I remember dad got one of those in 2010 or so on a business trip to video call us. He's like 6'4 and 250lb, looked like Mr. Incredible working at his computer lol.

They didn't die off, they just evolved into Chromebooks.

I’d argue that Netbooks still live on today, just under a different name: “Chromebook”. While Chromebooks have gotten better, more flexible and powerful in recent years, they certainly started off as glorified netbooks - low spec, cheap, small form factor laptops that basically required an internet connection to do anything half-useful.

I finished my entire Comp Sci degree on my netbook. Little thing did great once I replaced the stripped down Windows with a lightweight Linux distro.

Man I sold truck loads of these things. And ONLY really to two types of people students and boomers. They were cheap, small and light and they handled word processing no worries so students loved them. This was also right around the time that boomers started retiring on mass and wanted to travel the world. These tiny laptops were lightweight and small so they fit in luggage easily, didn't tip you over your weight limit and were perfectly suited for checking emails, booking tours/motels/hotels etc and for video calling friends and family while you traveled around. But smart phones and tablets replaced them.

Video disliked for not flying dankpods back out just to say “eee pc”

I still have one and use it actively. I regret their passing as they were genuine x86 PCs capable of all a PC could do, albeit slowly. No jumping through hoops with ARM, no sandbox of Android, just an honest-to-god PC, cheap and small.

chromebooks are effectifly a brandification and slight scale up of netbooks.

I actually still have an EeePC 701 4g surf sitting in my drawer, that thing is still alive and in a kinda good condition despite getting abused by young me back then.

Bigger smartphone + Tablet + More portable 11inch-14inch laptops = the death of netbooks.

Back in 2010 when I had an ISP call center job for a year, I remember customers calling in with these Windows CE based laptops they picked up at CVS. I *hated* those awful things. Never handled WPA quite right and in the end I had to inform customers that while we could use WEP, it was advised against. Of course the customers insisted on WEP.

I bought a new Netbook just a couple of weeks ago. Why? because we needed a really small form-factor windows PC for office work on locations without internet. It's just is to run Office on location and not to be the main machine and it works perfectly for that task. Funny thing is, when I bought it the sales man questioned me before processing payment to make sure I knew what I was buying.

I had an Acer Aspire One that was perfect for college after I upgraded the ram. It worked fine for my college work and in between classes, I was able to emulate games up to the PS1 era. It's such a convenient form factor that even with the battery not being able to hold a charge, I still drop it into my bag whenever I need to travel so I have a laptop on hand if I ever need it for anything.

Yeah, I miss my HP Mini. I had one towards the end of my law degree. I needed a word processor to type out papers, something that could log on to the college wifi so I could do my research (JSTOR and LexisNexis), and save ripped DVDs to to watch later. It was in a backpack that got stolen while I was on vacation, along with my PSP and my iPod. It was the sum total of my digital footprint back then. Gosh, that loss still hurts!

I still have two working Acer Aspire Ones. My then-girlfriend-now-wife and I used them to take notes in class when we were studying law. It was the perfect device for watching class and taking notes. I was able to type everything the teacher said, plus the blackboard, plus pay attention to him (I can basically type without thinking about it). They were light, small, smaller than some books I had to carry at the time, and the battery lasted over four hours, enough for a day of classes. Outside the classroom, I don't have much use for them anymore due to the small screen. Working as a lawyer nowadays I usually have 2 or 3 screens to do my work.

My little netbook did its job well for years, it only died last year...

