Can Crowdfunding Bring Back The Netbook? (salon.com) 243
"The mini-laptop's market niche got swamped by the iPad and the phablet," writes Salon, since the stripped-down hardware of tablets made them cheaper to produce. But now netbooks could be making a grassroots-fueled comeback, "thanks to the lower costs in electronics manufacturing and the fact that individual investors can come together to crowdfund projects." An anonymous reader quotes Salon:
Michael Mrozek, the Germany-based creator of creator of the DragonBox Pyra, says "I never understood why they were gone in the first place. I have no idea why you would use a tablet. I tried one, and it's awkward to use it for anything else than browsing the Web"... He has already managed to raise several hundred thousand dollars through a private pre-order system set up on his geek's paradise online store. Once those initial orders have been filled, Mrozek said he will probably start up a mainstream crowdfunding campaign for his Linux handheld... "The niche was always there, but thanks to the Internet and crowdfunding, it's easy to reach everyone who's interested in such a device so even a niche product still gets you enough users to sell it. That wasn't possible 10 years ago."
Meanwhile, in just under two weeks Planet Computer raised $446,000 on Indiegogo, more than double the original $200,000 goal for their netbook-like Gemini computer (with a keyboard designed by the creator of the original Psion netbook). Planet's CEO Janko Mrsic-Flogel says "It's a bit like Volkswagen bringing back the Beetle," and predicts that the worldwide demand for netbooks could reach 10 million a year.
Meanwhile, in just under two weeks Planet Computer raised $446,000 on Indiegogo, more than double the original $200,000 goal for their netbook-like Gemini computer (with a keyboard designed by the creator of the original Psion netbook). Planet's CEO Janko Mrsic-Flogel says "It's a bit like Volkswagen bringing back the Beetle," and predicts that the worldwide demand for netbooks could reach 10 million a year.
piece of shit machines (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:3)
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:4, Insightful)
I still miss my first generation EEE PC which was stolen two years ago. It had a special battery that lasted forever and was perfect for writing novels outside. Now I'm using an Asus Transformer, I had to put special anti-reflective plastic over the display to be able to read anything, it still sucks in the sun and it runs Windows 8. :(
Anyway, the reply to your post: Netbooks are awesome, perfect for writing books outside, for example.
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:2)
Sounds like you want 'classic start menu' make windows look like a former version.
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:2)
Anyway, the reply to your post: Netbooks are awesome, perfect for writing books outside, for example.
I agree with this conclusion!
I had a 2nd gen EEEPC years ago that was great for surfing the web and writing for hours on end. Because it was so cheap it was also essentially a "throwaway" that I used to cut my teeth on (very) basic hardware hacking, like adding a touchscreen. I gave it away to a friend in 2009 when the netbook market was booming. I never did get another one but I have very fond memories.
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:5, Informative)
specs?, piece of shit machines that were locked to having max 2 gb ram, who the fuck thought that was ever a good idea
Microsoft thought it was a good idea to limit netbooks.
The 1st netbooks ran Linux. People found out that they didn't need Windows. Just a browser mainly. Manufacturers found they could reduce a large % of the cost by not putting Windows on it.
MS had discontinued XP and netbooks couldn't run 7. So they brought XP back for netbooks. They created a spec it that limited the screen resolution, ram and cpu.
And that ultimately killed netbooks. It saved MS's Windows revenue for a number of years.
When the iPad and Android tablets came out, that trick wouldn't work anymore. Millions learned that they could do "internet" just fine without Windows. They could Google, Facebook, do google docs, listen to music, watch videos, take photos to put up on the web, chat, and surf the web.
Google Chromebooks are probably the closest we have to a Netbook now. For those of us that want to, Linux wll run on most of them too.
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:5, Informative)
The return rate for Linux-based netbooks was significantly higher that Windows ones. I don't think that it can be said that people found that they didn't need Windows. Also, it was Vista that didn't work well on netbooks. They fixed this with the Windows 7 Starter Edition, which finallly replaced XP on netbooks.
Netbooks still exist in the form of... netbooks. The Lenovo Ideapad 100S or the HP Stream 11 spring to mind as examples of this format. The specs tend to be 11" screen, 2GB RAM & 32GB SSD & full Windows 10. I've had a few different varieties of this sort of thing, and they do a reasonable job even though I'm not a big fan of Windows 10.
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:piece of shit machines (Score:2)
A better question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A better question (Score:2)
It must not be about costs, because you can buy a half decent notebook with a 1080p IPS display for a hundred dollars less than this "netbook" (see Anandtech's recent review of the Chuwi Lapbook 14.1, which has its flaws, but is an impressive value). My assumption then is that the attraction is purely the form factor. I would have thought that some sort of low-end android tablet or phone with a keyboard case of some kind would make this proposed product redundant.
But does it run Wine? (Score:2)
I would have thought that some sort of low-end android tablet or phone with a keyboard case of some kind would make this proposed product redundant.
Not unless it's an Android/x86 tablet or phone. One of the advantages of a GNU/Linux netbook used to be that one could run Wine for the occasional Windows app that doesn't demand performance more than what you'd get out of, say, a Pentium 4. (An Atom from the netbook era had instructions per clock roughly comparable to a P4.)
