I had one of the original netbooks (Asus EEEPC) back in the mid 2000s and I absolutely loved that thing. It was really great for bopping around college and travelling and such and had a killer battery life of like 8 or 10 hours or something like that. I used to run Win 7 dual booted with Ubuntu
this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Same had a little acer mini laptop in early 2000s I used it for notes, office apps, etc during college and between the battery life and how much more portable it was than the giant laptop I had at the time it was great, it ran BSD without any fuss too.
There's some talk somewhere else yesterday about how PC/laptop sales are tanking. It's mostly because people don't want "AI" computer.
Out of all the things in the past 20 years I miss - it was my netbook. It was amazing in college for me too.
Some say tablets killed the netbook, but there have been so many failed tablets that are not "iPad." It's a real gap in form factor and need
I loved my EEEPC. I used while study abroad before smartphones were common. It was great to carry on me at all times. If I needed directions or to check on a website I would sit at a café / restaurant / bar to have a coffee / wine / beer to grab the wifi. It was great and small enough that I could carry it open if needed. I loved it. I thought it was the future until the iPad took over
For awhile now I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a something like a modern version of the Poqet PC.
The Poqet PC had a much nicer keyboard than the laptop in the article, and between the simplicity of its software and a very aggressive power management strategy (it actually paused the CPU between keystrokes) it could last for weeks to months on two AA batteries.
Imagine a modern device with the same design sensibilities. Instead of an LCD screen you could use e-ink. For both power efficiency, and because the e-ink wouldn't be well suited to full motion video, the user interface could be text/keyboard based (though you could still have it display static images). Instead of the 8088 CPU you could use something like an ARM Cortex M0+, which would give you roughly the same amount of power as a 486 for less than 1/100th the wattage of the 8088. Instead of the AAs you could use sodium ion or lithium titanate cells for their wide temperature range and high cycle life (and although these chemistries have a lower energy density than lithium ion, they'd probably still give you more capacity than the AAs, especially if you used prismatic cells). With such a miniscule power consumption you could keep a device like that charged with a solar panel built into the case.
Such a device would have very little computing power compared to even a smartphone, but it could still be useful for a lot of things. Besides things like text editors or spreadsheets, you could replicate the functionality of the Wiki Reader and the Cybiko (imagine something like the Cybiko with LoRaWAN). You could maybe even keep a copy of Open Street Map on there, though I don't know how computationally expensive parsing its data format and displaying a map segment is.
Its very hard to beat the laptop form factor for productivity, but i wish there was more laptops out there with all the ports and hardware features i would like. too bad that some of them are only really available in obscure cyberdecks
There was a MacBook 12 inch like this that my business partner loved. It would last all day on a charge and he was building our app with it (Xcode and I think clang builds).
This was 10 years ago though.
I don't really see the point in low powered small devices like this, when something like an iPad/Galaxy Tab/eInk tablet is far better suited to the typical tasks you'd use them for.
we don't do things because we need to. we do things because we can.
playing doom on a iPod or Zune is completely awful. so why does it exist? because someone willed it into existence. why? because they could.
Aperture Science. We do what we must, because we can. For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead.
Science isn't about "why" - it's about "why not?" Why is so much of our science dangerous? Why not marry safe science if you love it so much? In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you in the butt on the way out, because you are fired! Not you, test subject, you're doing fine. Yes, you. Box. Your stuff. Out the front door. Parking lot. Car. Goodbye.
Not really applicable here though. Can you use a terrible keyboard on an 8" screen? Absolutely. Can you use a much better keyboard on a much better screen the same size or smaller/bigger on preference by using a more common device? Also yes.
you're looking at one aspect in a negative light.
on the flip side to your argument, maybe op travels by train 8 hours a day (4 there 4 back) and they only have one of those tiny little trays as a desk. I'd rather do something unusually instead of doing nothing boringly.
besides, wth have you done that makes your shitty opinion valid in this context?