Wrote my masters thesis on a 7" Eee PC - converted him into a touchscreen linux box after. I miss that little guy 😢

Netbooks disappeared from the market Chromebook: Am I a joke to you

I remember the first EeePC quite fondly. Actually the only product that I ever waited in front of a store for when it launched. An exercise in uselessness as it turned out, but the look on the store clerks face was still priceless. The guy couldn't believe that somebody actually wanted to buy that thing. However, I was in college back then and bound for an international conference overseas. Suffice it to say, a week later I was more than happy not having to carry around almost 4kg of laptop in the Mexican sun day in and day out. Worth every penny, and not even much of them. 😅

I loved my EeePC 1000H! I got it in 2008 for about £300. It was one of the bigger 10" ones, ran Windows and did everything I needed it to. Battery life was immense for those days too - I could pretty much get a full day on it (my previous laptop lasted about 2 hours with a P4 inside). Technology always moves on and netbooks are a fondly remembered part of my tech history. They weren't high-powered, but you have to remember that at that time, few people had as convenient a way to get online away from home. I didn't have a phone that could email or get online (aside from WAP websites, which were basically glorified Ceefax) and I had a desktop for heavy lifting. Netbooks came at the right time for me.

I had an Acer Aspire One ZG5 in college, it was my main computer. All I could afford. Put Windows XP on it and did all my work and my art on it. Even ran Secondlife. It still works as a makeshift security camera DVR. Very power efficient and does what it needs to do.

If you can believe it, there are still netbooks being produced as recently as 2023! The HP Stream 11 is an example: it was $150, ran Windows 10, and had 32 GB of storage, making it effectively useless as a computer because of how little space was left for the user... many programs didn't even function due to the lack of storage space. For a while, Gateway also made some.

I loved my eeePC 700 in college. Never had to fight for an open machine at the computer lab to write last-minute essays right before class

The Dell Mini 1011 was the *perfect* Hackintosh or, as I called it, "Hackintot." The form factor was ideal for grad school notetaking, the minimal size and heft meant it fit great in a backpack, and the battery life was phenomenal, especially as you could buy hot-swappable spares. The form factor isn't completely dead, btw. Over a decade later, I'm now seriously considering getting a GPD Win Max if I ever need another personal laptop.

I still have my Toshiba netbook from 2007. Throw it on every now and then (in offline mode) just to remember how slow everything was back then.

Still have my EeePC in a drawer. Not usable for much today, but 10 years ago it was an excellent machine for carrying around campus, downloading assignments, typing up papers on the go etc. Decent laptops at the time were back-breakingly heavy, so these were ideal as a light machine for use on the go that was also cheap enough that you could buy one in addition to your primary machine.

I has a Netbook in 2010, loved the thing. Small, light, and perfect for taking to school and work.

My father bought one for me when I was like 13yrs old. I used it a ton for writing stories and texts for school on the go. It was lightweight, compact and did exactly what it was designed for. Lightweight on the go work It was too slow for fluent internet browsing, too slow for gaming, but that's not the point Windows 7, 1gb of ddr3(not upgradable), intel atom(no hyperthreading single core) and maybe 2-3hrs of battery life were the downfall

1:59 I guess they have now been overtaken with crappy Chromebook’s or tablets

Framework did it in the study with the monkey wrench. My Acer aspire one netbook served me well enough once I maxed the ram and swapped the hdd with a ssd. I'd love to find a eeepc for portable XP retro gaming

I still have my netbook somewhere! I have been meaning to repurpose it into a portable automotive diagnostic machine.

I loved my MSI Wind back in college. Put an extended battery on it and was the first laptop I had where I didn't need to carry a power brick. Maybe with the pivot to ARM desktop computing we could see similar devices make a comeback.

I bought an EeePC 1005 in 2009 because I couldn't afford a laptop to replace my previous one. I used it for 2 years, it was kind of practical but I abandoned it when the HDD broke due to a bad fall (and got a corp laptop at the same time). A 9-10" EeePC today with borderless screen and nvme storage and an intel n95 or equivalent would be a really nice device if under 1lb :D

i have never been able to use my net book, the harddrive was 32 gb and windows took up 28 of those gb. but it did lead me down a road of learning about computers.

