Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

The Eee PC 701 was amazing. It was really good for students who needed something small and light that they could take to the library, etc. The alternative back then was a heavy power-hungry full-size laptop. This is before all the stuff we take for granted today like tablets, etc.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was the next really good netbook.

After those, Apple introduced the Macbook Air which came in a 11.6" size. Even Linus Torvalds owned one.

Chromebooks have now taken over the small and light segment replacing tablets as well, but they're locked down and all-in on Google compared to the old netbooks which let you run anything, so they're not an ideal replacement.

I don't think netbooks will be back. When you look at something like the Raspberry Pi 4, it's way more powerful than the old Eee 701 was and the Pi is a very small form factor. If a manufacturer thinks there is a market for it, they could encapsulate something like that in a keyboard and screen and give it Linux as an open OS. So why won't this happen you ask? It's a tough call because the competition for netbooks is actually smartphones. A student writing a paper, all they need is just a bluetooth keyboard and something to lean their 6.7" phone or tablet against.

The eee PC was also the original netbook used for the "booting Linux in five seconds" presentation at the first Linux Plumbers Conference: https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

That presentation inspired a whole wave of boot optimizations across the industry, that recalibrated the expectations for what "boot fast" meant. If you look at some systems at the time, "boots in 30 seconds" was a selling point.

Today, you can reasonably expect a system to be done booting in a second, with the slowest portion of booting any secure system being the user typing a passphrase.

The physical form factor is still around today, if you want a notebook PC that's smaller than an ultrabook.

Current flag carrier is probably the GPD P2 Max from Sheznhen's Gamepro Devices, a firm who started out making linux-based handheld game consoles around 2013 then branched out into netbooks. The first GPD Pocket stuck a maxed-out version of the Intel netbook spec sheet in a machined aluminum body with a 7" screen (underpowered processor and all) but newer models include less underpowered devices. In particular the P2 Max has the same footprint as the Eee 701/901 models but is thinner and lighter -- at 650 grams and 1.4cm thick it's comparable to an iPad mini with a keyboard -- thanks to the metal unibody construction.

https://gpd.hk

There are also competitors from elsewhere, notably One Netbook's One Netbook A1, which can be ordered with either an RS-232 port or gigabit ethernet if you work in a data center and want a portable terminal:

https://1netbook.com

Both companies also do tiny gaming portables with Windows 10/11 and the ability to drive an external GPU.

So basically the netbook sector is alive and well, if yuo want something significantly smaller than an ultrabook.

Finally, if these models strike you as too pricey -- they're not aiming at the same price point as the Eee -- there are less powerful variants on the theme from Chuwi and various nameless Chinese vendors. Just poke around on AliExpress for a bit and you can find a 440 gram micro-laptop for a reasonable price (if you don't mind waiting a lot).

I still have my EEE Pc 701 from 2007. Still works well with 2GB of RAM, Void Linux+DWM and an extended filesystem in the SD Card. Good for experimenting and for note taking with Emacs+org roam or Zim. Still good for reading wikipedia or stack overflow articles with netsurf or seamonkey(sites with JavaScript). Remember searching open or crackable wifi networks with the little fellow in the palm of my hand. I have another with NetBSD, works well too.

I had one, and I wrote a lot of code on it. There was pretty much nothing else on the market that could do web browsing in that portable of a form factor, and at that price point. Steve was somewhat right to worry about them -- in an alternate history they would have taken over as the dominant form of computing, creating a whole evolutionary tree of tiny laptops, converged with keyboarded mobile phones, at all price points and build qualities.

The 11" Air I got to replace the Eee was much better in every single way. One note is that the thin-and-long of the Air was much more portable than the chunky but stubbier Eee. It just fits better into the kinds of bags we all have. The thinness wars started then.

This is a great opportunity to remind everyone about the extremely negative dampening effects Micro$oft has had on innovation in both hardware and operating systems.

It's a monopoly and should have been broken up. We still can barely find OEM-installed Linux laptops, and an entity the size of Dell or Asus could easily float their own distro or add support dollar$ to an existing one.

My takeaway from the article: Microsoft gave ASUS a deal they couldn't refuse. ASUS took the bait and sold the Eee PC with Windows preinstalled but the version of Windows was a little too crappy. Ultimately this sealed their fate as people upgraded to a "real computer," resigning the Eee PC's position to that of a toy. Is this right?