Re:A better question (Score:3)
Re:A better question (Score:2)
The DragonBox Pyra has been available to preorder since 2013 (from what I can tell, it's a bit hard because the website is awful). So Michael Mrozek is the creator of not much so far.
He is however correct about tablets being awkward for anything other than browsing the web, which is why that's exactly what they are used for.
Any tiny Linux handheld is a niche device, which is why no mainstream manufacturer will make them.
Re:A better question (Score:2)
He is however correct about tablets being awkward for anything other than browsing the web
...and using those hundreds of thousands of apps designed for tablets and phones.
Re:A better question (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair enough. Browsing the web, angry birds and candy crush.
Re:A better question (Score:2)
I wanted a netbook but ended up with a laptop because no-ones selling good spec netbooks which is odd considering how easy they should be to make now with great screens readily available because of tablets and intel chips with the latest intel hd video is surprisingly good, stick 1 stick of 8gb memory and some ssd on there, could be cheap and awesome but they're just not doing it.
Re:A better question (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheap laptops (barely more than the price of netbooks, and eventually cheaper and better spec'ed than netbooks) killed it.
Both you and TFA are wrong. Manufacturers killed the netbook because once enough of them joined the fray and started competing, they eroded their margins so much that they forced the market into "chromebooks" or otherwise gimped netbooks that were cheaper to license.
Re:A better question (Score:2)
And yet the facts show that laptops that were under the price of netbooks but with better specs killed the netbook market. The price competition in laptops is even more fierce, and yet they're still being produced - licensing costs were not a consideration.
I remember one of my co-workers bringing his new netbook to work. After a month it stayed at home while my laptop continued to make the journey every day. Then again, my laptop had more utility - 17" display, dual hard drives, decent memory and cpu, linux. You can purchase a standard laptop with 8 gigs of ram for half what one of these pieces of shit will sell for.
As for their use case - "when you really need to type" - that use case no longer exists. Phones come with speech-to-text.
Re:A better question (Score:3)
yeah, I find myself saying "du -sk /var/log/* | sort -n | tail -20" all the time now....
Re:A better question (Score:3)
That totally depends on if they are done right. Some netbooks made were surprisingly capable. Cheap, small, sturdy and useful for the narrow set of tasks they were made for in the first place. Ideal as small computer when traveling, second PC to surf the internet on or write some documents when another family member has occupied the main desktop/laptop. And even as a generic college student PC for office applications many of them were more than capable. However there were also POSs, only capable of delivering a slideshow of BSODs.
A good netbook has a balance of hardware and software with a specific task set. Many successful netbooks had to forego a Windows operating system because of that, although some late models with Win Basic may have been OK-ish. Those unfortunately got bogged down over time due to too many updates or owners trying to shoehorn a regular version on it for the 'Aero' effect.
Later on, when the term 'Netbook' went out of fashion, it wasn't only tablets that took over. i3-class hardware got a lot cheaper (both in purchase price and power requirements) and so they gobbled up the market at the higher end. Some tablets were developed with sturdy keyboard docks that made them capable of everything a netbook could and some manufacturers still release a netbook-like configuration now and then. ASUS is still my favourite in that regard. And Chromebooks, except for the high-end ones are netbooks, if not in name. The market of mobile computing equipment just got more diverse and just 'Netbook' no longer covered it.
Not only that (Score:2)
But these days, cheap notebooks are around the price point that Netbooks were at. You can get a cheapass notebook for around $300ish. It won't be very good, but it'll work and be better than what a Netbook was and that was around what they cost.
All a "netbook" ever really meant was "very small, very cheap laptop." I guess if the "very small" part appealed to you then the current crop might not do it, but you can get cheap laptops.
My parents both have cheap Dells. Not the absolute bottom of the barrel, but under $400 in both cases. They aren't great, they aren't fast, but know what? They do the trick for them.
Re:A better question (Score:3)
Do we really want (or need) the Netbook back?
Yes.
These days everyone has a cellphone which is already infinitely better than the netbook of yesterday.,
Utter rubbish. I have a Nexus 6, but I'm sitting here writing it on my eee 900. The nexus 6 is spec for spec a much more powerful machine. It's great for reading stuff, but as a plaftorm for creating anything (except capturing photos and videos), even badly written, flamey slashdot posts, it's substantially worse.
It also runs a much worse operating system, and is a whole lot less flexible.
Blaming tablets is disingenuous (Score:3)
Given that, at the time they both launched, the described use cases for tablets and netbooks didn't really overlap much... it's hard to see how one could blame tablets for the failure of netbooks. It's really only been the past two or three years that there's been any traction with regards to "iPads as word processors" - and, even now, I don't see this done very often.
In our university department, I know a number of people who bought netbooks because they were small, light, and inexpensive. What they then found out was they were also severely underpowered and had too little built-in storage and memory. One of our professors brought one to us and said "I want to run Cadence and Matlab on this" - yeah, good luck with that.
It seemed like none of the people who bought them actually kept using them for more than a month or two.
There are lots of small, light, and useable laptops on the market now. If there ever was a "netbook niche", I'm not sure it still exists.