I was at university in that era. Many teachers had one, but the students all had traditional laptops. The main reason is that that was Computer Science and a netbook wouldn't be powerful enough to do what we needed to do

When I was riding the bus to and from work, my PC Eeee 1000HE was the perfect size. Performance was OK for the text and light programming I used it for. It still has great battery life. I check it every 5 or 6 weeks, battery life is better than my HP 15CL notebook.

I need to get hold of an old Eee PC again to use as a little Linux terminal. Chromebooks are like the evolution of netbooks.

I rescued a Dell Latitude 2110 from one of my last jobs to experiment with finding the right Linux distro to recycle it

I've still got 2 of those, upgraded with old 120gb Samsung PRO SSD and Windows 7 Starter, I love them, just right for my use cases. Especially the batteries last more than a month for me.

I still remember trying to pick between an Eee PC, Acer Aspire One, and MSI Wind for my college laptop. I loved that Wind so much. I wrote so many papers on it that it was difficult to go back to full sized keyboards. I think it was also the first computer I installed my own upgrades for.

I remember running MacOS on an EEE PC! Good times

I had an Eee PC. One of the ones that came with a cutdown version Windows Vista(?) which I recall downgrading to XP, and it then ran flawlessly. Loved that little guy. Used to take him to and from University for coursework, as well as internet, media/anime and video games (for some reason I very specifically remember playing Cave Story on it) in a way I decidedly do not with my smartphone. I think that sort of experience with a portable device has been missing since my Eee PC died: Even with an ultralight HP Elitebook (+ a laptop pocket in my backpack to fit it) a 14" laptop is still too big/heavy/cumbersome to jam in my bag and head out the house anywhere with, and perhaps due to having used a netbook I never got used to smartphones for being too locked down (also that touchscreens are awful/Blackberries aren't around anymore). There are certainly small/er PC models available today, like the HP Dragonfly- which I genuinely considered buying just to shave off that extra +1" vs my Elitebook, but perhaps I should be looking at one of those GPD mini laptops instead and/or a Samsung Fold (and then try to find a touchpad/keyboard combo that doesn't suck).

I have a Toshiba netbook from 2011 that still works to this day, what really impresses me every time I take it out to test it is that the battery still lasts just about the same time it did back in the day, is like the opposite of every other electronic device I ever owned. Also that thing has the most comfortable small keyboard I ever used, it's genuinely great for typing.

I remember when these things failed and then within 2 years we started seeing schools buying Chromebooks which are just netbooks but running a purpose built operating system

My Asus eeePC was great for taking to classes at university. Once I ditched Win and threw Linux on there, that is. It's so laughably CPU-bound in Windows that throwing an SSD in it gave no load time boosts over its original HDD.

I used to have an EEE Pc, which was wonderful for the time. Worked wonderful for wardriving among normal tasks as well.

I remember wanting a netbook SO bad. The idea of having a full blown computer in such a small form factor was awesome to me. Plus there were some cool hackintosh systems you could make, but boy did they all feel so plasticy and cheap. The whole era of smaller everything with phones, computers, etc. was fun but hilariously non-ergonomic.

I got this one I love, its 10 inch display is 1080p, looks so crisp, even with that 1GB of RAM, tethered it to my phone for both power and internet on long train rides, still works like a charm for the regular stuff.

Basically they were rubbish! End of story !

watching this on my 11 in Lenovo and i love it for travel. I do remember my blue gateway netbook was a beast back in the day also lol

Netbooks had 2 major selling points: price and portability. In terms of price, they made regular laptops cheaper, we finally started seeing regular laptops under $1000 or even under $800, so the price advantage shirked. In terms of portability, in 2008 Apple came with its MacBook air and Lenovo with its equally thin and light Thinkpad X300, both very expensive, but they started the "ultrabook" trend, and prices of MacBook Air and Windows ultrabooks went down to little more than $1000 in the early 2010s, so more and more people who wanted portability more than a very low price adopted the ultrabook trend.

