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A Look Back At the World's First Netbook
Not-A-Microsoft-Fan writes with this excerpt from The Coffee Desk:
"Netbooks are making huge waves within the hardware and software industries today, but not many would believe that the whole Netbook craze actually started back around 1996 with the Toshiba Libretto 70CT. Termed technically as a subnotebook because of its small dimensions, the computer is the first that fits all of the qualifications of being what we would term a netbook today, due in part to its built-in Infrared and PCMCIA hardware, and its (albeit early) web browsing software. The hardware includes the two (potentially) wireless PCMCIA and infrared network connections, Windows 95 OSR 2 with Internet Explorer 2.0, a whole 16MB of RAM and a 120Mhz Intel Pentium processor (we're flying now!)."
... since it was expensive as hell. Small notebooks have existed for a long time. The novelty of the Asus EEEPC was that it was cheap (and flimsy): it demonstrated that there was an untapped market for this kind of computers.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Those Sinclair machines of the eighties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Z88
Does not fold, but is small light and battery powered. Probably more PDA like though.
Determining when "Netbooks" arrived completely depends on your definition of what a Netbook is. In my definition, the Libbreto was/is not a "Netbook". Everyone will argue over what makes something a "Netbook" or not. I prefer to base it on concepts and specs from what was FIRST called a Netbook (which were the original Asus EEE's):
1) Physically small sub-notebook
2) Modest processor (compared to low-end main-line)
3) Smaller/lower res screen (smaller than typical sub-notebooks)
4) Solid state hard drive (Flash-based, rugged, lower power)
5) Runs Linux (no additional OS cost, better performance)
6) Lower costs (compared to low-end main-line)
7) Excellent battery life (compared to low-end main-line)
Those are the 7 things that opened the market and created the concept of the "Netbook". I have been running many small, sub-notebooks for well over a decade (Sony, Dell, etc), yet, none of them combined the above elements. They were generally MUCH MORE expensive than other notebooks, had hard drives, forced MS Windows bundled, and mediocre battery life.
Take a Netbook, add more memory, add MS Windows, replace the flash drive with a hard drive, jack the price up 33-50%, and it is still a Netbook? Not to me- it is just a sub-notebook at that point.
I saw one of those for sale at a computer faire quite a few years ago. I was tempted to buy it for the novelty, but I was young and poor at the time.
Now I have an eee 901.
Twenty minutes of work time and ten hours of charging time!
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
I had one for a while. Got it from a friend, then gave it to my dad after barely using it for 6 months. But it was definitely neat. The coolest thing about it (at the time) was being that small but running a full OS, not Palm or CE or anything, and with a real CPU. Mine had a P75, 4 GB hard drive, and dual-booted Win98 and RedHat 7. The former owner was a network admin who carried it around and used the serial port to talk to routers. Having a hardware fetish, I bought it from him when he no longer needed it but I found that, as neat as it was, I really didn't have much use for it. (Before wireless Internet was everywhere, having a notebook on hand wasn't that useful unless you were a writer or traveling to places that had network jacks.) So I gave it to my dad so he'd have something small to take to LUG meetings. One thing--it was definitely a conversation-starter. If you pulled it out in a public place you'd have questions from everyone around you.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Website is slashdotted :(
I thought this was the first Netbook:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook
I bought one of these back in 1996 via an importer for ~$1600. It was about the size of a VHS tape. I liked the side-mounted eraser head mouse, but the keyboard was almost too small for touch typing. It was much nicer than the competing IBM model, which (if I remember correctly) had a side-talkin phone built in.
Sold it a few months later for $3000. Good times.
I once used a Libretto 100CT. It's very small even by today's netbook standards. The trackpoint is placed in a very weird spot. But the portability rocked.
Another interesting "proto-netbook" machines I have seen are Fujitsu B110 Lifebook, the Sharp Mebius line (I still have a Japanese version of it laying around - it was fantastic to use, but now I've moved to a HP TC1100 because the headphone jack broke) and more recently Sharp Muramasa. The latter one is more or less equivalent to a good quality modern netbook (1 GHz CPU, up to 512 MB RAM, long battery life, 1024x768 resolution), but it costed a fortune when it was new.
