The lack of the Win7 boot screen isn't because it's starter, it's because the fancy Win7 boot animation requires a screen resolution of 1024x768 or higher and that netbook have a screen that have the 1024x600 resolution that is so typical of netbooks.
as a chinese myself, when the first laptop booted up i just felt a surge of nostalgia. that's just one reflection of most typical home laptop or pcs back in 2010s, and it surely was my memory
Added: the system vendor is "YLMF" as the wallpaper states, the greatest windows pirate company at that time. It actually lived until windows Vista era and then just disappeared
@@mumpy1520 it's "360 safe browser", a qihoo-360 company series software. it can open youtube because it runs on a newer chromium build (80+) which official winXP chrome stopped at 49
The popup at 11:10 is from a well-known, but kind of infamous Chinese software called 360 Safeguard. The first popup said that your computer boots in 1 minute and 2 seconds, beating 23% of all computers, and suggesting that you should do 6 optimizations. The second popup and the ball at 11:37 came from its system monitoring software, saying that your computer had used 25% of memory and suggested you close some programs (even though the computer is totally fine). That software is supposed to work like an antivirus and PC optimization software. However, it could take up so many resources and so difficult to uninstall, such that it behaves more like malware. Nevertheless, it is commonly found in computers owned by the Chinese elderly.
btw The browser from the same netbook is called 360 Safety Browser. It's basically some backported or old version of Chromium for Windows XP. As the name suggests, this is also from the same company as 360 Safeguard. The previous owner had the whole suite installed on that poor netbook 😂.
7:01 that, my friend, is a 1malaysia netbook, they were given out free by the Malaysian government. It was just a generic chinese netbook with eyesore of a 1malaysia sticker placed on top of the lid, the hard drives in those netbooks were notorious for failing constantly. As far as I'm aware they replaced these with much better (but still bad) Acer Aspire Ones
That Eee PC keyboard layout is not that bad. The one on Russian Eee's is miserable, though: firstly 2 or 3 keys on the right of each letter row are even smaller (to fit in rarely used letters), and secondly, some genius decided to move the tilde key into the function row, left of Esc. Yes, that means the function keys are shifted one position to the right! Got muscle memory? Throw it in the traaaash.
netbooks still can run on Linux Mint, I've repaired the Eee700 (7"), 900 (9") and 1000/1005/1010 (10"), the Atom D255 (in German, I live in Argentina, I speak Spanish), the Toshiba NB100/105, and lots of HP Minis, the worst limitation was the ram. We have lots of netbooks as our country gave lots of them to pupils in schools (MIT's OLPC initiative), after 2015 processors were upgraded to Celerons and ram increased to 4 gigs. Those netbooks were crucial in 2020 during the pandemic to keep educational services alive. I sold a month ago a HP Mini-210 with w10 Mini OS (a modified w10). They still have life remaining, not that much, but they're still useful.
Yeah i plan on buying a used netbook to run linux on it. Dirt chip and light weight. Raspberry Pis arent a good solution anymore with their insane prices
I have an EEE 1001PX with 2GB ram, Atom N450 and a 250SSD still in everyday use with Q4OS 64bit :D I bought it for school, than I used it as a toolbox to repair other PCs (storing ISOs and installers and to create bootdrives), now it's a "mancave pc" hooked up to a 4:3 monitor and external m+k and speakers. Mainly it's a jukebox/netradio, a little "focus typewriter" so I can write without distractions. Also it's a little beast with dosbox to play old games, really a nice project PC. It also had a 32 bit W7 setup for some old games. Great little pc serving me 15+ years now for almost every single day. Of course not my main PC but i would really miss it if it dies someday and probably get a similar for the same purpose :D
@@markenetube With W7 I agree, all network devices are blocked. But why not with q4os? It's basically an up2date debian with trinity DE. Fun fact: with minitube it can play 720p youtube at 30fps. Pretty impressive for it's spec.
@luki8806 it's an I5 sony viao. It will take win 10, but I find I get crashes on C&C etc. I have Liux Mint on a second partition . That runs like a dream. I used my Samsung netbook every day until 2 years ago. I use a Lenovo one still. Not with an Atom chip. It has a low power Celeron. I love keeping old tech useful. I do think it odd when people mock older stuff by trying to run things made 15 years after they were made. In their time they worked fine. I found a windows 95 PC in a skip a few years back. I was impressed at how fast it was. 16meg of ram. 800meg had.
