[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?