I still have one of these. An Acer Aspire One with Atom N270, 2gb ddr2, Intel GMA 950, 160gb hdd. The cpu's so underpowered that installing a SSD didn't make it noticeably faster.

Couldn‘t the 2015-2017 MacBooks (non-Pro/Air) be considered as a netbook because of their small size and light weight and m5 processors?

Damn, the netbook days were dark times. My mom was still using one a few years ago and it was painfully slow. She's now using a notebook we gifted her which is faster, has more storage, is quieter, thinner and lighter.

I once saved up for an Aspire One 11.6 with an AMD C-60 processor as my first computer I could call my own. Holy cow that thing was miserable. It once took 15 minutes to print a single page! Taught me a lot about the importance of value though - sometimes paying a little bit more gets you a much better end product.

I worked in a computer store at the time. These things were so slow, they made my job even more of a pain. Had to reset each laptop and netbook every morning, since customers the day before would've essentially destroyed the OS somehow.

I had an EeePC 900 running Xantos Linux. First I used to watch series on the way back from off-site work or on longer train trips, then I started experiment with different operating systems. I started to learn writing scripts to reinstall drivers after each install, I was too lazy to do everything manually. Once I played Starcraft for 3.5 hours on battery and it still had juice when I turned it off. Had no bad experience.

I had a netbook to take me through all school :) I still use it sometimes to ssh to other machines

The first laptop in my family was a Toshiba Mini NB205-N210 netbook in 2009. After it quit working, my parents gave it to us kids to use as a pretend computer. Then, in 2022, my dad managed to get it up and running again. The battery might not work anymore and the bezels might be falling off, but it still works to this day.

I ordered a brand new one that’s like a netbook coming soon, the MNT Pocket Reform. Totally open source project and I can even install a cell modem too, had a mechanical keyboard and trackball mouse too.

For myself and basically everybody else I knew in university, we didn't buy netbooks because of the size. They were so small that typing on them all day was highly uncomfortable. They tended to have a smaller, condensed keyboard that felt cramped.

I think the conclusion ist wrong. They never vanished, they just got rebranded to Chromebock.

That EEE PC was my oldest niece's first computer. I got it for her 7th birthday and my brother was probably the happiest about it, as it meant his laptop was back to just being "dad's computer."

My netbook was a godsend in college (I commuted). It was a higher-end Asus N10Jh with an Atom N280 and optional discrete GPU Geforce 105M that could be switched off to save power (from about 4h of normal use on battery). I can't wait to get one of them pocketable clamshell PCs. Man, I wish they also did SIM and camera, I'd rather have a true all-in-one device...

The netbook died because even when brand new they were so underperforming as to be nearly unusable. Most could not accept alternate operating systems such as linux to try and get them useable.

I still have my little red EeePc 1005peb. That's the computer that got me through college it had a ridiculous like 12 hour battery, and was really easy to haul around. It was the one I really learned about computers on. Ran my first VMs, learned some java, learned how to tweak windows 7, dual booted my first Linux distros, first machine I did hardware upgrades to. I love that thing. Sometimes I watch those PCBway commercials and fantasize about putting a modern SBC with a custom adapter board, and a modern OLED in it.

I DESPERATELY want to be able to fill the shell of my Acer Aspire ONE ZG5 (the one with the space between the monitor and keyboard parts you could put your fingers through) with something modern. I absolutely love that form factor.

Had one of those netbook successor back in 2016 (acer one with intel celeron). Had a blast with those thing when i had business trip since it was so small and has nice battery hour. Then at the end of the year i upgrade the ram to 6 gb and install ssd, then give it to my cousin. He still use it at 2024 with linux, the battery indeed need replacement but for light office it still work.

I owned a few netbooks. They were super handy. My first one was actually pretty bad, but I managed to fix one of its biggest issues with an add-on card that handled video processing and made videos on KZfaq play better. That was an interesting time.

