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!)."

Comments

I'm offended

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Anyone else get tired of the snide remarks about the hardware? And the stupid "environmental" digs at the CPU? How come no one ever slams software for needing dual core 2GHz processors ... to browse the Web or take notes? How about writing software that can still run on 10+ year old hardware, wouldn't that be better for the environment than needing a world-wide oil-driven infrastructure to make the new CPUs and chips and plastic cases?

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.