I had one, but even for those days it had a mediocre screen, mediocre keyboard, mediocre CPU, and mediocre slow storage. The MacBook Neo has none of that.
I have one. They were never fit for purpose for anything beyond reading email, watching 360p Youtube (back then, not so much now), and browsing very basic sites. I guess maybe Flash games were also on the table. The Celerons and Atoms in those machines were comparable to Pentium IIIs. There's a reason the Netbook was a fad. Most people discovered they didn't enjoy using them, while they not long after discovered that they did enjoy using these fancy new smartphone thingies.
They sold well. In my experience working at Staples at that time, small and cheap beat any other consideration for many customers. Hard to argue with a $99 PC.
A few months later, they'd realize it wasn't working out, come back, scream at us, and buy something bigger and faster.
I really liked the MSI one I had, but I knew what I was getting into.
Part of that was incidental factors. The 701 happened partly because of a glut of cheap, standardised screens designed for that first generation of in-car dashboard sat-nav systems.
It didn't help that those screens weren't particularly good.