I think I had a Dell netbook for the shortest time when my main laptop was going through some technical troubles at the time (translation: "it was six years old and frequently failing"), so a close friend of mine in the US bought and shipped me a cheap one that I could use to connect to our weekly D&D games. Then when I got a new computer, and _his_ laptop was starting to fail, I did the only decent thing and sent him back the netbook until he got back on his own feet. It wasn't a powerful machine, but it was a friendship solidifier for sure.

I actually had two, one from Acer on which I installed WinXP and a few years later a Lenovo S100 that came with Win7, my then girlfriend gave it to me when my main laptop bit the dust, it carried me through a three year period connected to a 17 inch monitor. I still have it somewhere, actually.

I had one of these on Windows XP in 2009-2010 - my parents bought it to me for university. Before I had pretty nice Toshiba laptop with Windows 8 that could ran Fallout 3 and CoD2, but I had to give it to my sister. What was really nice about my netbook (and it was only one nice thing) - it had built in WiMax module with pretty good prepaid plan that worked great in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Oh, and I got to run Max Payne 1 (obviously) and even 2 on stable 60 fps on it. You cannot imagine what a relief was it when I saved some money and bought a gaming PC for BF3 and Skyrim.

My Acer Aspire One is 15 years old and it still works fine. It needed and after market battery replacement (which sticks out more than the back of a Renault Megane), a new power cord, new HDD and a 2GB RAM swap, but everything else is original (screen, keyboard, motherboard, ports, etc.). If you don't abuse your machines, they WILL last. The only portable computers I've had since 2001 that failed mechanically were PDAs.

My first laptop was a netbook. I got it around the time that they first iPad came out. I found it to be a way more versatile device for getting work done than an iPad which actually cost more and was really just a big iPod, with no multitasking or proper file management system.

can't believe you didn't even mention OLPC at all. For many of us, broke college students in Eastern part of the world. OLPC was the first mention of "mini notebook" that made us think, "huh, if only I can get something that small just to do office work." that lead to Asus EEE PC

The Chromebook is the modern day netbook and you can do a lot more with one these days

I had an Asus 2 in 1 tablet thingy that ran windows back then, it was like a hybrid between a netbook (which is what it as marketed as) and a tablet, since the keyboard was absolutely rock solid by 2012 standards - pretty much the same as a mid tier laptop. That thing was freaking awesome.

I had an Acer EeePC 1025C, one of the fastest of them. Modded it to use 4 GB of memory, upgraded the HDD to an Samsung EVO 740 128 GB, that was at the time almost as expensive as the netbook it self, running Debian 32-bit and had a spare 6-8 hour battery. Only have to shutdown replace battery and up and running again. I used it untill 2022, when it was replaced by the Microsoft Laptop Go 1st gen at the outlet. It's so sad they don't produce them anymore...

AAAAA I LITERALLY JUST COMPLAINED ABOUT THIS TO MY FRIENDS I need a tiny laptop with not that much power so I can do some coding on the go, but I couldn't find any laptop that was either small enough or modern enough to appeal to me

yeah netbooks were def underpowered but i really miss that smaller form factor! so many laptops these days are 13-17+ inches, often deprioritizing portability over power and features. its cool to see brands like gpd (mainly known for handheld pc gaming devices) making smaller laptops powerful enough for more demanding workflows and current gen games. check out their win max 2 and win mini for examples. i wish more mainstream brands would tackle the netbook-esque form factor niche (samsung, asus, hp etc) in the current era.

macbook air lineup had a major role in popularizing what we know as ultrabooks today. steve jobs had a famous quote at ipad launch: “The problem is, netbooks aren't better at ANYTHING”

I loved my dell mini9 netbook. I ran xp and later windows 7 perfectly well. But windows 10 was completely crippled performance wise. Now it runs as an emergency console running Lubuntu, a cutdown Ubuntu distribution