Still using mine. (Score:2)
Re:Blaming tablets is disingenuous (Score:2)
Probably not (Score:2)
In my opinion, netbooks went into oblivion when Windows became the OS of choice by the manufacturers. There are other factors to take into as well, like very slow HDDs that hold more data (nice for marketing purposes) rather than SDDs, and poor TN-film screens.
not a fan (Score:2)
As I would imagine a lot of people are not fans either, they are slow, even the current models, the screens are small, which would be ok if their resolution didnt suck, keyboards are hard to type on, and they are heavier than their tablet counterparts
sent from a 12 inch 1.2ghz netbook cause I just happen to be hacking one up to use in a mini mame cab
A second life? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to see netbooks come back. The original concept was a smash hit- small size, excellent battery life, SSD, and running Linux, all at a small price. Lots of reasons led to their demise- Microsoft hostility, powerful phones, tablets, and client-side browser load increase were probably the three biggest.
I think there might still be a market for something small, inexpensive, and different. Maybe not a big market, but something with unlocked dual-boot Android and Linux with physical keyboard, larger than the largest phones but smaller than the smallest laptops (notebooks). Where having a keyboard and good, SWAPPABLE battery trumps being stupidly thin.
Oh, the Gemini PDA isn't it... too expensive, too small. Cool, no doubt, but it is more of a phone factor.
Re:A second life? (Score:3)
Re:A second life? (Score:2)
>"I do not think it is a good experience to go with a non 1080p screen"
That depends on the screen size and the audience. I will take a guess that at least 70% of people will notice no difference in anything higher than 1920x1080 on a 10" screen. Probably 90% of people on a 5" screen. If it means keeping the cost low and performance high, it is worth it to keep the resolution reasonable.
Re:A second life? (Score:2)
Every battery is removable if you own a screwdriver, this is a non-issue. Especially given the battery lives on laptops. Who is using a laptop for over 10 hours without being near a charger? 0.1% of the market, maybe.
Re:A second life? (Score:3)
>"They're called Chromebooks now.
In a way, that is true. Although most are locked-down and difficult to run plain Linux on reliably/easily (crouton is neat, but still mostly a hack). I think that is probably the key difference.
>"Every battery is removable if you own a screwdriver, this is a non-issue. "
Well, that is not true... look at phones for an example. Some have the battery nearly impossible even for a regular tech to replace without great risk of severe damage.
>" Especially given the battery lives on laptops. Who is using a laptop for over 10 hours without being near a charger? 0.1% of the market, maybe."
And in two years with heavy use the battery has lost half its life and needs replacing for any reasonable runtime. Been there, done that with phones. Been there with my Lenovo non-easily replaceable laptop too.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:A second life? (Score:2)
I agree with you.
It needs to run Linux.
Having a real (although smaller) keyboard and long battery life is an advantage for those who do more than browse the web.
It's also nice to be able to plug one in to a TV at a motel when traveling and watch movies on a full-sized screen. Although I'm limited to VGA with it, it still works quite well unless I have a HD file (the video processor chokes on them).
Missing keys (Score:2)
Netbook? Sure why not (Score:2)
Now we've got airs that have 11.6" screens, fully integrated keyboard, and weigh a few ounces more than ye olde macbooks.
Count me out (Score:2)
I never understood why they were gone in the first place. I have no idea why you would use a tablet. I tried one, and it's awkward to use it for anything else than browsing the Web
Unlike netbooks, which were awkward to use for anything including browsing the web. It was codeword for a really cheap, really crappy laptop with a tiny and poor screen, an anemic Atom processor, too little RAM and the slowest HDD you could find. No laptop user would choose it unless they very literally can't afford anything better, I had one because I normally use a desktop and just needed a cheap piece of shit I wouldn't spend much on and could afford to lose/damage. My use case is now fully replaced by a smartphone, I don't even need a tablet/phablet. Besides, aren't Chromebooks the current day netbooks? Or if you really want they have netbooks with Win10 [google.com]. Not that I'd touch that with a ten foot pole.
I admit I can't afford a Let's Note (Score:2)
No laptop user would choose it unless they very literally can't afford anything better
The only "serious" (i.e. non-Atom) 10 inch laptops that I'm aware of are Panasonic's expensive "Let's Note" laptops sold only in the Japanese market [liliputing.com]. Prices start at $1,200, and I wouldn't be able to buy one with a warranty anyway because I live in the United States, not Japan.
Besides, aren't Chromebooks the current day netbooks?
Not as long as destruction of your Crouton installation is as easy as following the prompts to press Space Enter.
Re:Count me out (Score:2)
Unlike netbooks, which were awkward to use for anything including browsing the web. It was codeword for a really cheap, really crappy laptop with a tiny and poor screen, an anemic Atom processor, too little RAM and the slowest HDD you could find
That's not how they started out, because the atom processor didn't exist. The first generation netbooks (eee 701 and eee 900) had celery processors, and SSDs. The 701 had a tiny screen that never appealed to me. The 900 has a screen the full size of the machine with a small bezel for the day.
No laptop user would choose it unless they very literally can't afford anything better,
I did. So, no TRUE laptop user would choose one.
I had one because I normally use a desktop and just needed a cheap piece of shit I wouldn't spend much on and could afford to lose/damage.