I still have four EeePCs. I had four of the original Linux-only model with the tiny keyboard and weird Linux distro. Those I got from a startup which bought a lot of them and found them useless. I replaced those with EeePC 1001 ("Seashell") models, which I buy on eBay for about US$30, wipe, and install Xubuntu.

They're convenient for things for which one might use a Raspberry Pi. You get a keyboard, screen, case, power supply, hard disk, battery, and ports. It costs more to build a Raspberry Pi up to that level.

That's what I use to run all those antique Teletype machines I restored. I have USB to 60mA 45 baud converters I built to interface them.

I remember that I was tuning a 1TB sql server database on a 10" eeepc/USB disk to prove a client they badly misconfigured their server, I was getting 10times higher txn performance

Started with 701 with a 3g key, continued with 10" one and then in 2011, the MacBook air 11",these years were peak IT, dev and fun for me.

Light, powerful enough, connected and the pricing wasn't too bad (hi2u Sony books at 2k+)

In 2008 or 9, I had about 20 Eee 701s shipped to the international school I was the IT Director at in Central Asia to make a mobile computer lab, outfitted some Gorilla cases with power and foam, and had a pretty decent cheap expansion lab. The downside was that our internet was a 10:1 oversub’d satellite with a max 1mb (and that was upgraded from the 5:1 256k that we had been on) and the teachers wanted the lab to do internet-based projects, and between that and the 3 DDWRT’d Linksys routers that I had scrounged from the bazaar since I had no room out of my 10k tech budget for the year that had to cover _everything_ tech for the 400 student K12 school, it wasn’t a great solution for the actual problem, but those little machines were awesome at the time.

I know for most people, phones or tablets fit that gap, but I think I would prefer an Eee over my Surface Go for casual use, if just for the typing form factor.

I had a 701. I loved that thing. I got linux on it and used it in college so much. I eventually upgraded to an 11" macbook air but man, that eeepc was a workhorse for me. Yes it was slow, but the battery life was incredible with the bigger battery and having a full OS laptop in a tiny form factor was amazing. What was even more incredible was that dell mini laptop.

I still have my MSI Wind. Great little machine. It runs Emacs and a compiler comfortably, so it's still useful. I prototyped a game on it over a series of subway trips to/from work.

One time a pretty girl at a bar saw it with its little retro Window Maker desktop, and told me I should buy Apple products because they're "more digital".

I guess netbooks are considered "retro" computing devices now, huh. Damn, I'm old.

I used one of these for uni for a while. The small screen is really not a barrier for just taking notes in class and the portability is so much better than a regular sized laptop (and the size makes it practically indestructible too).

It also makes for a surprisingly adequate dev environment if you get used to switching between virtual desktops for extra screen space.

Using an iPad instead of one of these would have been a total non starter[1]. If I was back at uni nowadays I'd probably just get the smallest laptop I could find with half decent battery life - funnily enough the new M1/M2 macbooks are pretty appealing, but I would love something in an even smaller form factor if possible.

[1] proper hinged lid is much nicer than a keyboard case with a kickstand, I need to be able to compile code and run arbitrary executables.

EeePCs are still useful machines today. Need something that spits or receives packets for network testing? Grab a used one with decent battery life and you're done. Want to listen to online radio in the lab but don't want to use your phone? Again, get a used EeePC for peanuts and connect it to a pair of speakers. And what about a small IoT controller to be put in each room? Pair it with a networked VoIP terminal and voila, instant communications too. They're small, their power supply is small, the audio i/o capabilities are more than enough for some uses (1) and they have a physical Ethernet port which makes them perfect for network testing and other uses (web server testing, emergency on-the-fly file serving, etc).

(1) Before I bought a Zoom recorder, I used my Samsung NC10 to record my former band using Audacity. I had to build an external stereo mic preamp because I wanted to use two dynamic mics to keep noise low as the internal mic and circuitry weren't built with the sound pressure of a rehearsal room in mind, and the input expected a higher level than a dynamic capsule could produce. I later built a stereo mic using two Panasonic WM61a electret capsules so I could get rid of the preamp; today I would use a pair of AOM-5024L-HD-F-R capsules, which are super cheap and super silent.

I'm glad my asuss eee is gone now, but in 2011 it was a fabulous travel aid for exploring italy - keeping us out of icky internet cafes and keeping us entertained on the long slow (railpass compliant) rail journeys.

Netbooks became of course the small and underpowered laptop that many rely upon today. They also perhaps provided some of the foundation for iPad's success - giving Apple a clear starting point from which to market a much nicer portable internet device.