49:52 - In the late 00's/early 10's, it was pretty common practice by PC repair corner shops (at least in Brazil) to make 2 partitions on an HD when installing Windows on someone's computer, and the technician would tell the user to save all their data in the second partition. That way, when the computer inevitably needed to be wiped again, the technician would just wipe the Windows partition and keep the second partition intact. Of course, the user would almost never use that partition because they would keep saving their stuff in the default folders, which are in the Windows partition. Good times!
One thing I’ve found Netbooks useful for is a diagnostic PC for automotive purposes (think OBDII). Not as cumbersome as a regular notebook and it doesn’t require much processing power. Adding an SSD always helps too.
I used to have an MSI netbook as a daily driver about 7-8 years ago. It was a dual core Celeron and was actually quite good for what it was, especially with SSD and RAM upgrade. It worked up until last year when the on-board RAM failed, so now it's pretty much dead.
In hindsight, it's not really that our computers felt slower despite the fact that they were... it's that the software didn't require as much power as today's PCs so from a performance standpoint, the software of the internet in 2009 ran just fine on a laptop from 2009. We didn't have as many features and integrations as today, but things ran fine.
Nahhh these things mostly ran like shit on the net. I remember very well having to change user agent to mobile to make it somewhat useful online... In 2013.
That eee PC being covered in motor oil tells that it was used just as intended. As a small crap for a workshop that you can google parts numbers or whatever on. Much better for that purpose than for any office work at all.
You may not know this, but in Latin America, in countries like Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile or Brazil, the government allocated money to distribute the famous netbooks to the educational community. The first models left a lot to be desired, but the latest models already had better features. Today, at least in my country Argentina, they still give out modern netbooks, with Windows 11 and 8 GB of RAM, and some models come with Intel I5.
Bill Gates killed the netbook. He wouldn't let the product line evolve, demanding that the machines use extremely low hardware specs and punishing anyone who went over those specs with high Windows licensing fees. Chromebooks don't have that problem because, of course, they're not using Windows.
Had a Dell Mini 10v back in the day. 10.1" screen, Atom N270, and 1GB RAM. Despite its anemic specs, it was an absolutely fantastic Hackintosh and ran Snow Leopard like a dream (with a patched 32-bit kernel).
To add insult to injury, corporations saw the low TDP processor as an excuse to not put a proper heatsink on it, further continuing the tradition of mid 2000s hot uncomfortable and loud plastic
Speaking of running Linux on these, the one without a tilda would actually be a pain. Not that you couldn't do it, but it's the shortcut for home directory. It makes the difference between typing ~/folder/file and /home/user/folder/file. For distro, Xububtu or Lubuntu might be good options.
The tilde (~) is usually found on the ESC(APE) key. You can always remap the keys or assign that character to some combination of modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Shift) and a regular key.
Back in 2011 I had a Acer Aspire One 722 Netbook. Powered by an AMD C-60 APU (first gen of AMD APU´s) + 8GB Ram it served me pretty well. With the quite capible GPU in this thing light gaming was no problem. My Dream machine back then was the Alienware M11x, the coolest Netbook ever created. If Alienware made a modern M11x instead of a Handheld PC i would buy that thing in an instant.
I love the netbook form factor! Bought an MSI Wind back around 2010. Upgraded the RAM to 2GB and it actually worked rather well for basic stuff. When it died of old age - the plastic literally broke to pieces - I replaced it with a Lenovo 11e which had a quad core AMD with 4GB RAM. That machine is a TANK which still works perfectly fine other than being terribly outdated. After 5 years or so I replaced with a newer 11e 2-in-1 with an Intel M series, and 8GB of ram. Unfortunately that machine is glitchy and gets stuck in low power mode. Seems to be a problem with the newer 11e generations. I think the key is to manage expectations. To me these were cheap beater laptops I could take on the go without concern. If I dropped one and broke it oh well. My son was issued a small 2-in-1 chromebook by his school that looks pretty much identical to the 11e and is for using the school's google docs on it. Even his textbooks are on it. No more textbooks, just a touchscreen laptop; I'm jealous!
I've had a vendetta against Netbooks since 5th grade in 2010 when we were forced to use them. It took four or five minutes to boot up and when I called the librarian over to try to troubleshoot, it booted up in front of her, leading her to say I needed to be more patient.
I still have an AMD based EEE PC and with an upgrade to an SSD and 8GB of RRAM I loaded Q4OS Linux and...it still makes a good basic laptop. Plays 720P video, surfs the web, they really aren't bad little laptops.