I had a huge, fast desktop at work and a bit of a bricktop at home. I needed something cheap and light that I wouldn't spend too much on and could afford to lose/damage. Well, I never managed to damage it in a way I couldn't repair (that took years) and since it was so cheap and portable, I took it tons of places. It's currently suffering a nasty systemd problem, but, well, of the machines I had back then, guess which one I'm using right now?
My use case is now fully replaced by a smartphone, I don't even need a tablet/phablet.
I used my netbook for a mix of surfing the web and creating stuff. I can't do the latter on a tablet to nearly the same degree. And typing on a phone? I'm not trying to write 50 shades of gray, thankfully.
Besides, aren't Chromebooks the current day netbooks?
I keep looking. The chances are I'll end up having to replace my eee with something much more expensive.
Netbook vs Tablet (Score:2)
Tablets and ebook readers already do everything the so called "netbook" does. What exactly are you going to get rid of to reduce the cost further?
About the only way I can think of to reduce the price that can't be applied to a tablet/ebook reader is to:
1) Remove the touch screen and add back in a mouse
2) Increase the thickness of the hardware, to allow for cheaper parts.
I can't see that working. The touch screen is worth the extra cost, and no one wants a thicker, heavier tablet, unless it is less than $40. I can't see it working.
Re:Netbook vs Tablet (Score:2)
Tablets and ebook readers already do everything the so called "netbook" does.
Including running a text editor, GCC, Python, and Wine? Because that's what I run in Xubuntu on my Dell Inspiron mini 1012.
Re:Netbook vs Tablet (Score:2)
You have made a false assumption - that they will add back in the extra features they cut out to make it thin.
If they did that, it would up the cost, and people would rather just get the tablet.
Note, I do agree that the idea of killing a microphone port is incredibly stupid - wireless has way too high losses.
But they won't put it back in just because they made things thicker.
Dunno about tablets replacing them... (Score:2, Interesting)
I loved the EEE PC, for me, it was a way to run any distro I wanted on a portable device that I could bring anywhere. I would often bring it with me whenever I needed to showcase my work.
However, I feel as if what replaced it for most people (that did not just get them to save a buck), was single-board systems like RPI. I would always plug in an external monitor + keyboard on these things anyway, because their keyboards and screens were just waaaaaaay to small to do anything useful.
The 1GB RAM or the 2GB RAM currently offered by most Chromebooks etc, are just way to low, I would love to see a 4-8GB RAM netbook running on Intel HW for a decent price (100-150USD), but if that does not happen, I'll stick to my 15-17" laptop, even if its often impractial.
Netbooks and Tablets are Free (Score:2)
My Netbook (Score:5, Interesting)
During a time when I "worked from home", I would travel frequently. On one such trip, my laptop I used for work died. I needed one ASAP, so ordering online wasn't an option. I walked into BestBuy (not really any other option with where I was at the time). I just needed something to get me by until I returned home to my normal workstation, so I pick up a cheap Acer Aspire One 10" netbook for $300. This was I think five or six years ago now. This netbook is awesome, it has 2 DIMM slots in it, so I was able to move over the 8GiB of RAM from the dead laptop over to the netbook. All these years later, the thing is still working like a champ. It fits nicely instead of my camera backpack and use it to dump photos while on the go, with slow but functional support for the latest Lightroom and Photoshop. The thing also has wired gigabit ethernet, so it always travels with me when I'm working on-site for tech clients. Had a city-wide power outage recently where I was able to quickly hop into the server room with this thing, plug it in, and get to work monitoring the rack of server, AV, and phone equipment while running on emergency power.
Looking at what is being offered by the link provided, it is just yet ANOTHER random Android device. Cool, I guess? But it wouldn't be able to do any of the actual WORK that I would need it to do. It is essentially just a phone/tablet with an attached keyboard. If I wanted that, there are things like the Transformer Prime from Asus. Or if I wanted to shell out actual money, there are Surface tablets from Microsoft. The thing being offered now adds no real functionality over the existing offerings whatsoever.
Re:BULLSHIT! (Score:2)
Re:BULLSHIT! (Score:2)
Love my netbook! (Score:2)
I have a Lenovo X131e, that I replaced the HDD with an SSD, that gets more use than my tricked out desktop machine. It runs Win7 x64, is mostly used for browsing, but can handle anything from Word to pro audio just fine. It's not tiny or superlight, but it's just the right size to carry around the house, and it's built like a tank.
A tablet is just an oversized phone, but a netbook is really useful.
We're not the general public (Score:2)
That's what the majority of people used a computer/laptop for, before tablets took over.
WTF (Score:2)
Just go to Walmart and buy one -- HP Stream, etc.
tablets with keyboards (Score:2)
Nope (Score:5, Interesting)
Tablets and phablets didn't kill netbooks alone, pricing and other options did.
I imagine some Linux hardcore users would want a cheap-o laptop with paltry specs to tinker with, but the majority of the market is not interested in that.
With netbooks, you could at most browse a bit, check e-mails and do the very basic stuff that any smartphone or tablet can do better today, even the extremely cheap ones. And then, with the advent of Chromebooks, you can even get a Windows 10 laptop positioned to compete with it, with prices under 200 bucks.
I don't think a single guy experience on trying to use an Android tablet for productivity and finding it "awkward" is reason enough to ressurect a line of products that are justifiably dead. Honestly, plenty of people can use Android tablets for productivity well enough, and keyboard accessories ranging from horrible to excellent are already out there. Go on eBay and search for Android laptop if form factor is an issue. Android already has a cleaner and more intuitive interface, and apps like the full Microsoft Office suite, with data synchronization and other native features to boot.