The eeePC 901 was what got me into Linux, and by extension basically my whole career in IT. Fabulous little device which changed my perception of computers from "gaming plus garbage MS Office software" to a truly general purpose, infinitely customizable tool.

Asus has had some of the worst naming conventions on their laptop over the years.

Good luck figuring out which Zenbook UX3XX compares to which, with every configuration under the moon available.

The best thing I ever saw for the EEE PC was this glorious hack

https://beta.ivc.no/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Internal_Upgrades

I had one of those. It was amazing to carry around. I changed the default screen that was so small. But Microsoft entering the scene simply ruined it all.

We used multiple of those in the robotics laboratory. There was a scene of people putting components and was great for adding sensors and so on with minimal effort.

My current laptop is an Apple Air M2. Samsung just preferred Microsoft money than competing. I believe it was the intention from the start.

The 901 was the sweet spot (if you got it with the 6600 battery)

Samensize as thr 701 but bigger screen. Powerful enough to rin Eclipse (i kid you not, did a lpt of development on that thing), massive battery life.

It was a great machine, rugged, took a hell of a beating.

My EEE was probably my best laptop purchase ever.

Dual core atom with 2GB memory, became my BYOD dev machine at work (with external keyboard and monitor, of course). Handled dev tasks in Ubuntu like a charm, weighted almost nothing.

I got myself a 1000HE (2 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD) in 2009, installed Ubuntu (was it Jaunty?) on it, and loved it. I got the slightly heavier one, with a 6-cell battery with uptime touted as 9.5hrs; in reality it was more like 6-7 hours, but still great for the day. I used it as my main machine up until 2014. Did a lot of Clojure hacking on it. It even got me a job at one point.

It was rugged, too! Carried it around with myself everywhere. At one point I dropped it from ~1 metre (my backpack slid off the arm), and some plastic was chipped off the case with the hit, but the little thingy continued to work. It eventually developed a line of green-dead pixels on the screens, but was still usable.

In 2019, I wasn’t using it anymore, so I gave it away to someone who needed to complete their M.A. thesis while travelling on a budget. I loved that ten years in, the little thingy was still useful.

Looks like I have a separate heart for tiny computers. Now I have a GPD Micro PC, which reminds me of the 1000HE in many ways.

"The OLPC project was the subject of much discussion. It was praised for pioneering low-cost, low-power laptops and inspiring later variants such as Eee PCs and Chromebooks"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

The mid 2000s were really a time of change and tech commodification. From a german perspective, it started with the first "1000€ Laptop". The first new decently sized, decently specced Laptop selling for a price of less than 1000€.

Later came the Netbooks. That put portable general purpose computers for the first time into the hands of students who had trouble affording a "real" Laptop. You could immediately see the change in the university library and computer pools.

After my "regular" Laptop broke I was in a bit of bind financially, but was glad to be able to afford a Samsung NC10. And I must say I really liked it. I cold take it everywhere. It was powerful enough for text processing, powerpointing, webbrowsing and older games. Keyboard and screen where ok, but coming from a resolution of 1400x1050 on my old Laptop I especially mised vertical screen real estate.

Are there modern "netbook" style cheap laptops with upgradable RAM/HDD?

One of the joys of netbooks (for me) was throwing 4GB or 8GB or RAM and an SSD into those things. At which point they become pretty credible performers for a lot of things.

But every time I look into such things these days, I can't find any upgradeable ones.

Funny how bad the Engadget/Verge crowd are at technology that is not 100% mainstream?

The top comments are much more insightful.

I read the article twice, and the only takeaway I can remember is, the Eee-pc that ran a custom Linux distro was better than anything that came after it.

What a wave of nostalgia. Had the 901 during grad school in 2009. Bear in mind, the alternative at the time were huge, bulky laptops that ran hot with the fan on all the time. I had one of those at home, but I wanted something light on the go. And I was too poor for a smart phone.

Came preinstalled with Windows which I immediately ditched for Ubuntu. And despite my PTSD with linux on a laptop...everything worked! Even suspend!

Great battery life, super light, and surprisingly a great screen too. My main annoyance was how tiny the touchpad was and how loud the click buttons were.

Eventually I graduated and had a desktop at work. Later got a laptop and by then, the thinkpads were slimming down with decent linux support. Good times though - what an era.

For a while I did web backend development on my Eee PC, I used it as a hackintosh and modded a minipci 3g module on it. I actually got used to it for a while until I used o normal laptop again and noticed just how incredibly slow those Atom CPUs were.

