Can Netbooks Be Cool Again?

Megalith

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I found this one confusing. Aren’t 2-in-1 devices like the Surface (which are, in fact, very cool) and Chromebooks (which have made waves in the education sector) basically the spiritual successors of netbooks, meaning that they never really went away? I guess this may just be a clever advertorial for the GPD Pocket, a 7-inch computer that can fit in a jacket pocket, but I guess it is interesting to think about how far we’ve come with portables since 2007 (although a decade is about a millennium in tech years).

…netbooks…came with major compromises. One was the ubiquitous Intel Atom low-power processor, which sometimes struggled with handling basic computer multitasking. Windows felt slow and heavy compared to a good netbook-specific flavor of Linux, but if you needed to run a Windows-specific program, you’d be out of luck. (Yes, you could set up a dual-boot system. That requires more effort than most people want to put into a $400 laptop.) And even as netbooks grew in size, their keyboards were often cramped — my small fingers started to feel like a superpower, and I still had trouble with the original Eee PC. After a while, the netbook became one of those things I’d suggest with the cautious qualification that it wasn’t for everybody, like my favorite cheap whiskey or an early Man Man album.
 
I did really like my netbook back in the day. I adapted to typing on it quickly. Had to have the right lilt with my fingers. Battery life was great, and for what I did the cpu was perfectly the right slowness.

Regarding this campaign, I could use a small computer in 2018 for a trip I'm planning. I was leaning more towards a Surface of some sort.
 
I have a couple older family members who still use MSI Wind netbooks to check email and play solitaire. I remember when I first got a netbook and thinking it would be cool to have the same amount of power in a tablet, in retrospect the laptop form factor is simply more useful in a wider range of situations. When I want to use a touch screen I use my phone.

I'd love to see a return of the 10" form factor and more Linux machines. Pretty much all cheap laptops come with a spinner hard drive and Windows 10, I'd much rather dump both for a 250 GB SSD and Linux Mint.
 
I really do wonder where netbooks went: If only the world could see the reintroduction of such small, long lasting portable computers, I could imagine that such an idea would really revolutionize the way we communicate as we know it. I don't know why netbooks seemed to have faded away....


-posted from my smartphone
 
I feel like they were replaced by the 11.6 inch devices and 2 in 1s. Honestly chromebooks do a pretty good job for under 200. The windows ones struggle performance wise and Windows needs more than a 16gb of storage and it's storage needs grow over time. And Windows updates are painful on slow devices.

I love the backwards compatibility of windows and the ease of use but it just needs work on low end devices.
 
I'd take one at the right price. If they can make that dock actually work like it shows, could be an interesting product.
 
I just don't see how in the era of high power smarthpones and tablets investing in a netbook makes sense.

It didn't work in the XP -Vista ear because the hardware was way too limited to run the OS well enough and now that low-end hardware has become powerful enough and Windows 10 actually can run well on netbook class hardware, the "modern" browsers cannot run well with limited ram. So while a modern netbook is actually sorta viable to run the OS and the apps, the use case that people would want a netbook for will still be too limited.

People will just be better served using the smartphone they likely already have were the apps run well and the form factor makes sense and to add on to that, new chromebooks will run android apps too.
 
I'd love to see a return of the 10" form factor and more Linux machines. Pretty much all cheap laptops come with a spinner hard drive and Windows 10, I'd much rather dump both for a 250 GB SSD and Linux Mint.

On the bottom basement laptops (like $150 and less) I am starting to see 32GB eMMC storage become common.....pretty much a tablet in a clamshell body. Hardly anything inside them.
 
Netbooks? No, they were never cool nor useful unless you were 80, super cheap and only needed AOL email. They serve zero purpose today. Smartphones are powerful, tablets are cheap, laptops are small, cheap and powerful. There is literally not one use case where one of those items is not a better choice.
 
Netbooks? No, they were never cool nor useful unless you were 80, super cheap and only needed AOL email. They serve zero purpose today. Smartphones are powerful, tablets are cheap, laptops are small, cheap and powerful. There is literally not one use case where one of those items is not a better choice.

You have to remember that 99% of the population is not [H].
 
Netbooks? No, they were never cool nor useful unless you were 80, super cheap and only needed AOL email. They serve zero purpose today. Smartphones are powerful, tablets are cheap, laptops are small, cheap and powerful. There is literally not one use case where one of those items is not a better choice.