Nowadays you can also get cheap Windows laptops, tiny desktops like a Kangaroo PC (there's even a Kangaroo laptop with a weird design), stick computers or even something like Gole 1 that can dual boot between Windows and Android.
You can build your own portable with something like a Raspberry Pi.
Not to mention Chromebooks among other devices for productivity.
Honestly, I think it's kinda stupid to try to revive netbooks at this point, personal opinion as a business thing. It'll be an extremely niche market that will fail to scale.
I'd be all for a Linux tablet though, for personal usage. Not that I think there's a market for that too. What Linux needs these days is to get ported, adapted and get support for devices like smartphones and tablets, not to keep trying to go back in time. Yes, I know Android is based on Linux, but I'm talking about other distros. I know Ubuntu has a version for mobile devices, but those are too limited and impossible to find in the market.
I'm not a hater or anything like that. I've just converted an old laptop that was laying around into an Ubuntu machine to tinker with. I just don't see a market for netbooks anymore. What we had back then were schools and businesses willing to pay a little for underpowered laptops running Linux for the very basics... but that has changed.
Furthermore, you know what Netbooks sound like for your average consumer? Extremely underpowered and horrible to deal with devices. Garbage. Expired electronics. Failed strategy. Outdated and deprecated. Something lying in a storage space somewhere with a ton of dust on top. A waste of not a whole lot of money. Outside of Linux evangelists, that's what I mostly hear. Would you want a netbook for work/school/business? Ewww no, gtfo of here with that.
I can almost guarantee you that most people, if offered a netbook, would rather:
1. Spend a bit more on a more capable device - Chromebook, Linux or Windows;
2. Get a bluetooth/OtG keyboard and mouse and use their own smartphones/tablets instead;
3. Get nothing and keep using whatever they have instead of having to carry an extra device running an OS that they'll need to learn how to deal with.
Netbooks are dead, let them go gracefully. If you are going to release a new product with similar objectives, call it something else.
Re:Nope (Score:2)
Kinda, sorta.
What killed netbooks was the pricing. $300 for a laptop? Consumers were happy, but manufacturers were basically shaving costs everywhere to meet the price point. It was almost a money-losing machine - margins were very thin.
And those machines were cut to the very bare bones.
Then they started machine machines with bigger screens, bigger keyboards, more memory, etc. And manufacturers were happy - they could upgrade the screen from a 800x480 screen to a 1024x768 (from 7" to 8 or 9") and charge another $100 for it - so the price of netbooks kept creeping up. Until a nice netbook started costing from $500 and more - I think a fully equipped one started costing up to $750. At which point you pause - because that's laptop range in pricing. With people wanting the stuff in more expensive netbooks, the cheap ones died off as the more expensive ones had higher margins.
Then tablets came out. What the iPad did was basically what everyone wanted in a netbook - a way to consume content. They liked the smaller form factor of a netbook because it was easier to read books in bed with a smaller, lighter machine. It was great for people to watch their Netflix on. But then tablets came out and could do that easier and better, and had even higher margins to boot, dropping the netbook.
Awkward to use tablets (Score:2)
But guess what 99% of the population want to use their portable device for...
Then add the fact that netbooks are also awkward for almost everything except browsing the web, because the screen and the keyboard are too small.
In addition, browsing the web is better with the screen in portrait mode, than in landscape mode, so the netbook is not even better at that.
I'm sure there are use cases for netbooks, and I loved my Asus netbook when I got it, but I think I have only used it a handful of times since I got myself a Nexus 7
Re:Awkward to use tablets (Score:2)
But not just the web - a lot of content is formatted for print and that requires viewing an A4 page in portrait. One of my textbooks retails for $AU250 but can be purchased online for a quarter of the price as a ebook. My laptop is useless for reading it so, I plug in my trusty 1024x1280 19" monitor (rotated, of course)
Landscape is good for movies, speadsheets and IDEs such as Eclipse that tack on sidebars. Documents, not so much.
They never went away (Score:2)
Walk into any Best Buy or Walmart and there will be a usable $200 Windows netbook I actually had a $200 HP stream 12 for a year and a half. It bundled with a year of Office (which I need, and think is much better than Libre), so that's like $80 off the $200. Worked perfectly for work and browsing web and online grad school. Tiny computer, no moving parts, I would just bring it along on trips without thinking about it. I could play Civ 5 on lowest settings, ha.
The two issues were the 32 Gigs of hard drive, with maybe 20 Gigs free after installing the OS and Office and basic apps. The 32gb drive ensured you would only want the computer if you used it as a 2nd computer or just for the most basic uses, although I guess you could use a USB 3.0 key drive, or an SD card. And the 2 GB of RAM was kind of a limiter, but really not a big deal. I know the latest rendition of the Stream has 4GB of RAM, which I imagine is fine.
I really liked the computer, but when it broke due to much abuse I went for a Macbook. If Windows 10 didn't suck so much I'd probably get another one.
Salon? (Score:2)
The second you cite Salon, you might as well be quoting Breitbart.
