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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop. They're netbooks, but far too often they weren't powerful enough to even run a modern browser with the weight of the OS hanging off of it.

A Chromebook is really the only true netbook that's ever existed.

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That doesn't explain why companies killed netbooks though. A lot of the low-end full sized laptops are now running netbook-class hardware at netbook-level prices, with all the performance issues that goes along with it. You just can't get anything smaller than 15" anymore without either shelling out for an Utrabook or Macbook or buying a Chromebook.

To be fair, OEMs didn't kill netbooks. Microsoft and Intel did - by stopping the OS and processor deals that made netbooks possible in the first place.

This is pretty much why I haven't bought a new laptop in 4ish years.

I disagree; I see two problems with netbooks:

1. People were expecting a laptop; they are not; however, they're decent computers (don't do video, don't run VMs ... :), and portability and price are really nice.

2. Laptops got cheaper, and netbooks didn't ; when the first netbooks came out, they were less than half the price of the cheapest laptops; now, they're about the same price :(

There's a lower bound price where it's just not worth making and selling a computer of that price point because your per-unit price won't justify the inventory costs, design effort, risk and support costs. Right now, it seems like that price is ~$350 for PCs and $250 for Chromebooks. That may be the real innovation of ChromeOS: Windows usability without Windows licensing fees, plus lower support costs. Plus, you don't have to worry as much about inventory becoming obsolete, because the OS will update as soon as they connect anyway.

> The problem with netbooks is that they were full desktop software running on hardware that was far, far short of a full desktop.

I didn't have a problem with my Acer netbook. It's slow, but not horribly slow. The main laggard factor is the 1gb RAM, which is too little for a Windows 7 install.

However, I had to remove all the crapware first. If they didn't ship with those installed, they wouldn't make money from all those juicy contracts.

Same setup here. While I got a newer laptop a year ago, when I really need mobility, the Acer netbook is the first to go into my backpack. It runs Ubuntu, Unity, Emacs and my choice of Django/Flask/App Engine stacks. Mine has 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and I'm considering giving it a small SSD drive. The slow disk seems to be the worst performance bottleneck.

Fellow netbook user, Thinkpad x120e, 6 gigabytes of RAM and a recent 256 gigabyte SSD (recommended!) make for a plenty capable machine. It used to last 6 hours, but could do with a new battery. And USB3 ports etc. but it generally flies.

Someone further down mentioned a beer-induced $800 repair on a MBA. I dropped half of mine in a sink of water (don't ask) and it works perfectly. Tested the 'splash proof' keyboard quite thoroughly.

Definitely a market for lower-end sub-$500 machines that are actually capable of running anything.

See, when I said that the Chromebook is the only true netbook that has ever existed, I meant that the term "netbook" implies that the device is configured to prioritize the use of a web browser over that of native apps. This is assuming that web applications offload their processing needs to a remote server, so the hardware can be lower power. That's where the "net" in netbook seems to come from.

In the sense of a true netbook-as-a-thin-client, the Chromebook is the only competitor in this market. What you have with 6GB of RAM and a large hard drive is a small form factor laptop. I agree that there's a market for lower-end cheap laptops. I disagree with calling them netbooks, because then you get confused posts with people asking what the point of a netbook is. The Chromebook is the point of a netbook.

I did pick up on that, but struggle to believe you genuinely believe that the term "netbook" originated from a concept of the browser-only system. I suspect you might be mangling the semantics to fit a product you like. The most likely origin of the term for me is the mass-media, recommending the lighter units for web-browsing as that's all they were capable of. This all before pads and tabs hit the big-time. Or, specifically not manufacturers intending to build browser-only systems.

Cue a few years of Moore's Law, and the net effect of a market for affordable yet usable portable machines produces capable, upgradeable machines. And tablets. Cue content producer/consumer distinction etc.

I was taking the term to the most extreme literal meaning, yes. Because to me, if a netbook is not designed almost exclusively for web-apps, it's not a netbook. It's an ultra-portable laptop, a category that has been around a lot longer than the EeePC.

> In the sense of a true netbook-as-a-thin-client, the Chromebook is the only competitor in this market.

Some Sun partners tried. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray

and

http://www.aimtec.co.uk/sun-ray-notebooks.php

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