Back in my college days my netbook was amazing. It was small enough that it didn't add too much extra bulk in my backpack and the all day battery life meant I didn't have to carry around the charger.

It was definitely more than useful but these days the battery life and overall size are not that much of a problem with normal laptops as they were 10 years ago.

Back on topic however....this pocket PC idea is kinda dumb. The design isn't that great and I see no possible use case for this given that any smart phone or tablet can do what this thing will need to do. As with a smart phone or tablet, this PC will only be used for doing minor 'on the spot' tasks so it really doesn't fit in at all in today's tech landscape. It's useless.
 
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The netbook tries to serve two needs... and I guess fails in both. Part of why the tablet cannot replace the laptop is shear practicality of dimensions. Some of us are old and need a screen we can see and a keyboard we can type on. The netbook keyboard is too small, and the screen is not functional in the way a tablet screen is. I wish it wasn't the case, but it's a fail. I like the convenience of the size, but the thing just can't serve both needs. We need the tablet or device for theBS this and that, and we need the laptop for serious work. There's just no in between that is all to everyone. Size matters... ask your wife.
 
Lumping the surface in with Netbooks? Yea I don't think so. Even the lowly surface 3 starts @ $500, (which isn't the cool one) so it's definitely not in the same territory netbooks were in. Chromebooks are netbook replacements though, and those are not cool at all.

A "netbook" will likely never be cool, because it's meant to be cheap. You're not buying a cheap pile of junk because you want to, it's because it's within your budget. All of the "cool" toys are well over $1,000, because they actually have decent hardware in them.
 
Netbooks were never cool. They were a brief splash when laptops were more expensive. They were mainly just cheap and crappy laptops with cramped screens and keyboards.
 
Most of what the average person does on a computer can be done in a web browser. A netbook had great battery life in a time period where you only got 3-5 hours at best. Most of the time, I don't need a full laptop. I'm perfectly happy with a Chromebook.
 
The Netbook will never gain as much fame as it saw 5-7 years ago because of:

Consumer segment: the advancements that smartphones and tablets have undergone.

Business/Enterprise segment: the incoming flurry of cell phones running full versions of Windows or iOS, being dockable with support for ethernet, and external kbam and monitors.
 
The clam shell design doesn't make much sense these days with a touch screen. It would be a lot more appealing to me if it had a hinge like the Dell 3000 Series 2-in-1. I have one of those, and it's pretty nice all things considered. The main issue is that it's somewhat slow for the content creation tasks I do a lot, and the Intel graphics are the major achilles heel (Pentium N3540 2.16ghz, upgraded to 8GB RAM). I need to update the video drivers to something current to see if it makes much of a difference. Anyways, a real game changer would be a super compact 2-n-1 with dedicated video and support for a good amount of RAM. As long as it had some type of standard expansion area for the SSD (M.2, etc), I don't care what size drive it came with.
 
I love my netbook.
It's an Asus with some flavor of Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM, and a touchscreen. I did surgery and replaced the HDD with an SSD and did a clean install of Win10-64 on it.
It actually runs great, but I'm also realistic with my expectations (no, it doesn't play Doom...)

I end up using it a lot on airplanes - writing/editing reports, email, doing Excel, and making PowerPoint Presentations. I find the full keyboard and touchpad mouse to be invaluable. I also have a micro-wireless mouse that I'll sometimes use along with it.

So I don't know - it depends on the person. I hate typing on my tablet, so for me my netbook has it's place along side my tablet. But to each his own.

P.S. - I typically carry my tablet in my netbook case alongside each other.
Flame away...
 
My Aspire One was a dog no matter what I did to it. Maxed out the RAM and installed an SSD but that Atom was awful.

Maybe now with better low power CPU's it could work?
 
I love my netbook.
It's an Asus with some flavor of Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM, and a touchscreen. I did surgery and replaced the HDD with an SSD and did a clean install of Win10-64 on it.
It actually runs great, but I'm also realistic with my expectations (no, it doesn't play Doom...)

I end up using it a lot on airplanes - writing/editing reports, email, doing Excel, and making PowerPoint Presentations. I find the full keyboard and touchpad mouse to be invaluable. I also have a micro-wireless mouse that I'll sometimes use along with it.

