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.

Comments

Dunno about tablets replacing them...

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved the EEE PC, for me, it was a way to run any distro I wanted on a portable device that I could bring anywhere. I would often bring it with me whenever I needed to showcase my work.
However, I feel as if what replaced it for most people (that did not just get them to save a buck), was single-board systems like RPI. I would always plug in an external monitor + keyboard on these things anyway, because their keyboards and screens were just waaaaaaay to small to do anything useful.
The 1GB RAM or the 2GB RAM currently offered by most Chromebooks etc, are just way to low, I would love to see a 4-8GB RAM netbook running on Intel HW for a decent price (100-150USD), but if that does not happen, I'll stick to my 15-17" laptop, even if its often impractial.

My Netbook

[darkain]

During a time when I "worked from home", I would travel frequently. On one such trip, my laptop I used for work died. I needed one ASAP, so ordering online wasn't an option. I walked into BestBuy (not really any other option with where I was at the time). I just needed something to get me by until I returned home to my normal workstation, so I pick up a cheap Acer Aspire One 10" netbook for $300. This was I think five or six years ago now. This netbook is awesome, it has 2 DIMM slots in it, so I was able to move over the 8GiB of RAM from the dead laptop over to the netbook. All these years later, the thing is still working like a champ. It fits nicely instead of my camera backpack and use it to dump photos while on the go, with slow but functional support for the latest Lightroom and Photoshop. The thing also has wired gigabit ethernet, so it always travels with me when I'm working on-site for tech clients. Had a city-wide power outage recently where I was able to quickly hop into the server room with this thing, plug it in, and get to work monitoring the rack of server, AV, and phone equipment while running on emergency power.

Looking at what is being offered by the link provided, it is just yet ANOTHER random Android device. Cool, I guess? But it wouldn't be able to do any of the actual WORK that I would need it to do. It is essentially just a phone/tablet with an attached keyboard. If I wanted that, there are things like the Transformer Prime from Asus. Or if I wanted to shell out actual money, there are Surface tablets from Microsoft. The thing being offered now adds no real functionality over the existing offerings whatsoever.

Nope

[XSportSeeker]

Tablets and phablets didn't kill netbooks alone, pricing and other options did.

I imagine some Linux hardcore users would want a cheap-o laptop with paltry specs to tinker with, but the majority of the market is not interested in that.
With netbooks, you could at most browse a bit, check e-mails and do the very basic stuff that any smartphone or tablet can do better today, even the extremely cheap ones. And then, with the advent of Chromebooks, you can even get a Windows 10 laptop positioned to compete with it, with prices under 200 bucks.

I don't think a single guy experience on trying to use an Android tablet for productivity and finding it "awkward" is reason enough to ressurect a line of products that are justifiably dead. Honestly, plenty of people can use Android tablets for productivity well enough, and keyboard accessories ranging from horrible to excellent are already out there. Go on eBay and search for Android laptop if form factor is an issue. Android already has a cleaner and more intuitive interface, and apps like the full Microsoft Office suite, with data synchronization and other native features to boot.

Nowadays you can also get cheap Windows laptops, tiny desktops like a Kangaroo PC (there's even a Kangaroo laptop with a weird design), stick computers or even something like Gole 1 that can dual boot between Windows and Android.
You can build your own portable with something like a Raspberry Pi.
Not to mention Chromebooks among other devices for productivity.

Honestly, I think it's kinda stupid to try to revive netbooks at this point, personal opinion as a business thing. It'll be an extremely niche market that will fail to scale.
I'd be all for a Linux tablet though, for personal usage. Not that I think there's a market for that too. What Linux needs these days is to get ported, adapted and get support for devices like smartphones and tablets, not to keep trying to go back in time. Yes, I know Android is based on Linux, but I'm talking about other distros. I know Ubuntu has a version for mobile devices, but those are too limited and impossible to find in the market.

I'm not a hater or anything like that. I've just converted an old laptop that was laying around into an Ubuntu machine to tinker with. I just don't see a market for netbooks anymore. What we had back then were schools and businesses willing to pay a little for underpowered laptops running Linux for the very basics... but that has changed.

Furthermore, you know what Netbooks sound like for your average consumer? Extremely underpowered and horrible to deal with devices. Garbage. Expired electronics. Failed strategy. Outdated and deprecated. Something lying in a storage space somewhere with a ton of dust on top. A waste of not a whole lot of money. Outside of Linux evangelists, that's what I mostly hear. Would you want a netbook for work/school/business? Ewww no, gtfo of here with that.

I can almost guarantee you that most people, if offered a netbook, would rather:
1. Spend a bit more on a more capable device - Chromebook, Linux or Windows;
2. Get a bluetooth/OtG keyboard and mouse and use their own smartphones/tablets instead;
3. Get nothing and keep using whatever they have instead of having to carry an extra device running an OS that they'll need to learn how to deal with.

Netbooks are dead, let them go gracefully. If you are going to release a new product with similar objectives, call it something else.

Re:piece of shit machines

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh my AMD netbook is rocking 8Gb of RAM and came with 4Gb and Win 7 X64, maybe you shouldn't have been buying those crap Intel Atom netbooks? At the time it was only $60 more to get the AMD one and when I'm not using it on house calls I can use it as an HTPC with full 1080P over HDMI.

The reason you saw so many of the crap Atoms is Intel was product dumping, its the same reason you see so many of those Intel Atom convertibles so cheap now. But Atom was shit then, its still shit now, if you are gonna get a netbook? Don't make it an Atom if you don't want it to be crippled and blow ass, heck the AMD netbook chips even support hardware VM and ECC memory if you needed it so no segmenting the market like Intel always does.