Biggest issue w/ these netbooks and linux is the fact that these usually all have 32 bit atoms in them and linux is phasing out 32 bit support so the majority of the major distros just dont work
@@ashadowintime7305 sadly for the most part, yes there are a few 32bit distributions out there but officially the kernel for linux has been 64bit only for a while, so all the 32bit linuxes are getting older by the minute wich on those slow atoms isnt the worst thing, but it may affect your software compatibility
I have a netbook called HP Mini 311 with 256mb NVidia ION graphics, and combined with Windows XP + SSD, it can actually do things and run old games well.
@@ChupetaoSP I would say 2005 games or below and at mid-low settings. The only games I have personally tried are San Andreas and both Battlefronts games and they all run fine at mid-low settings.
I still own a HP Mini 311-1000nr that I did a board swap on for the one that had the full nvidia ION. I also flashed the hacked bios to overclock it and added a 2gb ram stick to max out the ram capacity to 3GB. It's fun to tinker with.
Ahhh this brings me back. Believe it or not, before I got my current PC I was using an Aspire One up until September of 2020 for everyday use running on Windows 8. I also played a ton of SM64 on it with PJ64 and I can say that it was even powerful enough to screen record it at 480p no issue whilst playing. It would have surely worked better under Windows 7 or XP but eh whatever. Great video
Not me still using that same Acer Aspire One model in 3:30 as my main computer in 2024. 💀 It was super cool back in the day, but for 2024 standards it's definitely a torture device. Yet, something worth mentioning about my Aspire One is that, even after 14 years using it, the battery is working perfectly. Back in the day it lasted like 3 hours disconnected and after all this time it can survive 1 entire hour before needing to recharge. Even though it drives me crazy, after so many years together, i've grown fond of it but i do hope i can upgrade in the next years because such hardware can't run windows 10 not even to save its life and windows 7 is already a relic
I too still use a netbook, I find it useful for some things. I like them for typing things up relatively distraction free and/or for playing music. They can still be quite snappy when paired with a lightweight linux distro (lxle is my fav)
I had an Acer Aspire One as my only computer from 2010 to 2014 or so when it finally broke. I loved that damn thing. Unfortunately it really did not hold up well to being used for university. But one of the tricks I used to be able to do with it was running it in a mode where it could play music with the screen closed, sticking it in my bag with headphones plugged in and using it as basically a massive MP3 player, between the demise of my iPod and getting my first smartphone. I also loved being able to take it on the train to write without it being jammed up against my chest the whole time. I’ve never been tempted by a Chromebook of equivalent size though because there was just something special about having a fully capable (if dog slow) tiny PC with me all the time.
Funny, my grandparents have the exact laptop you showed in the intro, just in a cool red/brown color instead of black. I think it looks very classy and timeless.
Actually, I'm still have one of these. Helped me a ton at school with typing all the notes during classes. It could be around 10 years now. It is very worn out and running on WinXP. I still use it as typewriter with Open Office. Yes, it isn't enough, but it works and still usefull from time to time.
OMG, the Eee PC! This little gem was amazing! It came with the most horrible custom Linux-like crap installed, but I managed to turn it into a Hackintosh that ran faster than my iMac G5! Using an external monitor and keyboard, I actually made some tunes on this thing running GarageBand. Oh, the memories!
Awesome video! Love seeing these old machines. :D That unbranded one is a rip-off of the Sony Vaio FW Series, of which I own one. It's not the best rip-off I've seen, but it does definitely try its best.
Ghost was a very popular disk cloning program in the 90s. You could either have two HDDs in one machine (source and destination) or make a special netboot floppy and ghost over a network. back when I was in school I volunteered to set up a new lab of PCs, so we ghosted one win2000 image to all 24 new boxes.
Oh boi... I'm still using that same model of aspire one. The ram limitation suck, the cpu and cooler assembly suck even more, but once you load it with an ssd and some flavor of linux or bsd it works like a charm. I keep mine as a spare terminal, gps and dosbox machine.
I had an Acer aspire One that I bought in 2010. It was the first computer I had with a built-in webcam, so I could go on chat roulette with it. I was also really amazed at how long the battery lasted without it being plugged in. I had owned laptops before, but as I'm sure you know with computers of that era, you could only go a few hours before you needed to plug them in. I never did any heavy work on it. It was just for word processing and web browsing and stuff with only a few tabs open at a time. At the time I figured that if I was in a program like nursing school or something and had to do online training programs, it would totally be all that I would need. My ex had an EeePC and she absolutely loved it. Her friend set up a custom version of Linux for it that he somehow optimized for it. When she went to college, her dad had an insisted on picking out a computer for her, instead of involving her in the process, and he got one of those gargantuan laptops that she hated hauling around. So she bought an EeePC for taking the classes and normal day-to-day use.