Went from a Windows XP desktop to a windows 7 netbook, 12FPS on Minecraft was my normal :D

i really liked my 10" winxp eee pc. bought it when i sold my old laptop and was waiting for my new one (took a month or 2) in 2009 and used it for different things like printing tickets till around 2018. sometimes i think about buying a tablet nowadays and then i'm basically looking for a netbook with removable screen. the keyboard is fine for typing, way better than using a display and it also protects the screen when put in a bag but those kinda devices seem rare today :-/

I imagine a wide chunk of the 20% market share those netbooks had were schools that bought for a 1000% mark-up

I still miss my hand-me-down netbook I tried using for grad school. Went two weeks before just buying a new laptop

My mom's old Eee PC eventually wasn't enough for her work, so she ended up passing it along to a group of car tuners who favored the little solid state computers for their speed, durability, and compatibility with their tuning software

The problem was the concept of what a netbook was supposed to be became abandoned. Things like the original EEEPC were both cheap and tiny, but excelled in being an actual real little laptop that could run Windows well enough and had a much better battery life than a full size laptop. It even predated the mass roll out of Atom CPUs and ran an underclocked Celeron giving it more horsepower than many netbooks that came later. And 'could run Windows' meant XP which was becoming increasingly dated. Within 2 years netbooks became so big that they were barely any smaller than some 'real' laptops, prices for them made them barely any cheaper, but they also continued to be powered by weak Atom chips and had inadequate storage and RAM for newer versions of Windows. It's a shame because I got so much productivity out of my 1st gen EEEPC and the EEE901 that replaced it. Nothing like that really exists now.

I had one from LG during my college years from 2011 to 2016. The size was great, the battery lasted the whole day, the keyboard was the perfect size for me and I'll never be as fast typing anymore on my other machines. And I did pretty much anything on it, besides classes I watched heavy videos, played simple games and used the internet on the spare time. I almost bought one from Chuwi the other day because I missed it.

My first laptop was a netbook (norhtec gecko, the one with the five inch screen and internal battery). I did my programming on a math notebook during the two hour commute to work. Getting a cheap laptop that just has to be windows compatible so it can run company softtware worked for me.

I was very happy with my windows netbook. Leading to the end of netbooks was: -1 The netbooks quickly got replaced with ulta netbooks (ultrabooks). They cost as much as a full laptop but didn't do everything a computer should. -2 Worth mentioning the a lighter version of windows is still a resource pig and had a hard time running, unless you were tech'e enough to really optimize it.

My oldest sister had a pink ASUS Eee netbook during her college years. She only bought it because it was smol & pink; she bought it for its form over its function.

I remember the computer shop I worked in at the time selling them and hardly any of them sold.

Aren't Chromebooks and Tablets with keyboard covers basically just the same idea but evolved?

My 2009 Acer Aspire One refuses to die. and the battery still works and holds it for 3-4 hours. It used to do 12 hours.

I remember having a handfull of these in my 7th grade social studies class so we could take turns researching stuff. I remember they all had Atom professors, Windows, and were almost unusable. None of us had ever used anything other than a full-sized keyboard so we took forever to type anything

I had a Acer netbook years ago, bought it with money I was getting from computer repair stuff I was doing. It kept going from about 2011 to 2016 when its chipset starts getting funky. While it was "weak", it was powerful enough to play Minecraft at 20 FPS, sims 1, Call of Duty 1, and SimCity 4. it provided years of entertainment for me.

Still got my EeePC 1005HA in a shelf somewhere. It was extremely cheap, ran well enough with Windows and was easy to lug around to school. Was able to play some simple or retro games as well.

I still have my Acer Aspire One, it's running Windows XP and I even skinned it. I mostly keep it near the router bridge for the rare time I need to log into it, it's only accessible via directly plugging into it.

got a netbook still, its in pieces but still boots up and runs, only takes 100 years to load up chrome now (its 11 years old)