I also remember owning a very small subnotebook a long time ago (~6 years?) that fried my lap and could be used as an iron, but I can't remember the make or the model.
In a word, the only thing that changed with netbooks is that they made the once exclusive category of subnotebooks financially accessible to the general public.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
We all have our own idea of what a netbook is/was.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A Libretto 100CT in fact, with the widescreen 7.1" TFT display (800x480), Intel Pentium 166Mhz MMX overclocked to 233Mhz, 32MB RAM upgraded to 64MB (couldn't handle more) and a 2.1GB HD which I replaced with a 20GB one. I later added a 802.11b WiFi and made quite a good web surfing machine with FreeBSD + Netscape and Firefox later on...
I've been using it regularly until 2004 and then on and off until 2006 or so. It's resting in a box down at the basement now.
Having used a small machine like that is what made me immune to the netbook craze while everybody around me thinks they're so cool and useful and have been buying small cheap machines and finding out how particularly useless they are...
IMNSHO they're too small to be useful for most kinds of real work and to big to carry around or surf while, say in bed - I'm much better off now with a regular laptop that I can get real work done and an iPhone that I can surf the web casually wherever I may be.
The "netbook craze" started with the EEE PC. There was no "craze" before then because small laptops were expensive.
If there was anything like the netbook craze before, it may have been the Tandy Model 100, a small, lightweight, inexpensive computer with built-in modem that's popular even today with writers. In fact, I think a netbook in that form factor (flat, screen and keyboard open, AA battery powered) would still be nice.
http://oldcomputers.net/trs100.html
That's not when the netbook craze started! The craze is a recent event; that product predates it.
My 60CT wasn't a netbook for one very simple reason: no net. The thing didn't have built-in connectivity of any kind.
Oh but no, that would need actual programmers (instead of drag and dropper "programmers"), and it's easier to mock hardware than admit that there's something deeply wrong with modern software.
Mostly random stuff.
In this house, just now I counted a Libretto 30 in the kitchen (wife plays games, but I got her a netbook for the other room), and a Libretto 100 as a WiFi LAN print server. The 3 others are in cupboards, 1 sadly zonked by airport x-rays (I used to travel). Nice items, but won't step up to XP and you can't get the extra memory now.
Mine is 1992 vintage and actually still works, though it is getting more difficult to move files between it and the newer stuff around here. Its chef virtue is that it weighs practically nothing and can be connected to its dock, which includes a floppy disk drive and place for a full-sized keyboard. Has a reasonably respectable 4mb of RAM and a whopping 80mb hard drive. I used it for years to write up notes. It's no good as a netbook because it can't use a browser compatible with most of today's Internet; it's got an early version of Mosaic on it.
I actually replaced it just this past Christmas with an HP mini netbook. I'm relatively happy with it, but as with its predecessor, all I do with it is carry it around to write up notes.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
... in fact, thecoffedesk.com is hosted on one of these! Also: http://thecoffeedesk.com.nyud.net/news/index.php/2009/05/09/the-worlds-first-netbook/
A Sub-Notebook is what this is: Small and light, yes, but certainly not cheap. Examples of this would include the MacBook Air.
Sub-Notebooks have been around pretty much since notebooks have been around (as demonstrated in some of the other comments in this thread). Netbooks are a recent phenomenon beginning with the EEE. Just my $0.02
Right. In the book "Myths of Innovation," the author (Scott Berkun) discusses how there is no such thing as a product being ahead of its time (which is what it seems this /. article summary is basically touting). You can't have a great idea in isolation and expect the market to come to you. Part of the invention process is how will your audience accept the product? Aside from patent trolling, the marketplace doesn't allow for financial success in a walled garden.