So I don't know - it depends on the person. I hate typing on my tablet, so for me my netbook has it's place along side my tablet. But to each his own.

P.S. - I typically carry my tablet in my netbook case alongside each other.
Flame away...

Why would we flame you? You are using a netbook. Sounds like punishment enough to me.
 
My Aspire One was a dog no matter what I did to it. Maxed out the RAM and installed an SSD but that Atom was awful.

Maybe now with better low power CPU's it could work?

Atoms starting with Bay Trail are MUCH better than prior. Out of order execution made a big difference. I have a Surface 3, Cherry Trail x7-z8700 and the little sucker is far from fast but not slow either. eMMC storage is the bigger bottle neck. It's a great little device to carry around when you need more than a touch only tablet and the ability to run desktop apps. Office runs great, 1080p video performance is solid, web browsing even with a lot of tabs runs well due to 4GB of RAM.

The big thing holding back these devices now is cheap eMMC storage. I don't know what's on the horizon as an upgrade from eMMC but that could for this class of device by once and for all making them run well without any big bottlenecks.
 
My Aspire One was a dog no matter what I did to it. Maxed out the RAM and installed an SSD but that Atom was awful.

Maybe now with better low power CPU's it could work?

Yeah, netbooks were underpowered from the get-go...only if they increase the performance significantly would I be interested. I do like the form factor for travelling.
 
You can pickup a 2nd hand HP Stream for around $100. It's basically a modern netbook.

DO NOT run windows 10 on it however, load times are horrible, updates don't complete, etc as it only has 32gb of solid state storage. You can add an additional 128gb via a micro usb drive for $30

If you have access to Windows 7 Starter then it's a beautiful little device you can take with you and not worry about much.
 
You can pickup a 2nd hand HP Stream for around $100. It's basically a modern netbook.

DO NOT run windows 10 on it however, load times are horrible, updates don't complete, etc as it only has 32gb of solid state storage. You can add an additional 128gb via a micro usb drive for $30

If you have access to Windows 7 Starter then it's a beautiful little device you can take with you and not worry about much.

Windows 10 will run fine on this class of device with 32GB of eMMC storage with 2 GB of RAM or better. I just setup one for by brother-in-law, a Lenovo Ideapad 100S, 2GB RAM/32GB eMMC, got it fully updated, installed Office 2016 Pro on it and it still had about 15 GB free on it. Yes, the eMMC will chug with large write operations but for the money it will get the job done for light to medium productivity.
 
future is a netbook and cloud computing.

future can mean 3 years or 20 years.
 
I find the full keyboard and touchpad mouse to be invaluable.
Flame away...

I'm curious what brand it is? One the biggest issues I saw with a lot of netbooks was they had cramped keyboards and an absolute trash touch pad on them. The small screen size simply doesn't leave enough room for an actual full sized keyboard. I'm looking at some stuff right now and the type cover for a SP4 is about 1 1/2" wider than an old Asus Eee PC netbook, and it's very obvious looking at the two which one has more room. Considering the type cover itself costs more than a netbook, it obviously should be better. The SP4 type cover is in fact as wide as my desktop keyboard for the main keys, so there won't be a compromise like there is on a netbook.



I had wiped all traces of atom out of my head, and unfortunately it's coming back looking at this thread. I forgot that the N450 existed and that it's a single core 1.66ghz with 512KB cache and can only support one memory slot. :barf:

For reference this came out the same year:

Intel® Core™ i7-980X Processor Extreme Edition Q1'10 3.60 GHz 12 MB 6 core.
 
I had one of the first netbooks on the market. An Asus EeePC. That thing was horrible to use. Single core, piece of crap Atom, tiny screen, slow hdd, not much ram. It was ridiculous to use for anything. I couldn't even properly surf the web. I didn't bother going back to them, not even when dual core Atoms and such came out.

Fast forward to today, I've got a Surface 3 to play with. It works exceptionally well for minor everyday tasks. It hiccups sometimes on high bitrate 1080p videos, but overall works well. Take off some of the amenities and I can see being able to cram that all into a cheap netbook and get the price to $200-ish.
 
Netbooks have no place in today's market and MS has given up trying to cater to them.

Honestly if you needed a small machine to do daily tasks most have something to suit their needs or there is already a cheap option available.
 
Netbooks have no place in today's market and MS has given up trying to cater to them.

