[hn_throwaway_99]

> Netbooks were low-powered mobile devices (basically mini laptops) that launched in 2007 and basically disappeared (as a viable market category) after the iPad and its kind were launched in 2010.

Chromebooks are very much alive and well.

[jetrink]

You're not wrong, by most definitions of netbook, but I think the parent commenter makes a very good point if you look at them in terms of their form factor. Netbooks of that era were these weird little machines with 8.9" screens and 70% scale keyboards. I remember carrying mine in a coat pocket. It was really exciting at the time to see Windows XP running on something like that. In the end, it was a bad compromise and those have disappeared. The netbooks of today are, for the most part, full size laptops.

[GordonS]

IMO, the biggest issue with netbooks of that time is that they were so tragically underpowered! I wanted the form factor - but with enough CPU and RAM to actually use, well, anything, and a screen with a high enough resolution that I couldn't see the pixels!

Back then, all netbooks seemed focused on price alone - almost like they knew it was a fad, so made them cheap enough for an impulse buy.

The tech of the day just didn't stack up - but it does now. I wonder if we might see a netbook revival - small, cheap machines that are actually of doing things?

[r00fus]

Kids can't even play Minecraft on our family chromebook without essentially running a different OS.

Chromebooks aren't a panacea.

[pjmlp]

Chromebooks are an US specific phenomenon, hardly seen anywhere else in the world.

[msh]

In Denmark they seem to be quite popular and being rolled out in schools.

[r00fus]

They're all over public schools where I live.

[mehhh]

Those types of educational accounts have been home to Apple (and later Microsoft) in the recent past, all it takes is one school administrator to flip that district to a different solution.

Hence NeXT's focus on educational institutions prior to being bought by Apple.

[pjmlp]

That being?

They are almost nowhere to be seen across European consumer electronic shops.