I know it sounds odd, but the 701 and the 901 had two of the best keyboards I've ever used. Absolutely beautiful little machines.

While I (like many!) loved my Eee PC...

>This Eee PC ran a “Pine Trail” processor so Joanna photographed it with pine branches. This was state-of-the-art tech blogging in 2009.

...it bothers me more than expected that the picture shows spruce branches.

#NotAllConifers

Loved my EeePC 1000HE back in the day, ran FreeBSD on it along with many other committers and we were all carefully tweaking the milli-amperage (power drain) to maximize battery life. I used to remember how many mA some kernel modules and daemons consumed.

At some point I donated it to my startup to serve as a datacenter recovery console complete with a 3G USB modem.

On a trip to SF, I saw an Asus Eee Pad at BestBuy (and Android tablet) and couldn’t resist the power of the Eee marquee. It didn’t serve as well or as long as an iPad would, but had a great life and is still alive 11 years later.

Loved my EeePC and my Asus R101 netbooks. Backpacked all over the world with them, they lasted for hours, could still code on them and edit photos, watch tv episodes and more. I mourn their passing.

I had an eee that I absolutely loved. It could barely run multiple tabs in chrome but it was small enough I could fit it in a satchel. Did my undergrad begining to end with it.

I have one. Best kitchen computer ever. About 8 yrs worth of use for 99 bux. Battery is bad now but it's too expensive to replace. It might be time to replace.

> All to run a deeply-annoying version of Windows

That’s only the later models based on 7 starter edition. My 1000H simply ran XP (maybe Home Edition, then replaced with Pro, but for most people that wouldn’t be a big difference).

As with most people here, it wasn’t a beefy machine, but in my university years I did _everything_ on it, including running virtual machines in VirtualPC and VMware Workstation and turning it into a Snow Leopard Hackintosh.

I've still got my 701 4G (it was my daily driver from 2008 to 2016) - I've had to replace the keyboard and power supply and upped the RAM to 1Gb. It runs Haiku OS currently (really well, despite the screen resolution being "officially" below requirements). It'll also run antiX, Q4OS Trinity, Refracta, Void, Alpine and FreeBSD reasonably well.

I worked for 2 years with a netbook as a main machine. A Samsung N250; I might have bumped up the RAM to 2GB.

I could carry it everywhere and it was fast enough for KDE, Arch Linux and web development.

I was also young enough not to have problem with the 11' screen.

I think the screen broke during an hackathon (I think it fell) and I just plugged it to an external screen and kept on working.

My 2009 Asus 1215B is still going quite alright, I needed to upgrade it to 8GB and replaced the HDD with a SDD, and in what concerns its use as travel netbook, it still manages to do its job.

Just don't ask him to do Rust compilations, or new GCC releases, unless plugged into mains.

However when it dies, I will most likely replace it for a 2-1 laptop, or a plain Air.

They're all chromebooks now

If I am not mistaken (no doubt someone will correct me if I am) some models of the EeePC were not vulnerable to Spectre/Meltdown. At least, I remember checking on the one I have and seeing that it was not vulnerable. A truly slow, low power CPU. I loved the VGA textmode on the EeePC. It looked great.

Alas, the battery died some years ago and lately it will not even power on when plugged in. The blue lights and the red one come on when I press the power button but only briefly then turn off. The red link will blink while plugged in. I would like to salvage the HDD. What are the chances I can remove the HDD and retrieve the data. It is not a 701 but a later model 1015px from circa 2012. The keyboard is in mint condition as I never used it. I only used a USB keyboard.

IMHO, today's Chromebooks pale in comparison. Fewer USB ports and no Ethernet.

I still use OpenBSD x86 on an Atom netbook.

Still using one as a daily driver to write code and read articles on. (1gb ram, 1.6ghz, Win 7)

It's painfully slow at browsing some websites, but runs VSCode and all of the dev tools just fine. There's some weird pleasure in knowing that if your stuff runs on that, it will run anywhere.

For a few years I had an X205TA "Eeebook" which was a bit of a mixed bag.

The battery life was stellar on the Atom processor, and the boot time was fast enough that I could save even more battery by shutting it down between classes.

The cramped keyboard and tiny screen, however, made it a pain to use sometimes, and 2gb of RAM meant having to be careful about what I had running to avoid seriously slowing it down.

When Windows 10 came around and PCs started upgrading without any user input, my laptop was among them. Unfortunately, the original operating system was the slimmed down "Windows 8.1 with Bing" that was intended for use on low-spec hardware. Windows 10 absolutely killed the performance and I had to grab a used Thinkpad Carbon to have something light but functional.

