New Blog 1: Best Netbook

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Best Netbook

Within the next few years, when you say "netbook" to someone, they will wonder what you are talking about. The term is nearly gone from the lexicon already. In fact, I've almost forgotten it myself.Although popular for about three years, the netbook was a failed experiment as far as I am concerned. I am stunned that it was as popular as it was.Let's review.The netbook was a diminutive notebook epitomized by the Asus Eee PC 700. Everything else seemed to be a variation on the Asus theme. This unit had a 7-inch screen, ran Windows, and weighed about two pounds. It was kind of a clunker when compared with devices in the Toshiba Portege R-series, which were of similar weight with a bigger screen and a lot more power. The Toshibas also cost three or four times as much.The point is that the concept was nothing new. What was new was the idea of cheapening the thing so much that it actually had some odd appeal as a disposable toy or a cute piece of crap.The machines began to appear in 2007, and by 2009, the junky aspect began to emerge. I was never a true believer in this sort of machine as it seemed too small to be practical. Toshiba first tried to invent the genre back in the mid-1990s when it produced a laughable machine called the Libretto, which I thought was the end of the line for these sorts of machine. It might be traced back to the Poqet and the Atari Portfolio of the 1980s. I need to make sure to mention the Gateway Handbook within this category. All predate the Libretto and the netbooks.