So idk if somebody has commented it yet but there never WAS an MS-DOS 7.1, not officially. The MS-DOS with some early versions of Windows 9x is called MS-DOS 7.0, but it was never released as a standalone product. But a custom "MS-DOS 7.1", based on the version of MS-DOS from Windows 98, was created by a bunch of people over in China called the "China DOS Union". It gets used as a "modern DOS" like FreeDOS does now, the same group made a minified version of Windows 3.11 that fits on one floppy disk, and that's all I know about this.
I used those netbooks as music players, old consoles emulation and to watch movies. They can still do that. I remember I found a working HP netbook on the trash in 2018
I had the opportunity to use such a Toshiba NB 520 for some time. In general, the computer was really useful for undemanding tasks, the battery life reached a real 8 hours, it worked without problems on trips as a machine for copying files from camera cards to disks, or searching for something on the Internet, or as a computer for diagnosing cars, after installing dedicated software. The main problem was the amount of RAM, the 520 had a serious limitation in the amount that could be installed, and a low screen resolution, so some programs stuck out beyond the screen and you couldn't get to buttons like ok or cancel. And as for the speakers, you're right, some of the better sounding in this type of equipment, because they were made in collaboration with Harman Kardon
man I wanted that Aspire One when I was a kid so badly, there was a version that came with a pentium and it could run minecraft at 20fps and that was gold at the time for me!
I have a net book i bought in 2019 from some no name brand. It has 64gb of memory, 11 inch touchscreen & an intel Celeron 4000. It serves my needs. I save & view dashcam video, file taxes, applied for jobs, went on virtual job interviews & a bunch of other mundane tasks. Somethings, like filling out certain job applications, requires an actual PC. But i don't want to drag out out a heavy 15 inch laptop. My netbook is getting up in age & I'm looking for a new one. But finding an 11 inch laptop with a halfway decent processor is unnecessarily difficult.
I had an Acer Aspire One D260 back in 2011, and it was much cooler back in the day, originally had Windows XP on it, but I installed Windows 7 and managed to get Minecraft and GTA SA running at 'playable' framerates. Minecraft only ran whilst it was in the early alpha stages though, as an update came along at some point that removed compatibility for that particular integrated GPU. It may have been underpowered, but it allowed me to learn the ins and outs of computers and since then I've built a number of computers that I can play actual games on. Had a massive smile when you first bought the Acer on screen, so many memories flooding back.
I had a dell netbook w/ an atom processor and windows 7 starter. Got me through the last 6 months of undergrad when my hp died, but it was intended to be my grandmas laptop long term. She used it for meeting minutes and web browsing tasks. She gave it back once she got an iPad. I ended up using it in an intro to python course in 2018 and worked great with upgraded single 2gb ram. Donated it to free geek in 2020. Hope it helped someone or was recycled to fix more powerful devices.
I own such a tablet PC, the HP Compaq TC-1100. In my opinion those are criminally underrated. I'm still using mine for sirious tasks. The Aspire One was my first ever Notebook in 2015. I cannot express how much I hated that slow peace of junk😅
Those HP entertainment PCs are nice when cleaned up. I have an HDX 9000 "The Dragon" complete in the box, and I upgraded an HDX 18, which has a Core 2 Quad QX9300 which is still way more powerful than Celeron budget laptops sold. now, with SSDs and 8GB of RAM. Late 2000s was a great time.
Solving the heavyweight browsing, here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, my netbook x100e tuned with 4GB RAM and SSD is loving Windows 7-64"pro" (original), a second monitor and a remote desktop for linking to another computer running another Windows Pro.
