Were they? I think that for work or hobbies laptop is better, has better screen and keyboard and they are not that expensive now. And for watching short videos you can just use a phone.
When Netbooks were popular, laptops were expensive and heavy, and smartphones weren’t anything like what they are today.
Netbooks were the ultimate portable productivity tool. Journalists would write about how they could take them on site and write about things while it happened. Students could type notes in class. I even saw a face painter at a kids party using an EeePC as part of their workflow.
Cheap laptops these days do now exist, but they suffer from drawbacks like weight, terrible battery life and poor performance. All problems that the EeePC didn’t have. And smartphones are fine for videos, but the lack of physical keyboard makes them impractical for typical productivity suits. The nearest modern competition to EeePCs are devices like MacBook Air and similar Windows devices. But they’re not cheap.
Netbooks were the ultimate portable productivity tool. Journalists would write about how they could take them on site and write about things while it happened. Students could type notes in class. I even saw a face painter at a kids party using an EeePC as part of their workflow.
Cheap laptops these days do now exist, but they suffer from drawbacks like weight, terrible battery life and poor performance. All problems that the EeePC didn’t have. And smartphones are fine for videos, but the lack of physical keyboard makes them impractical for typical productivity suits. The nearest modern competition to EeePCs are devices like MacBook Air and similar Windows devices. But they’re not cheap.