Netbooks

Netbooks are small, lightweight, inexpensive laptops designed primarily for mobile productivity and internet access. Emerging in the mid-to-late 2000s, they emphasized portability over raw performance and typically featured screen sizes of about 7 to 10 inches, compact keyboards, and solid-state or small hard drives. Most models weighed under 2.5 pounds and used energy-efficient processors such as Intel Celeron M, VIA, or later the Intel Atom family, with modest amounts of RAM and storage.

The first major wave began with the Asus Eee PC, released in 2007, followed by competing lines from MSI, Acer, Samsung and others. Netbooks often ran Windows XP or Linux and were marketed as inexpensive, travel-friendly devices for web browsing, email, word processing, and light multimedia. Prices commonly hovered around a few hundred dollars, with configurations offering 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM and 4 GB to 160 GB of storage.

Limitations included slow CPUs, limited graphics, small displays, cramped keyboards, and restricted storage, which constrained heavy multitasking and media workloads. Battery life varied but could be competitive in practice due to low power draw. Connectivity typically included Wi-Fi and Ethernet; many models lacked optical drives.

Impact and decline: Netbooks spurred a boom in ultra-portable computing and influenced subsequent products, including low-cost laptops and later Chromebooks. Their popularity waned around 2010-2011 as tablets and more capable ultrabooks offered better performance and user experience at similar prices. By the early 2010s the term netbook fell out of common use, though the concept of affordable, portable computing persists in various form factors.

Legacy: Netbooks demonstrated the demand for mobile internet-enabled devices and pushed manufacturers to optimize for energy efficiency, compact design, and price-sensitive markets.