I loved my Compaq Mini 110c, it was really portable and had long battery life thanks to having a big 55Wh battery. It's an older one so it came with Windows XP which ran great on the Atom N270
seeing that white Eee PC with the textured shell immediately took me back in time because I had one of them back when I was in high school, I got tired of how slow it was with the shitty Windows 7 Starter install so I put Linux on it, which started my life-long love affair with alternative operating systems
Ah, the nostalgia 😅 i remember having one of those, a Lenovo model. Had to look into my inbox for the name, it was an IdeaPad S10e. Bought it in 2009 for 199 euros, it came with 512 MB soldered RAM and a built in 4GB emmc… the invoice says I ordered a stick of 1 GB DDR2 right along with it as it had one dimm slot. no OS, so I put ubuntu on it. Used it quite a lot for university, loved how small and light it was compared to most laptops back then. But the 10 inch display and small trackpad were definitely a limitation, and it had an annoying fan noise under load. I remember using it with an external monitor and keyboard when at home if I didn’t feel like turning on my loud PC. Apparently I sold it on Ebay for 11 euros in 2019, by that time ubuntu was not really useable and could not be updated, so i put some very light weight distro on it.
I got really nostalgic about the first netbook as it was my first ever laptop. My dad used it for a long time and then gave it to me (with Windows 10 installed! I've never used anything that horrible before...). I used it for a long time, although making it bearable with a lightweight Linux distro.
I bought a dell mini 10 back in 08 for school. It wasn't anything special but it did the basics alright. 160gb HD, 1gb ram, Win XP, and a decent number of ports.
I have a Samsung n110 I bought in 2009. It was useless browsing the web even 15 years ago, more so today. I still have it though and the battery still works. I even find it useful as a terminal pc for network engineering tasks making use of its built in ethernet port which is rare today.
19:31 it's not called internet, in windows xp when a web browser is pinned to start it shows "INTERNET" label and browser's name is right under that label.
Back in 2010 when i was in 7 th grade, in Greece they would give us (only the 7th graders) notebooks for free in a way to try to digitalize or modernize the schools, we would bring those things to school and try to do classes. It pretty much didn't work and it was canceled so we were the only 7th graders to ever get those notebooks. i had the acer aspire one, it run dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu, which was my first Linux experience & Laptop experience.
The white ASUS I'd try cleaning with an old toothbrush instead of a microfibre cloth, gets into the texture pattern better. I still have my Sony Vaio P, never marketed as a Netbook but had the same Atom processor and performance. It was slow but tolerable with an SSD upgrade, and I even used it as my main PC for a few months when my desktop had a motherboard issue, and it was small enough to fit into my jacket pocket between college classes. It had the full version of Vista home that I actually upgraded to Windows 7, and that ran smoother, and while the Linux based quickstart mode didn't have a ton of functionality it had the same UI as the PS3 and Sony's cameras and Bravia TVs had in the era, I believe it was intended mostly for quick browsing your camera photos in your hotel room, with the SD and Memory Card slots.
The Sony Vaio that was out in 2010-2011 was a beast of a laptop. Biggest con was the battery and charging port. I still have it I just need it repaired. The amount of Skype and Oovoo done on that laptop was crazy lol. Even had the newest FL Studio at the time and rarely had lag.
I still have my acer aspire one aod270! Made in May 2012. Granted the hinge is borked, but it works. Upgraded the ram to 2gb of ddr3 ram. That's all the upgrading I did for it
netbook 2 i have that same one they where selling back in like 2010 on ebay for like around 290nzd free shipping brand new was a good deal at the time i still sometimes use it you can run games a little better on it if you install modded GMA drivers
The only real limitation of Atom Netbooks was not the anemic performances of the processor, which are actually fine for office type work, but the artificial maximum RAM expansion of 2 GB Intel baked into the Atom to avoid competition with their other CPU lines. I've had netbooks, loved them to death, worked a lot on them on the road, but today they can't even load a webpage because of that severe memory restriction. Too bad, because they were actually very usable under linux.
Windows 7 Starter actually makes perfect sense, as it's not as resource heavy. If I install a VM for basic tasks that requires Windows, I'll always go with 7 Starter. I managed to get a bunch of starter keys from a store that scrapped their unsold netbooks not that long ago. Main downside to Starter is... You can't change your language. As for Minesweeper.. You only get to reveal the blank squares if you click one of them.. Not if you click a square that's touching a mine
The lack of the Win7 boot screen isn't because it's starter, it's because the fancy Win7 boot animation requires a screen resolution of 1024x768 or higher and that netbook have a screen that have the 1024x600 resolution that is so typical of netbooks.
y'know it's bad when a laptop can't even load a loading screen
@@zUltra3Dreal
So that explains why my netbook just says Microsoft Corporation
@@zUltra3D Netbooks WERE MEANT to be bad. It's because of Microsoft licensing that demands those limitations be put in place for netbooks.