Not the netbook you are looking for (Score:3)
Most netbooks were full fledged PCs able to run Windows, had ethernet and full-sized USB ports.
What they offer is just a small tablet with a keyboard. In fact you could just buy a small BT keyboard and use the smartphone you already have.
Microsoft killed the netbook (Score:3)
With Windows 8, the assumption that folks would use a touch screen. Win8 didn't port over to Atom based netbooks.
I used an Asus 1000HE netbook for many years with WinXP. It served me well. When XP became old, I moved Win7 to the hardware. It was pretty slow. I tried buying an Asus Netbook running Linux. The software was OK but the hardware was a disappointment (a surprise for Asus as they generally make pretty good hardware). I ended up having to return the unit because it had wireless connectivity problems. I need to move Linux on to one of the netbooks.
I liked the compact size and battery life of the netbooks. I have tablets that I use but they're useless for typing text. Same with phones in my opinion.
Now, I just use a laptop either running Linux or Win7. I like a real keyboard because I type and I write more than one word or one line responses to emails, etc (and here :-) When Win7 goes away, I won't be using a Microsoft solution due to their "phone home" policies and forced update crap. Their days are numbered with me.
The only viable solution I see for netbooks is for them to run Linux.
Microsoft doesn't give a damn about netbooks now, nor did they after WinXP IMHO.
Re:Microsoft killed the netbook (Score:2)
Asus are now manufacturing Atom-based devices running Windows 10 with detachable keyboards. i.e. a poor man's Surface 3.
Albeit they cost 50% than the equivalent non-touchscreen HP Stream 'netbooks'.
Yes, there is a market (Score:2)
Look at what just happened with Apple and Samsung. They both had significant problems with their product releases because they were trying to make smartphones that were thinner and had more functionality. Apple had a case warp problem and the S8 was an incendiary device.
Consumers don't give a rat's ass about "thinner" at this point. Given a choice between a thin phone with a shorter batter life and a fatter phone with a longer use time, 99% of the public would want more talk time. But the public doesn't get that choice because Apple and Samsung are engaged in a pissing contest on design aesthetics.
If you don't think this is true, consider the market in battery packs for smart phones. Right now on Amazon there are 22,828 listings [amazon.com] for external power for phones. People are carrying around another device just to keep their phones working.
So there is a market for a phone with a longer battery life. This is just one approach. If the smartphone manufacturers had a clue they would be competing on the real world use case of how long the phone works without needed to plug in somewhere. If there was any actual competition in the market this would happen, but effectively it's a duopoly between Samsung and Apple, at least outside of Chine. So we're stuck.
That's a palmtop, not a netbook! (Score:2)
Netbooks were small, weak Windows laptops costing a couple hundred dollars. That market is very healthy, although it partly moved to 2-in-1's. You can find lots of such products on Chinese stores like Gear Best.
This, on the other hand, is a palmtop. These were small PDA's (remember those) with keyboards. The Psion Series 5MX was one of the best, but there were several Windows CE ones.
This will certainly have an appeal for those (like me) who remember the 5MX fondly, so thanks for posting about it, even with the completely misleading title. I feel that there's less need for palmtops today, given netbooks and keyboard cases for tablets, but I did a lot of story editing on the 5MX, and I'm sure that some people would still find use for a small 400g device with a decent keyboard over the alternatives.
Older Thinkpads are better. (Score:2)
For the price of these netbooks, you can get a lot more.
8 inch tablet + keyboard cover (Score:2)
You can already buy a netbook equivalent for $350. In fact, I've been consistently using my Kindle HDX with the keyboard cover for the past 4 years.
not gone (Score:2)
The original netbooks were too small (Score:3)
The 11.6-inch "netbook" of today is the perfect size. The keyboard keys are full-size. The touchpad can be reasonably large. There can be more USB ports. RAM and hard drive upgrades are often possible unless it's one of the Chromebook-based ones with soldered RAM and a 32GB eMMC SSD. The screens are nice and big and always have a minimum resolution width of 1024 pixels, a number which some websites don't even work on without a horizontal scroll bar but which is far better than the 800-pixel screens of the bad old days. They're always thin and light and disposably cheap.
No one in their right mind wants 7-inch netbooks back. Even 9-inch models have squished keyboards and myopia-inducing screens. The 11.6-inch netbook, despite not carrying that label in the marketing literature, is what the market has settled on...and with good reasons for doing so. I can only see a tiny niche market for uncomfortably small netbooks. Let the old tiny netbook remain peacefully in its grave.
Re:The original netbooks were too small (Score:3)
Apparently there IS a small minority that wants those tiny netbooks back, thus the crowdfunding projects. Presumably they have some need to run desktop applications and they don't like tablets. The crowdfunded devices are essentially small Windows tablets with a permanently attached keyboard, and work about as well as a tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard in a folio case. (But you don't have to remember to recharge the keyboard as well as the base.)
I don't think any of those systems will ever grow beyond their little niche. It's nice that contract manufacturers can make them inexpensively enough so they can be made for the people who want them. I just hope that all the people who fund the projects actually get their little computers.
Revisionist (Score:2)
Ultrabooks (Score:2)
Re:Ultrabooks (Score:2)
Aren't "Ultrabooks" the Netbooks we all really wanted? We have 12-13" laptops now that probably have less volume than the 9-12" Netbooks they replaced.