Honestly if you needed a small machine to do daily tasks most have something to suit their needs or there is already a cheap option available.

There's always gaps. I want a 10" laptop for $200 or less, has a Windows OS, that doesn't require internet, to work on word documents, listen to music, and play some videos. There is literally nothing that fits that.

MS still trying to cater to that market, but with a tablet, not a netbook. So price is higher, while spec wise, it's essentially a netbook. That's what the Surface 3 is essentially.
 
There's always gaps. I want a 10" laptop for $200 or less, has a Windows OS, that doesn't require internet, to work on word documents, listen to music, and play some videos. There is literally nothing that fits that.

MS still trying to cater to that market, but with a tablet, not a netbook. So price is higher, while spec wise, it's essentially a netbook. That's what the Surface 3 is essentially.
If the demand arises for a 10" device such as this then I can see them coming back but I don't see it as there is too much competition and I think MS gave up trying to continue such devices.
 
If the demand arises for a 10" device such as this then I can see them coming back but I don't see it as there is too much competition and I think MS gave up trying to continue such devices.

I feel the same. I can definitely see them making a good product today to fit the category, but I don't see much demand for it. So, doubt any companies will bother trying to make a product. Why I just spent the money on a more expensive Surface 3.
 
There are a number of 10" screen 2 in 1 devices on the market, essentially the evolution of the netbook that run in $200 price range.
 
i used my old netbook a lot for house calls for family friends etc to fix their network or computer. Was easier than the 17" gaming laptop to drag around and wasn't as worried about it getting screwed up.
 
There are a number of 10" screen 2 in 1 devices on the market, essentially the evolution of the netbook that run in $200 price range.

Sure a decent one is $300+. Take out some memory and you'll see them at $250. That or some no name brand at $200 or less with crap specs. I just think it'd be better to take away the convertible-ness and use that money on more memory, more storage, or slightly faster processor. I don't see much changes on that, cause convertible or tablets seem to be the current hotness.
 
Sure a decent one is $300+. Take out some memory and you'll see them at $250. That or some no name brand at $200 or less with crap specs. I just think it'd be better to take away the convertible-ness and use that money on more memory, more storage, or slightly faster processor. I don't see much changes on that, cause convertible or tablets seem to be the current hotness.

There are a number of 10" 2 in 1 Windows devices at around $200, generally Cherry Trail Atom, 2 GB RAM/32 GB eMMC and 1280x800 IPS screens like this one: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-sw...mory-black-steel-gray/5591833.p?skuId=5591833. These are a hell of a lol better than classic netbooks performance wise and the IPS screens are a good improvement as well.

Not speed demons but great for a small, cheap, lightweight device that can run Office and do other light to medium productivity tasks.
 
There are a number of 10" 2 in 1 Windows devices at around $200, generally Cherry Trail Atom, 2 GB RAM/32 GB eMMC and 1280x800 IPS screens like this one: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-sw...mory-black-steel-gray/5591833.p?skuId=5591833. These are a hell of a lol better than classic netbooks performance wise and the IPS screens are a good improvement as well.

Not speed demons but great for a small, cheap, lightweight device that can run Office and do other light to medium productivity tasks.

They are definitely way better than the original netbooks, but listing an Acer doesn't help. Not sure how many Acer products you've owned, but they generally work right up untli warranty runs out. Sometimes, they don't make it that far. My last Acer product was a W700 tablet, it's got bubbles in the screen. Friend bought an Acer Gsync monitor, it lasted all of 2 months. I've also owned an Acer monitor and Acer android tablet before. They broke like a month after warranty. Acer wants to become a quality brand, yet build cheap junk.
 
Friend bought an Acer Gsync monitor, it lasted all of 2 months.
Thanks for making me feel better about deciding to skip Gsync due to price and build concerns. I ended up getting a Dell non-gsync IPS instead, can't complain about a thing, just have to keep the framerates at 60fps!
 
Thanks for making me feel better about deciding to skip Gsync due to price and build concerns. I ended up getting a Dell non-gsync IPS instead, can't complain about a thing, just have to keep the framerates at 60fps!

I couldn't justify getting a Gsync monitor at all, since I never see screen tearing. That or I've simply never noticed it. I tend to set my games to always get well above 60 fps, cause I know there will come times when it'll dip below and I don't want it to get anywhere near 30 fps.
 
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