I think it was because it was booting from UEFI.
as a chinese myself, when the first laptop booted up i just felt a surge of nostalgia. that's just one reflection of most typical home laptop or pcs back in 2010s, and it surely was my memory
Added: the system vendor is "YLMF" as the wallpaper states, the greatest windows pirate company at that time. It actually lived until windows Vista era and then just disappeared
do you know the name of that browser that actually loaded youtube?
@@mumpy1520 that's called "360 safety browser", a 360 series software which run a newer chromium build
@@mumpy1520 it's "360 safe browser", a qihoo-360 company series software. it can open youtube because it runs on a newer chromium build (80+) which official winXP chrome stopped at 49
@@mumpy1520try supermium
The popup at 11:10 is from a well-known, but kind of infamous Chinese software called 360 Safeguard. The first popup said that your computer boots in 1 minute and 2 seconds, beating 23% of all computers, and suggesting that you should do 6 optimizations. The second popup and the ball at 11:37 came from its system monitoring software, saying that your computer had used 25% of memory and suggested you close some programs (even though the computer is totally fine).
That software is supposed to work like an antivirus and PC optimization software. However, it could take up so many resources and so difficult to uninstall, such that it behaves more like malware. Nevertheless, it is commonly found in computers owned by the Chinese elderly.
btw The browser from the same netbook is called 360 Safety Browser. It's basically some backported or old version of Chromium for Windows XP. As the name suggests, this is also from the same company as 360 Safeguard. The previous owner had the whole suite installed on that poor netbook 😂.
Funnily, I also have this app/antivirus on my Netbook too. ahahah Too bad I cannot power up my Newtbook coz I don't have a charger that fits the plug.
lol, the irony of Chinese software to 'keep you safe' online... from what? Free press and discovering human rights exist elsewhere?!
360 is basically malware
💀💀💀
7:01 that, my friend, is a 1malaysia netbook, they were given out free by the Malaysian government. It was just a generic chinese netbook with eyesore of a 1malaysia sticker placed on top of the lid, the hard drives in those netbooks were notorious for failing constantly. As far as I'm aware they replaced these with much better (but still bad) Acer Aspire Ones
YOOOO it's been found!!!
oh damn we had those??? iirc at least in my school we had the aspire ones (malaysian btw)
i'm pretty sure that netbooks got replaced with lenovo thinkcenter desktop around early 2019 which is kinda nice
@@Villager_U no not really here at least we have transitioned to these netbbok sized thinkpads running windows 10 however
By the shape and design alone, I think it's based off the Eee PC 1000H.
This guy must be Dankpod's long lost brother.
Dankpods + MJD
@@Astrid-- EXACTLY
"SOMEONE'S BEEN IN HERE"
That Eee PC keyboard layout is not that bad. The one on Russian Eee's is miserable, though: firstly 2 or 3 keys on the right of each letter row are even smaller (to fit in rarely used letters), and secondly, some genius decided to move the tilde key into the function row, left of Esc. Yes, that means the function keys are shifted one position to the right! Got muscle memory? Throw it in the traaaash.
netbooks still can run on Linux Mint, I've repaired the Eee700 (7"), 900 (9") and 1000/1005/1010 (10"), the Atom D255 (in German, I live in Argentina, I speak Spanish), the Toshiba NB100/105, and lots of HP Minis, the worst limitation was the ram. We have lots of netbooks as our country gave lots of them to pupils in schools (MIT's OLPC initiative), after 2015 processors were upgraded to Celerons and ram increased to 4 gigs. Those netbooks were crucial in 2020 during the pandemic to keep educational services alive. I sold a month ago a HP Mini-210 with w10 Mini OS (a modified w10). They still have life remaining, not that much, but they're still useful.
Yeah i plan on buying a used netbook to run linux on it. Dirt chip and light weight. Raspberry Pis arent a good solution anymore with their insane prices
I find Netbooks really endearing! They try so hard :)
I have an EEE 1001PX with 2GB ram, Atom N450 and a 250SSD still in everyday use with Q4OS 64bit :D I bought it for school, than I used it as a toolbox to repair other PCs (storing ISOs and installers and to create bootdrives), now it's a "mancave pc" hooked up to a 4:3 monitor and external m+k and speakers. Mainly it's a jukebox/netradio, a little "focus typewriter" so I can write without distractions. Also it's a little beast with dosbox to play old games, really a nice project PC. It also had a 32 bit W7 setup for some old games. Great little pc serving me 15+ years now for almost every single day. Of course not my main PC but i would really miss it if it dies someday and probably get a similar for the same purpose :D
Someone will probably warn you not to go online with it. I have an old laptop for gaming I use for TH-cam too sometimes. Not been hacked yet.