Not really. Ultrabooks are thin and stylish at the expensive of practicality and generally not cheap. They are Intel's response to the Macbook Air. Netbooks are small, utilitarian, and cheap. They aren't for everyone or every application but the need for such machines still exists.
What I want : Real mobile PC without compromises (Score:2)
What I want :
1. Integrated REAL keyboard - no virtual kbd, no separate bluetooth crap that I must manage its separate battery charge status, can STAND BY ITSELF and GUARANTEED TO STAY IN ONE PIECE on irregular,vibrating surface like bag on my lap on subway so no separate keyboard with kickstand or magnet connected like MS surface/current netbooks
2. Lightweight for mobile gaming - can be used continually with two hand grip(like nintendo DS) or one hand grip(like smartphone). In my experience the upper weight limit is somewhere around 400g~500g
3. NO castrated storage - cpuwise Atom is OK you can even use OLD generation low power Atom like Z530(2W)+yucky imagination GMA500 GPU to run dosbox/SNES emulator/2d games rather well. Current Atom(after bay-trail) with REAL INTEL GPU can even run lightweight 3d games well if you set the preferences low. All the slowness comes from its slooooow eMMC raw flash(no parallel tricks like SSD) storage especially it's write speed is painfully slow.
4. adequate memory - minimum 2GB
5. good battery capacity - minimum 10 hours for light use/3 hours for heavy(gaming) use.
6. OS freedom just like PC - install & use linux just like pc without problem. android? I'll install android myself if necessary.
7. NO castrated USB(like having only 1 micro usb that also used for charging - huge headache for charging&attaching external devices simultaneously)
8. REAL connector to external display device - NO MIRACAST CRAP
For now I have one that satisfy 1,2,7,8(now discontinued UMID mbook SE) I hope to find one that satisfy all my requirements(plus more)
I hope so (Score:4, Insightful)
I need a way to connect to my servers and network equipment by CLI on a reasonable screen.
Touch keyboard eat 50% of a landscape screen.
Bluetooth keyboard are nice, but need an extra charger.
Netbooks are great tools, but you need to find one: it's an endangered species.
Still have my HP Mini 311 from 2009 (Score:3)
I run Mint 17.3 Xfce on it, it works well, I still use it to debug some code in car application written on AVR ATMEGA, it can compile a 32K project in a few seconds, transfer it via USBasp, serial console via a CP2102, etc. I am using it mainly for this as my other laptop is 17" and too big.
The bottleneck is the CPU so browsing some big sites like facebook or reddit+res it is slow. I also installed Win10 on a partition to try it, it works fine!
You can buy one for ~$70 on eBay. To replace it I would need a $300 chromebook and manage to install linux on it, but would miss some keys maybe?
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:2)
Netbooks are cheap, almost disposable, laptops with small screens. Today all you can get are cheap, almost disposable, laptops with medium sized screens.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:2)
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps that's true for the people you know. When I was a student, having a tiny lightweight computer with a real keyboard that ran a real OS was great for writing papers and code. Not so much for compiling huge programs, but a little python work? No problem. Having an Ethernet port built in and all the standard Linux network utilities came in handy more than once for onsite network troubleshooting.
Not bad for such a small machine. Oh yeah, I guess it was inexpensive as well. So yeah, netbooks are useless.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:2)
Yes too
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that a tablet/phablet is not a decent productivity tool. It's great for media consumption and maybe social media, but lousy for real work. The tools aren't right, the multitasking really isn't right, and most of the bluetooth keyboards are pretty inadequate.
I have an old Acer netbook, circa 2009, that still works well and I'm much more productive on that than I am on my much more expensive tablet.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
I see your viewpoint, but some of us work in coffee shops and libraries to avoid the noise and distraction at home.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
Some of us take care of hundreds of sites where we may have to locally console into devices to work with them. Or we may have to attend conferences or meetings with the organizations that we work with. Or we may have to be on-call.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
I bought one because it was ickle. It's about the size of a textbook and it fits in a manpurse that I can wear under my coat perfectly. At the time I bought it I was on a lot of site visits & courses and for quickly banging out a spreadsheet it was more than adequate,
Now it has less than a tenth the power of my laptop, but that bastard needs a flatbed to move any substantial distance.
Two 80-column windows; Wine compatibility (Score:3)
Or do you really think people are going to bother toting around netbooks instead of phones and tablets?
I do. I carry a phone on a pay-as-you-go plan without a data plan and pay per year what many pay per month. I also carry a now seven-year-old Dell netbook because it works fine for my hobby programming projects while I ride the city bus to and from my day job. On a netbook, I can open two 80-column windows side by side, viewing my source code in one and the output in the other. A tablet, by contrast, tends toward a window management policy of all maximized all the time because of its smartphone-derived GUI. On a netbook, I can run the occasional Windows application in Wine, such as the debugging version of the FCEUX emulator, with acceptable performance. A tablet, by contrast, is more likely to have an ARM CPU that's incompatible with the x86 instruction set for which Win32 applications are compiled, and I imagine the unsupported method of using Wine with QEMU would produce unacceptable performance due to emulation overhead.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
I know tablets with detachable keyboards exist, and there are also 3rd party keyboards.