Berkun also cites many examples and non-examples of famous inventors like Edison not actually being the first to invent something (such as the light bulb), but really being the best one to bring it to the audience. He also demonstrates how you wouldn't be able to bring a modern invention such as the netbook and take it back in time to be as successful as it has been for us. The infrastructure wouldn't be there and the public mindset would have no reference point or paradigm to go from.
The first with the portable DVD player form factor was the Fujitsu P1200. I consider this the first modern machine that fits into the netbook designation.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
http://oldcomputers.net/grid1101.html This was even earlier. I guess what passed for a
netbook today, is well, not quite a netbook, except for the browsing stuff.
The eMate from apple could be classified as a netbook, since it did have email and browsing capabilities and has even been hacked to use 802.11b these days on top of its cat-5 and modem abilities. It was after all a low power computer based off the Newton.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Yes, there certainly was a "craze". You just missed it because you're weren't living where it happened. The small notebooks have always been popular in Japan but never really caught on in the US. Americans could only buy them through import sites at twice the price, so mostly we just looked at the pictures, read the specs, and sent letters to the manufacturers begging them to bring those models to the US. It was fantastic walking around Akihabara, seeing machines that you only saw pop up as brief descriptions in US magazines. Beautiful machines that never made it to the US shores. Nowadays, with the web, it's all to easy to see the pictures and look up specs, but back then, we only had mere glimpses. So yes, there was a craze. But because the machines were never exported, that craze never made it to the US.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
And with good reason. These things were a nightmare to support! I had to support two of them, and I think I'm going to need therapy now that their existence is known to me again...
I have to stand up for the Asus Eee PCs and speak about my experiences in their defence. I bought 30 x 701s a year and a half ago for a university project working with 11-14 year old school children. They've since been issued to a total of approximately 330 students across 12 different classes, taken out on field trips, and issued for home use. Only one has broken so far, a student dropped it onto a tarmac road while walking and carrying it in her hand, so that's about a metre or so drop. It broke the corner of the screen casing but apart from that was fine, we could pull the data off it and give her a spare to carry on with. We now use it as a test machine back in the lab, it works fine but we don't really want to issue it to students.
A few have started to show scratches on the casing, and that's been it so far. They work ok in light rain, though the touch pad freaks out when they get too wet, we've found for field trips the solution is to get transparent plastic bags and slide them over the laptops and then they are fine (we use our geology department's rock sample bags, thanks guys!).
So I'd say they are reasonably robust given these kind of conditions.
On the road I used a computer called Twinhead Subnote running Windows 3.1, with a built in modem I could connect back to the office. Here is a photo http://tinyurl.com/pybl33
One of the first machines to approach the prices of today's netbooks, not just the specs, was the VAIO SR33. 600mHz Celeron, 128MB RAM, 10.4" screen, 1" thick, slightly under 3 lbs. I bought mine (new) for $900 around the middle of 2001. I finally replaced it 4.5 years later, but I still consider it the best notebook I've ever used.
_MY_ first netbook was an IBM PC110, which I actually still have. It's now running Windows 98SE from a 1 GB CF card.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
You could qualify it as netbook, but probably what really started the craze was the XO, the idea of a $100 notebook for every child. It had most of the attributes that make it a not so bad idea, price, long battery life, wifi, etc.
Cagati addosso, stronzetto.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
How could the Libretto 70 be termed the first netbook when it followed on from the Libretto 50?
Well, close enough. It was a Toshiba Libretto 30, which my mother bought for me in Korea in 1996. It was a pretty neat little gadget, a full-blown PC that was good enough (jumping through some hoops that involved use of a Zip drive IIRC, but heck I was in college back then and had loads of free time) for me to install Red Hat Linux 5.0 and do much of my college work on (primarily LaTeX documents, as a host system for MC68HC11 embedded system development, and a bit of Netscape 2.0). It was not much larger than a typical VHS cassette, and as such was very convenient. It had slightly lower specs than the 70CT mentioned in the article (66 MHz Pentium and only 8 megs of RAM IIRC), but that was plenty of power for what I used to do back then. The remarkable thing was that it was only a little less powerful than the desktop I had back then, and the only reason why I didn't ditch my desktop for it was the tiny keyboard and the display which was limited to 640x480x32. It was also very expensive, way beyond the price points of full-sized laptops with comparable specs.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/13/miniature_computer_field_guide/
There were plenty before that. The Tandy(s), the unbelievable HP Omnibook 300, and many others. Come on, the Tandys and Omnibook ran on AA batteries. The Omnibook had Windows, Word, and Excel on ROM and a built-in mouse.