@@markenetube With W7 I agree, all network devices are blocked. But why not with q4os? It's basically an up2date debian with trinity DE. Fun fact: with minitube it can play 720p youtube at 30fps. Pretty impressive for it's spec.
@luki8806 it's an I5 sony viao. It will take win 10, but I find I get crashes on C&C etc. I have Liux Mint on a second partition . That runs like a dream. I used my Samsung netbook every day until 2 years ago. I use a Lenovo one still. Not with an Atom chip. It has a low power Celeron. I love keeping old tech useful. I do think it odd when people mock older stuff by trying to run things made 15 years after they were made. In their time they worked fine. I found a windows 95 PC in a skip a few years back. I was impressed at how fast it was. 16meg of ram. 800meg had.
Q4OS is a good choice for these netbooks. Debian based, resource friendly and up to date, can't go wrong.
49:52 - In the late 00's/early 10's, it was pretty common practice by PC repair corner shops (at least in Brazil) to make 2 partitions on an HD when installing Windows on someone's computer, and the technician would tell the user to save all their data in the second partition. That way, when the computer inevitably needed to be wiped again, the technician would just wipe the Windows partition and keep the second partition intact. Of course, the user would almost never use that partition because they would keep saving their stuff in the default folders, which are in the Windows partition. Good times!
lol
One thing I’ve found Netbooks useful for is a diagnostic PC for automotive purposes (think OBDII). Not as cumbersome as a regular notebook and it doesn’t require much processing power. Adding an SSD always helps too.
LETS GOOO 1 HOUR LONG FROKFRDK VIDEO
I used to have an MSI netbook as a daily driver about 7-8 years ago. It was a dual core Celeron and was actually quite good for what it was, especially with SSD and RAM upgrade. It worked up until last year when the on-board RAM failed, so now it's pretty much dead.
13:20 dang my guy flat out ignored firefox and green chinese inet explorer, that's harsh
36:58 welp, that's nice. Removing ram without removing the battery. That never went wrong in the history of computing. 💡
I will continue to remove ram without removing the battery every single time from here on out
I will remove RAM without removing the battery if it's off, what could go wrong?
@@frokfrdk6:00 can I buy that white eeepc from you?
@@frokfrdk6:00 can I buy that white eeepc from you?
In hindsight, it's not really that our computers felt slower despite the fact that they were... it's that the software didn't require as much power as today's PCs so from a performance standpoint, the software of the internet in 2009 ran just fine on a laptop from 2009. We didn't have as many features and integrations as today, but things ran fine.
Nahhh these things mostly ran like shit on the net. I remember very well having to change user agent to mobile to make it somewhat useful online... In 2013.
That eee PC being covered in motor oil tells that it was used just as intended. As a small crap for a workshop that you can google parts numbers or whatever on. Much better for that purpose than for any office work at all.
You may not know this, but in Latin America, in countries like Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile or Brazil, the government allocated money to distribute the famous netbooks to the educational community. The first models left a lot to be desired, but the latest models already had better features. Today, at least in my country Argentina, they still give out modern netbooks, with Windows 11 and 8 GB of RAM, and some models come with Intel I5.
can't believe frokfrdk made an 1+ hour vid and uploaded it 12 hours before wwdc24
True 😅
Getting in early before everyone goes to wwdc content for the next week
Heh i forgot that was coming up. I used to follow them religiously.
@@TheAppleExperence Only lemmings watch Apple trash.
@@TheAppleExperence Apple is for fkg iddie yots.
Bill Gates killed the netbook. He wouldn't let the product line evolve, demanding that the machines use extremely low hardware specs and punishing anyone who went over those specs with high Windows licensing fees. Chromebooks don't have that problem because, of course, they're not using Windows.
I wish non-CrOS Linux netbooks at least survived.
Had a Dell Mini 10v back in the day. 10.1" screen, Atom N270, and 1GB RAM. Despite its anemic specs, it was an absolutely fantastic Hackintosh and ran Snow Leopard like a dream (with a patched 32-bit kernel).
@TheAppleFreak yeah, I also used my Dell Mini 10v as a hackintosh. That was the only reason I bought it. Today it is running Linux MX Linux XFCE.