Still got mine (900) running a low power linux and swapped the dead slow ssd to a 64gb somewat still slow drive. Not much use other than carrying on trips so if it gets stolen I wont care… its a shame to see so much good computers are thrown out while still perfectly working.

A walk down memory lane for sure... I loved my Eee PC 901 and still have it. I used it to build a 'carputer' / navigation system before I had a smartphone. http://mrgris.com/projects/birdseye/

I remember becoming disillusioned that the netbook branding pivoted to "cheap" rather than "compact". The 9" series was quickly abandoned, with much more expensive 10" models becoming standard. An "almost laptop"-sized laptop for "almost laptop" prices wasn't really compelling. The 901 was adorably small and only cost $400 iirc.

I'm actually surprised people have such good memories of these horrible things. Perhaps I missed something. If the iPad grew out of Netbooks then it's like it junked its own DNA and stole some good stuff from somewhere else.

My eee is remarkable how much the thing found uses, first as intended to have a computer while commuting, what 5 years later smart phones would do, then for a very long time it sat in my living room as a always on email terminal, in which role it easily delayed buying my first tablet by a first year and then until two years ago as a podcast player next to my bed. Thing is, I'm considering to reinstate it, since right now my phone does that and I'm not sure being able to check twitter when just woken up in the middle of the night is actually an advantage. So, really just an amazingly useful design.

Are there any good, light, 11" cheap Linux (arm?) Laptops still on the market?

Ugh, did I really pay $399 for a 701 and think it was a great deal? I guess I did.

I still remember the frustration that the screen height was so short (480px) that I couldn't reach the bottom of many ubuntu configuration panels.

I borrowed a friend's Acer Aspire for quite a while when I was unemployed during the Great Recession. My 1st gen MacBook Air had a bad battery, but the Aspire was a lifesaver and not a bad little machine at all.

I had one that I was glued to during my adolescence, constantly IM'ing with friends during the twilight of IM, before smartphones became dominant. Extremely durable, it was more capable than you would think. The lack of devices of a similar quality and form factor is extremely dissapointing; everything's lighter now but also flimsier. They were one of the greatest consumer devices of the era.

I still keep an old EEE PC around running XP, airgapped, for compatibility with old hardware I collect that VMs run into USB issues around. Runs great, parts are still available.

I did my entire IT degree on an Eee PC and I won't hear a bad thing said about it. It was the only working laptop I could afford and with Debian on it it was an IRC/shell/light browsing beast.

i ran an eeepc 701, then 1000HA, for seven years put together until the motherboard on the 1000HA died. maxed out the ram, installed an SSD, and expanded battery.

ran xmonad with lxde parts, and tiny little pixel fonts in my terminal. mostly used terminal apps, and firefox with noscript, vimperator, and sub-100% scaling.

probably the most bespoke computing experience i've ever bothered to put together. my sticker game was incredible. the phrase "FREE WIFI" was a strong contender for knuckle tats.

And they were incredible. A $200 laptop you could buy in 2007 that ran Linux and had flash storage. I credit mine with learning the command line for the first time.

I still have an Acer Aspire One (522) that I use for VAG diagnostics, as a laptop is too cumbersome to have inside a car whilst plugged in.

This little Netbook served me well for light work, travelling and light gaming surprisingly.

Never a bad memory of it, and upgrading aspects of it was fun to try and squeeze more out of it.

https://tomaytotomato.com/acer-aspire-one-upgrade-2014-2/

Have so many fond memories of my Eee PC 1005HA, running backtrack and taking it to coffee shops. Netbooks were just the ideal form factor at that time for running Linux.

I loved my Eee PC from Asus and had a dark blue one (which was the better model). It was back in 2008/09 when I was bagpacking in central and southamerica. It was great to use it at the hostels instead of waiting for getting a free spot on these public PC. People back then either went to cybercaffe/internet caffee or waiting to use the few slow PC at the hostel and had to pay for it.

> Did anyone actually buy a netbook? The only people I ever met who had netbooks were other tech writers; at one memorable trade show my colleague Adi Robertson showed up with both a gigantic gaming laptop and a tiny netbook, two laptops both perfectly ill-suited for the tasks at hand.

The only people I knew who had them, bought them used. I don't think I know anyone who bought one new.