About a decade+ ago, a friend of mine in college gave me a Gateway Handbook and I still own it to this day. I upgraded the RAM to 24mb and put in a 1GB hard drive in it and whatever Linux distro I had around at the time. It was definitely usable when I was in college to take notes on, but using as a daily application for my life is where it failed; 802.11b was *just* emerging and playing Doom on it during class quickly tired. It's comical to see how laptop industry flops back on itself (much how fashion has went back to calling 80's straight leg pants and moon boots the new 'in'). I remember when all the hype a few years ago surrounded the netbook. It's cool, don't get me wrong (and I do own a Acer Aspire ZG5), but definitely not a new idea. Just a regurgitation of what failed the first time around because there wasn't enough technology infrastructure to support it (e.g. wi-fi, internet for the masses, etc.)
The Librettos may not have exactly been netbooks (concept didn't exist at the time, and 802.11 was basically non-existant), but they were certainly the forerunner of netbooks:
Similar size
Similar weight
Reduced performance compared to full featured notebooks of the same era
Could run a real OS (these were not overgrown PDAs)
I still remember the first time I ever got to see / use a Libretto. This was before they were releasing them in the US - this particular one was a gift from the head of Toshiba to Bill Gates. Back in 1996, I knew a guy who worked for Microsoft IT's Executive Support team who was getting it setup for Bill - it was a bit of a pain to get it setup with English Win95 OS and Japanese Win95 drivers (Toshiba didn't have English drivers yet as they weren't onsale in the US), but he finally got it working.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio
Great to see this article about the adorable Toshiba Libretto.
Still, a lot of people, use the Libretto on a daily basis for work, study or just for fun.
There is even a fairly new website, www.librettoworld.com, dedicated to the Toshiba Libretto.
You can find very useful stuff around there, and there is also an active user forum!
Librettoworld.com is the only actively maintained resource for all Libretto owners.
I had a Libretto then and actually still the same one today (I use it as a OBD for my car). I ought the Libretto because my HP 200LX was dated and not the best system to get on the net with (though you could). Toshiba Librettos were built solid, did the job and were small and light as hell. Great for traveling when you needed just a little access on occasion (do that these days with my smart phone).
yes, the Toshiba machine, and then the Sony C1V family of 'PictureBooks' were also good precursors. I had one of those, and it was wonderful. 1kg in total, 1024x480 pixels widescreen, Transmeta Crusoe CPU, 12 hours of battery life with the jumbo battery. The pricetag was high, though..
Mine still runs without issue today
I believe the Compaq Contura Aero sub-notebook predates the Libretto.
Back in mid 1998 I was tossing up between the IBM Thinkpad 110 and the Libretto 100CT. The Thinkpad 110 was released in 1995, so it was a bit old but they were cheap in 1998. 486SX-33, internal harddisk, PCMCIA ports and an inbuilt modem caused journalists to love it. Similar size to a large pack of cigarettes. http://www.basterfield.com/pc110/brochures.htm But I went for the newer Libretto and used it for many years on overseas trips. Pentium 133, internal hard disk, SVGA, sound. Similar size to a paperback book. The only downside was the collection of accessories I had to take with me - external CD reader, charger, mouse, modem card, ethernet card, CF adapter, etc. Both could take Windows 95. I've also used 286 class DOS based portables similar in size to the current netbooks. I used it on overseas trips with both a development environment (vi, Borland C and a cross compiler) for EFT terminals and also various bank environment simulators so I could demonstrate EFT terminals to our prospective clients completely in a self contained environment. In a single briefcase I had a complete travelling kit for going to any client, demonstrating and even customising our products.