But they all run arsewank operating systems.
My Eee 1000 boots into Kali when I want to & Win7 when I have to.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:2)
All of that software you listed runs great on a Surface Pro 4, aka "a tablet", aka "fondleslab."
Probably not what you're thinking of though since the price on that plus keyboard is $1,200+
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
Was it simply the cheapness of netbooks that made them compelling? If so, why do we not consider Chromebooks as having filled that void. Netbooks started out cheap because they ran (stripped down) Linux distros that could run on the minimal hardware. Well, Chromebooks do that today - with fewer compromises in performance (for what they can do). And you can load a full Linux distro on them, so the hackers that loved netbooks are also satisfied.
Of course, Netbooks ultimately changed into cheap Windows PC's once Microsoft felt a threat. But they were lousy Windows PC's and limited to small screens by Microsoft's deal on the cheap OS licenses. Chromebooks are not limited in screen size, have decent keyboards and trackpads and mainly just skimp on local storage these days. So, I guess if you need lots of local storage and/or need to run Windows, then sure - the cheapest mainstream laptops will provide you with a suitably shitty Windows experience. But if you need something that fills the niche that netbooks were originally intended to fill, a Chromebook is the thing - unless, of course, you're fine with a cheap tablet...
A Chromebook wipes itself (Score:3)
Netbooks started out cheap because they ran (stripped down) Linux distros that could run on the minimal hardware. Well, Chromebooks do that today - with fewer compromises in performance (for what they can do). And you can load a full Linux distro on them, so the hackers that loved netbooks are also satisfied.
The problem with a Chromebook is that it's too eager to wipe itself once you put it into developer mode. Anybody who turns on your developer-mode Chromebook is prompted to press Space then Enter to erase everything and reenable OS verification.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:3)
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:2)
11.6 inch isn't "small" to people who prefer 10.1 inch for ease of carrying.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:2)
Indeed. I can get quite a few "notebooks" here that would have been called "netbooks" during the hype. This seems to be fake news (alternate facts?) designed to make the gullible buy something they can get significantly cheaper elsewhere.
Re:Netbooks are gone? (Score:2)
https://www.amazon.com/Cambio-... [amazon.com]
I see things like that all over the place. Tablets with keyboards and touchpads. After I bought a "Pure" tablet I never understood why anyone would buy another one.
Also seeing as you can usually buy these for under a hundred dollars they make great alternatives to microcontrollers like the raspberry pi.
Re:Not a consumer device (Score:3)
Aaaand - you missed the point. This is not for consumers. It's for ... well, keyboard junkies. For anyone who routinely tries to type on a small phablet and who wants a clamshell system. I'd love one if I had any use for it. If I were needing some sort of portable text terminal, if I had to create and respond to complex emails away from a real computer, if I were a closet Blackberry fan - I'd love one.
I still like it. Since I'm not doing anything like this at present, it doesn't really appeal to me. But there were times when I would have committed at least four of the seven sins to get one.
WTB a quality consumer device (Score:2)
I have keyboards that cost more than some netbooks. If I want a small lightweight laptop, I'll get a 12-inch sub-notebook like the macbook air or thinkpad x270. It doesn't have to be cheap if it can hold up and last me a long time.
Re:400 bucks for a 7 inch android tablet w/ keyboa (Score:2)
yeah no thanks. Can get a cheapo android tablet for less than 100 and a bluetooth keyboard for like 30.
Netbooks disappeared because the hardware simply wasn't good enough at the time; i should know i have an asus atom netbook gathering dust in a drawer. Once the hardware caught up, was powerful enough without killing the battery within 45 minutes, android tablets took over the market and there doesn't seem any point in going back.
If you want a mobile workstation then get a laptop/ultrabook.
I got a $50 7" Android 6 tablet + a $10 bluetooth universal 7" keyboard & stand. I added a bluetooth mouse. You can add USB OTG for plugging in storage, keyboard, mouse. I can ssh & tunnel to home from Wifi, do google docs, run chrome, ebooks, youtube.
If it had > 1GB RAM, it'd be enough for a remote access laptop. With only 1GB of RAM, it lags when running more than 1 app at a time. Any tablet with more RAM seems to cost as much as a chromebook which I could run Linux on and do more.
If only they had 7" chromebooks.
Re:Asus still makes them. (Score:3)
Asus still makes them. Transformer. I've got 2 of them and love em.
Too bad it's a pain to install GNU/Linux on the Asus T100TA. Suspend is still broken, among other things [jfwhome.com].
Not all applications are ported to tablets (Score:3)
A tablet running a smartphone-derived operating system runs smartphone applications. A netbook ran desktop applications. If a desktop application is available for a particular task, but an application for a smartphone-derived operating system is not, it's quicker to run an existing desktop application to perform that task than to write a smartphone application from scratch and then perform the same task.
Re:Not all applications are ported to tablets (Score:2)
Then get a low end laptop or a used old one. They are not so expensive anymore, and you will probably be better off.
I got a netbook back when they were popular for my Wife who just did basic computing stuff. While it worked it was just a poor experience. Not powerful enough to do anything more modern. She shortly switched over to a tablet and had modern apps designed to run on the platform.
Desktop apps are designed for a desktop system. Cramming it in a netbook only means you are going to run slow or insecure.