day with my little ASUS eeePC netbook (1Ghz, 2Gb RAM, Ubuntu), because I was able to set it up as a network bridge: devkit > Ethernet > netbook > USB > Palm Pre > 3G. Then I was able to run Wireshark so we could capture and debug network traces. That led to a fix released to unblock the beta testers.

BTW, I got 12h+ battery life out of that thing. My tech friends may have scoffed at it, but it was a tank, and my writer friends loved it.

[SparkyMAWy]

I used Netbooks as diagnostic tools. They're never going to be a gaming PC, but for Office (I wouldn't do Visio on one, though) or small and light in coffee shops, hotels or comms cabinets connected via serial to a Cisco switch, they definitely had their place as long as you remembered what they were.
I last netbook has 8Gb RAM and 256Gb SSD in it and so still runs reasonably.

[alexflores]

I think we're kind of seeing them come back in the form of Chromebooks. I do remember them and my wife laughing at them because of their small size. The netbook was also geared more to the student say in elementary. I remember seeing some at one of the schools I worked at as a custodian.

[tromick]

First, I want to thank you for this podcast because it brings my memories back! I loved it and you are absolutely right in every aspect and word. Here is my story:

I used Acer Aspire One 751h 2GB, 160GB HDD, Z520 1.33Ghz in 2011 summer. High school life was waiting for me. I bought this (asked my dad of course lol) because I could not use my sister's laptop. It was too much personal for her and it was not like family computer.

I bought this cuz I was the smallest in my class and I found this machine suit for me, for my fingers, school bag etc. When I bought this and went to car, waiting my parents coming back from bank, used it and found it slow! I could not say anything to my dad because my sister, my dad warned me that "Look, it does not have DVD unit, it is small computer, like really 'small' in every aspect." and lemme tell you that my dad is not using any computer in his life. I knew DVD lifespan was going to end so I really did not care.


When we came to home, I told my mom and she was like "I knew it, why you did not listen your sister and father?". WTH! We have tried to refund but of course it is rejected. It was display product by the way and nobody have bought this for a year. The only laptop I loved was this one because it was 11.6" not 10 inch and it was THIN. (Later on Ultrabooks came on with higher specs and higher price and I was sad.) Unfortunately I sacrificed N atom CPU for this big screen, slow netbook. I saw Asus EEE PC on the net and checked all wiki model list sites in 2010 but there was not chance to buy it. A month later, in different tech store, I saw HP DM-1 11.6" minibook and it had better CPU and GPU and it was like real semi-laptop thing. The look and the specs. Gosh I was SAD when I saw that!

Anyway, I formatted PC to Windows 7 Starter, updated BIOS, it become better. This minibook thought me patient with it's speed and all Windows features, tweaks so I know them like my name right now. I was closing some services and all the other tweaks and it was giving me some speed. Some specific flash player version to run my DDTank, Transformice game smooth, not pepperflash etc. With HTML 5 coming, it become harder to watch Youtube vids since HTML5 was using CPU like hell. But I really loved this netbook for any cost because this was my, FINALLY, first personal computer. I bought this so my sister could not take it from me but it did not change the fact, she took it from me for some months then gave it back.

I have tried to use it for nostalgia and due of needing a second computer but CPU was bottlenecking the SSD that I put in. Right now, it sleeps on my right with in the bag forever. I won't sell it in any way, any cost.

And I want to add something, In 2018-2019, I was looking for tea cup from Edwardian ages. I was walking in the backstreets of Taksim, Beyoğlu. I saw one semi-café, semi-collectioner old building and the front was like french cafés. There was only one customer in the café side which she was using minibook, can be Asus EEE PC 10 inch, and she was typing in the DOS or something. I found this so excited and at the same time weird because seeing a woman with fashion glass, dress, nails and with a minibook, DOS not a typical/everyday thing. I think she was novel writer because I got that vibe from her and found this very interesting because I have never seen a minibook in real life for past eight years since 2012-ish times.

[YselaCreyoStudios]

Milhouse: hey Bart remember Netbooks? they're back in Cloudbook form!

[Stjaernljus]

the fall of netbooks from my perspective was people expected too much from them because they thought of them as "real" computers.
i love netbooks because i know what i can expect to do with it and it does those things great. i still get about 9 hours of worktime on my netbooks original battery.

the wintel specification for a netbook was
7"-11.6" screen
1GHz-1.9GHz CPU(as low as 800MHz if delivered with linux) single core (or dual core on later ones)
512MB-1GB RAM(as low as 256MB if delivered with linux) generally upgradeble to 2GB
integrated webcam
no opticaldrive
fully legacy free

[coreydm]

"Who bought these things?!" Immediately tells us about 2 times when he bought a netbook.

[emdotrod]

Looking back, I was glad netbook was a thing. It was never comfortable to type or browse internet with it, but it is a one big step for a cheaper and more decent subnotebooks

[thomilsvlog]

I got one of those as my first self-bought computer, an Acer Aspire One 110L that retailed at 229€ in Germany at the time. Had it for four years and still think back fondly. That device got me started in blogging.

[trocitosdefresa]

I still like those kind of computers...

[DaSlice]

I wish this was an actual podcast I could listen to on the go...great content

[keppr]

I have been looking back into netbooks lately, and I love mine. I use it with a Logitech F310 controller and emulate N64, PS1, SNES, etc. with no issues.

[emailshafihusain]

I purchased an Acer netbook in 2009 November and my experience was great. I was fascinated to see such small machine run windows XP just like a big computer would. I would download movies, watch YouTube, play some retro games like Mario and it would run all programs that I would want it to. My experience was good enough but you are right that people didn't want to buy netbook as they were apprehensive about its power and capacity. None of my friends bought it even though I told them that it does the job well for our purpose as we didn't have anything heavy to through on it anyway. I still own one very old samsung netbook from 2012. It obviously struggles as per today's demand like zoom, etc.

[kidthorazine]

Your timescale is a little screwy, by the time netbooks became popular barely anyone was using dialup and more tech oriented people where already getting home wifi. The boom in publicly available WiFi and 4g where what allowed Netbooks to become popular in the first place.

[TheJman]

They never left they evolved into tablets, chrome books, and ultra books

[gentuxable]

OLPC started it all in my opinion. Seymour Papert and Nicholas Negroponte wanted to make an affordable laptop for children to learn. Asus followed soon with their Eee PC which was at first targeted for education but unlike OLPC, Asus went for their distribution channels and succeeded. OLPC you had only an option to donate one and get one for yourself but never as retail. The first generation of netbooks ran on Intel Celeron CPUs or even VIA C6, the Atom came *after* because of the success, also Microsoft didn't want to license XP for new machines as Vista was already out but seeing the success they changed their mind. Linux was preinstalled on all first gen netbooks and some stores had some funny "Attention, Linux!!!" stickers.

[logustrate]

Late to the party, but I bought a netbook to complement my PC in 2009 when going to university. An LG X120, it had a "Smart On" feature that was basically a separate power button you could dual boot into a light linux for quick tasks. Used it to take notes, write papers, and watch movies on.

Took it apart a while ago, planning on using the screen for pi gaming system. I have fond memories of that little thing.