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Can Crowdfunding Bring Back The Netbook? (salon.com)
"The mini-laptop's market niche got swamped by the iPad and the phablet," writes Salon, since the stripped-down hardware of tablets made them cheaper to produce. But now netbooks could be making a grassroots-fueled comeback, "thanks to the lower costs in electronics manufacturing and the fact that individual investors can come together to crowdfund projects." An anonymous reader quotes Salon:
Michael Mrozek, the Germany-based creator of creator of the DragonBox Pyra, says "I never understood why they were gone in the first place. I have no idea why you would use a tablet. I tried one, and it's awkward to use it for anything else than browsing the Web"... He has already managed to raise several hundred thousand dollars through a private pre-order system set up on his geek's paradise online store. Once those initial orders have been filled, Mrozek said he will probably start up a mainstream crowdfunding campaign for his Linux handheld... "The niche was always there, but thanks to the Internet and crowdfunding, it's easy to reach everyone who's interested in such a device so even a niche product still gets you enough users to sell it. That wasn't possible 10 years ago."
Meanwhile, in just under two weeks Planet Computer raised $446,000 on Indiegogo, more than double the original $200,000 goal for their netbook-like Gemini computer (with a keyboard designed by the creator of the original Psion netbook). Planet's CEO Janko Mrsic-Flogel says "It's a bit like Volkswagen bringing back the Beetle," and predicts that the worldwide demand for netbooks could reach 10 million a year.
Meanwhile, in just under two weeks Planet Computer raised $446,000 on Indiegogo, more than double the original $200,000 goal for their netbook-like Gemini computer (with a keyboard designed by the creator of the original Psion netbook). Planet's CEO Janko Mrsic-Flogel says "It's a bit like Volkswagen bringing back the Beetle," and predicts that the worldwide demand for netbooks could reach 10 million a year.
Perhaps that's true for the people you know. When I was a student, having a tiny lightweight computer with a real keyboard that ran a real OS was great for writing papers and code. Not so much for compiling huge programs, but a little python work? No problem. Having an Ethernet port built in and all the standard Linux network utilities came in handy more than once for onsite network troubleshooting.
Not bad for such a small machine. Oh yeah, I guess it was inexpensive as well. So yeah, netbooks are useless.
specs?, piece of shit machines that were locked to having max 2 gb ram, who the fuck thought that was ever a good idea
Microsoft thought it was a good idea to limit netbooks.
The 1st netbooks ran Linux. People found out that they didn't need Windows. Just a browser mainly. Manufacturers found they could reduce a large % of the cost by not putting Windows on it.
MS had discontinued XP and netbooks couldn't run 7. So they brought XP back for netbooks. They created a spec it that limited the screen resolution, ram and cpu.
And that ultimately killed netbooks. It saved MS's Windows revenue for a number of years.
When the iPad and Android tablets came out, that trick wouldn't work anymore. Millions learned that they could do "internet" just fine without Windows. They could Google, Facebook, do google docs, listen to music, watch videos, take photos to put up on the web, chat, and surf the web.
Google Chromebooks are probably the closest we have to a Netbook now. For those of us that want to, Linux wll run on most of them too.
The return rate for Linux-based netbooks was significantly higher that Windows ones. I don't think that it can be said that people found that they didn't need Windows. Also, it was Vista that didn't work well on netbooks. They fixed this with the Windows 7 Starter Edition, which finallly replaced XP on netbooks.
Netbooks still exist in the form of... netbooks. The Lenovo Ideapad 100S or the HP Stream 11 spring to mind as examples of this format. The specs tend to be 11" screen, 2GB RAM & 32GB SSD & full Windows 10. I've had a few different varieties of this sort of thing, and they do a reasonable job even though I'm not a big fan of Windows 10.
It was the market that replaced Linux with Windows, but there was also some aspect of conspiracy. Microsoft couldn't charge the full license cost of Windows for a machine as cheap as a netbook without driving up the price significantly (and making the Linux versions a lot cheaper) so they offered Windows XP for netbooks, but with a bunch of caps on the maximum spec that it would support to avoid cannibalising the rest of the laptop market. This effectively capped the maximum specs for netbooks.
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