the 30CT a 486DX version was originally only an Asian release. The Libretto50CT was a P1 version running at 150mhz (if memory is correct) This version had sound where the 30ct did not. Size was identical to the size of a vhs cassette case. If anyone out there thinks typing on an early EeePC is hard you had nothing on the Libretto's. Great system, Rock solid, Loved mine.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
The Tulip PB subnotebooks were already 248 x 155 x 46 mm (like 9.5 x 6") in 1993.
http://www.tulipgv.nl/tpb.html
As much as I despise Sony, I have to say that I did enjoy my Picturebook C1X that I was given for work in the late 90s, that definitely counts as a netbook. I remember it was the first device I'd ever used with builtin wifi. It looked cool and worked decently. On the down side, the battery life on the machine was atrocious, its motherboard fried three days before the warranty was up (which would have cost $2200 to replace, and the machine cost $2500 to buy), and the hard drive died shortly after I got the machine back from the motherboard replacement. But the bragging rights of having the smallest laptop out of everyone I knew was pretty neat.
Back when these came out I bought a pair of Libretto 110CTs for the company I worked for. I ended up taking one of them and installing Red Hat 6 on it and set it up to find rogue wireless access points in the companies many locations around the US. Since I was already traveling to many of these locations to do security audits, I just added wireless scanning to the list. To make things more interesting, I gutted a Franklin-Covey planner book and through skilled application of sticky-backed Velcro, I installed the Libretto into the planner book. While I was meeting with the local IT and/or security people I would have my planner book sitting on the conference table searching for wireless signals. At the end of the meeting I would check the Libretto and ask them about their wireless networks. More often than not they would deny the existence of any wireless devices (they were 100% forbidden by policy at that time), I would show them the stealth Libretto showing the average of 1-3 wireless APs with such incriminating names such as, "*companyname*-AP" or "*companyname*-lab". I was able to rescue both of those Librettos from the dumpster when their time was up. I still have them both today and they both run perfectly. Here is my stealth Libretto
Oh, man, I LOVED my POQET PC. I ran Framework, an integrated office suite that gave you a database, word processor/outliner, contact manager, and spreadhseet all in one, coordinated application space. My whole world was on that thing.
Being able to run literally weeks off of 2 AA batteries was a stunner then and now. I looked for years for a replacement once they discontinued it, and not until last year did I see anything that I thought was its equal in portablity, price, and performance (the XO-1 from OLPC.)
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I tried to "update" a Mitsubishi Amity subnotebook (122Mhz, 48MB ram, 640x480 screen, 2GB drive). I recently installed Damn Small Linux to replace Windows 95 and a wifi device. I use "elinks" or Dillo for web. I was unable to run off Compact Flash to IDE adapter to go solid state. I was unable to make TinyX work with the track pointer but it is fine with PS2 mouse. I bought the sub-notebook on Ebay a few years ago for about $100.
We've written a tool which guides them through their environmental enquiries. It's still under development but you can read the general information about our project here (Personal Inquiry website). Drupal on top of LAMP, running on the default Xandros OS. Battery life was something that concerned us for the full day trips across two towns, but we solved that by checking out tips on www.eeeuser.com
- switching off wireless in the BIOS (though used in the one hour school playground trials)
- lowering screen brightness a little
- setting the laptops to sleep on lid closing, and asking the students to close lids between locations (we walked across town stopping at a dozen places in each to collect data)
- hiding games so the students didn't run the batteries down playing these between working
- carrying spare batteries and swapping over some (not all required) at lunchtime.
Also used them on the ERA Project supporting disabled access to geology fieldwork in the Scottish Highlands - found that a field geologist could stream video and send photos from one Asus to another across a thrown up wifi network all day, needed one battery change generally, occasionally two for long field days.