I wrote a 16 page term paper on a Note 1 on a train while going back and forth to school. I also wrote some crappy android apps on the same phone for school. all on a crappy bluetooth keyboard and a 5.3inch screen. I think that gives me some idea of why such a thing exists.
want to know why I did it?
because:
- I could and so I did
- I had to because I was broke af in college and didn't have a device at home that could do half the shit my phone could
- I had the time on the train so why not use it
so, to put it bluntly, I think it's pretty fucking applicable here.
You have COMPLETELY misread my comments and missed the point.
My point was that there are plenty of other better devices suited to these tasks than a little obscure laptop with a crappy keyboard, such as an iPad or Android tablet or eink tablet, or even a phone. My argument wasn’t “hurr durr doing nothing would be better”.
My opinion is “valid in this context” because I’ve spent countless hours RDPd in to various machines and servers in trains, buses , passenger seats of cars, on the side of the road,etc fixing issues and making changes that saved literal millions of dollars at a time, and the last thing I’ve wanted in those situations was a worse device to do it on simply because it’s “different”.
Mobile Apps really are really lacking in terms of usability. There really is a use case for a real laptop experience
For reading and writing like the OP talks about?
Yes - I was surprised recently how useless the text selection and editing features on Android are. I had to edit a bigger document (like 70 pages) where I had to move some paragraphs, delete some and so on. No problem on a desktop even on a smaller screen, but Android was surprisingly unusable
I’ve had no problem doing that on Android. Cut and paste work just fine.
Take a longer text (like 70 pages or so) and try to delete the first 30 pages.
Are you trying to do this without a keyboard?
The devices you listed are either locked down, or are low powered devices themselves. None of them have a keyboard which is essential for linux.
Being “locked down” is irrelevant for a device used to read and write on. All those devices are also significantly more powerful than this thing.
They all also have keyboard attachments readily available across all sizes and prices.
Linux isn’t at all necessary for the use cases the author talks about. Windows would be massively overkill.
I fucking hate touch screens personally, and will always prefer a good physical keyboard. Don't like mobile OSs either
Keyboards exist and are widely supported for them.
I said a good keyboard. Plus the OSs are garbage
There are many good keyboards for iPads and Android tablets, especially since they support Bluetooth.
How are the OS’s garbage for reading and writing?
Eight inches ought to be enough for anyone!
It was enough for yo mom ohhhhhhhh!
j/k
did her twice, huh?
I can't imagine many people would find this a pleasant device to do any actual work on. Maybe writers on the go, as the author says, though with a dubious keyboard layout even that is questionable.
Docks are pretty great now.
I have a dock at home and at work. Single cable to plug in and get proper peripherals, 2 + 1 monitors, and power.
It's nice to be able to undock and go sit in a Cafe to read emails or do whatever you don't need full regalia for.
I can see this working on a smaller form factor.
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If you have to carry a separate keyboard, it defeats the purpose of an 8" laptop...
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I remember my 9 inch "netbook." That thing was dope.
I'm down to see this form factor make a comeback, personally.
ASUS still makes netbooks.
I bought a little $200 model a few years ago. It weighs 9 oz.
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I remember having 10 inch netbook. It was okay for a while, but I would never want to go back to 10 inch display on a laptop. It's just horrible to use. 13 inches is ideal for me =)
Well, at least it's 1920x1200 resolution. The old 10" netbooks mostly had 1024x600 which was terrible even by standards from 15 years ago.
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Urgh. Why do they always have to ramble about AI?
I appreciated it, since he didn't do a legit stress test. Running a local llm is intensive on the hardware, and if it performs well on that, it'll likely perform well on most standard, non-useless tasks. So, I see that part as a makeshift stress test.
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My eeePC still works. Installed a touch screen. The battery and power adapter is long gone but it keeps on chugging with a random 12V power supply.
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That keyboard layout gave me a stroke. I'd rather relocate Enter than the apostrophe. I suppose that could be remapped...
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