I lived through this era as a student on a relatively tight budget, and must have been one of the few people who was never tempted to get a netbook instead of putting Linux on my regular 15" laptop.

The tiny screen size was the deal-breaker, and a complete no-go from my point of view. I don't understand how anyone got a decent amount of work done on these tiny netbooks.

Got one of these during my second year of uni. Couldn't afford a full blown laptop, this handled the job good enough for me. I was able to read class notes, do some coursework on it when the lab was full. Even got it run a LAMP stack for some coursework. I still have this in my loft space, I just can't bare to get rid of devices.

Back in 2015 I had a Chromebook I installed Ubuntu on.

It was slow, but looked amazing with an HD screen before they were super common. Plus it was only $300.

I always thought Microsoft could have absolutely owned the ultra low end market If they had the right people in charge. Smart people work there, it's just like there's more ideas floating about than focus.

I know it’s not the same, but if you are looking for a small form factor with a real OS, consider the Surface Go 3. I have the 2 and have really enjoyed it so far. Not the fastest thing in the world as you would expect, but I have even done some Rust coding in it while traveling. Perfect for VSCode remoting!

I had the EEE PC 1005HA with osx 10.6 Hackintosh and ubuntu 10.04 installed. Maybe not so coincidentally, those are my two favorite operating systems. With a 2GB ram upgrade, it was more than enough for me to browse the Ubuntu forums and hang out on IRC. Also, to make horrible music with garage band.

I still have my Eee PC [1]. Haven't used it in forever and a day, but it was awesome at the time, especially with the EeePC specific linux distros that were available at the time.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/XY1IayV.jpg

I had one of these! I brought it on a bicycle tour around Europe to stay in touch with my business, as I hopped on WiFi hotspots at all the McDonalds. I remember it being awfully slow but small enough to fit into the front bag of my bicycle, which is super, super wild now that I think of it.

I had one. It was good. I installed Debian and Ubuntu on it (even dual booted with Windows). It was excellent. Very good little guy back in the day (around 2011).

I had two actually. I really loved them. Tiny, cheap but a real PC. Such a cutie. Brings back great memories of my Eee PCs. Loved it! :)

Ahh, the nostalgia - pretty sure I ran a 701 with windows and played space rangers 2 on it... Such a magical era, but wish I had done the same kind of Linux hacking as some of the other comments are talking about.

Edit: it might have been a 901 instead - and I was too poor to get an 1k series

Small form factor laptops are my love. I still use the discontinued MacBook that was smaller than any of the Air models. It's underpowered and the battery is going but it's still more than enough for what I need it to do.

It'll be a sad day when it breaks.

I've had "Eee PC" / Netbook for many years as my travel entertainment companion. I still have and use for the same purpose their newer thin and tiny Laptop (forgot what it is called) which is essentially netbook in anything but name

I just want a really small laptop like those Vaios from back in the day.

Asus should be praised for their Eee PCs, don't underestimate how many people were introduced to Linux thanks to the low end specs that were almost unusable with Windows

I still have one at home, was the last netbook my mom used before passed away. She loved it, and was running debían with life. Really amazing little piece of hardware.

I had one of these, it was great, although the micro-keyboard took some getting used to because I have big hands. My first Gen MacBook Air replaced it eventually. RIP

I have a slow-ass Eee PC rusting in a closet somewhere. What can I do with it? I already have a much-less-slow Surface Go as the family/kitchen computer.

I loved my 701. Could take it anywhere, attach external monitor and keyboard if needed. I got it out again a few months ago and now my 8yo uses it.

I had a netbook. It was great to take with you on hliday or on public transport. I mostly used it to watch movies while on the train :)

I still have my 701. I forget which small version of Linux is on it now, but it was best when it ran Fluxbox. Great for NES emulation.

These were a godsend. When I was living paycheck to paycheck I was able to get a CS degree on my $199 (black friday) 11" laptop.

I had a friend who bought a few netbooks years ago.

At the time they were fine for email and light web browsing.

Of course, as we know, such things bloat over time...

I bought one in 2008, installed Debian. It's very slow but still works perfectly. Very light use, for the past 10 years.

Don't remember which one i had, but my eeePC was awesome... I even could turn it into a hackintosh.

Schools (students) had EEE PCs over here. Also my family had multiple of them.

They were really popular

Good times, I had a 1201N atom laptop. Long battery life, 12 inch screen etc.

Loved my Eee PC at the time. Just enough computer, cheap, small.

I remember really wanting one of these back in 2007 or 2008.

Those are the OG-Netbooks!