To add insult to injury, corporations saw the low TDP processor as an excuse to not put a proper heatsink on it, further continuing the tradition of mid 2000s hot uncomfortable and loud plastic
Speaking of running Linux on these, the one without a tilda would actually be a pain. Not that you couldn't do it, but it's the shortcut for home directory. It makes the difference between typing ~/folder/file and /home/user/folder/file.
For distro, Xububtu or Lubuntu might be good options.
Never thought about that, that is actually kinda funny
been running lmde with mate de on mine, mostly. Well, devuan with mint bodykit by the time i finish with them.
Isn't the tilda key to the left of the space?
trust me my friend even xubuntu and lubuntu are too much for those
The tilde (~) is usually found on the ESC(APE) key.
You can always remap the keys or assign that character to some combination of modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Shift) and a regular key.
The color of the Toshiba Netbook is Gimblit - BCA476 with an RGB of 188, 164, 118.
These netbooks aren't actually that bad - Windows is.
Run Linux and they will be sooo much faster. Linux takes just 200MB Ram.
Some netbooks did/had to because of RAM limitations
Me watching on a 2010 netbook:
Back in 2011 I had a Acer Aspire One 722 Netbook. Powered by an AMD C-60 APU (first gen of AMD APU´s) + 8GB Ram it served me pretty well. With the quite capible GPU in this thing light gaming was no problem. My Dream machine back then was the Alienware M11x, the coolest Netbook ever created. If Alienware made a modern M11x instead of a Handheld PC i would buy that thing in an instant.
I love the netbook form factor! Bought an MSI Wind back around 2010. Upgraded the RAM to 2GB and it actually worked rather well for basic stuff. When it died of old age - the plastic literally broke to pieces - I replaced it with a Lenovo 11e which had a quad core AMD with 4GB RAM. That machine is a TANK which still works perfectly fine other than being terribly outdated. After 5 years or so I replaced with a newer 11e 2-in-1 with an Intel M series, and 8GB of ram. Unfortunately that machine is glitchy and gets stuck in low power mode. Seems to be a problem with the newer 11e generations.
I think the key is to manage expectations. To me these were cheap beater laptops I could take on the go without concern. If I dropped one and broke it oh well.
My son was issued a small 2-in-1 chromebook by his school that looks pretty much identical to the 11e and is for using the school's google docs on it. Even his textbooks are on it. No more textbooks, just a touchscreen laptop; I'm jealous!
I've had a vendetta against Netbooks since 5th grade in 2010 when we were forced to use them. It took four or five minutes to boot up and when I called the librarian over to try to troubleshoot, it booted up in front of her, leading her to say I needed to be more patient.
old netbooks in this video being used in 2024: "oh hi thanks for checking in I'm _🎵still a piece of garbage🎵"_
I still have an AMD based EEE PC and with an upgrade to an SSD and 8GB of RRAM I loaded Q4OS Linux and...it still makes a good basic laptop. Plays 720P video, surfs the web, they really aren't bad little laptops.
Biggest issue w/ these netbooks and linux is the fact that these usually all have 32 bit atoms in them and linux is phasing out 32 bit support so the majority of the major distros just dont work
Oh fk I didnt think of that. If i wanna run linux on a 32 bit cpu im screwed?
@@ashadowintime7305 sadly for the most part, yes
there are a few 32bit distributions out there but officially the kernel for linux has been 64bit only for a while, so all the 32bit linuxes are getting older by the minute
wich on those slow atoms isnt the worst thing, but it may affect your software compatibility
I have a netbook called HP Mini 311 with 256mb NVidia ION graphics, and combined with Windows XP + SSD, it can actually do things and run old games well.
Cool. Im looking for this one to buy it. Which games can run?
@@ChupetaoSP I would say 2005 games or below and at mid-low settings. The only games I have personally tried are San Andreas and both Battlefronts games and they all run fine at mid-low settings.
I still own a HP Mini 311-1000nr that I did a board swap on for the one that had the full nvidia ION. I also flashed the hacked bios to overclock it and added a 2gb ram stick to max out the ram capacity to 3GB. It's fun to tinker with.
Ahhh this brings me back. Believe it or not, before I got my current PC I was using an Aspire One up until September of 2020 for everyday use running on Windows 8. I also played a ton of SM64 on it with PJ64 and I can say that it was even powerful enough to screen record it at 480p no issue whilst playing. It would have surely worked better under Windows 7 or XP but eh whatever. Great video
Not me still using that same Acer Aspire One model in 3:30 as my main computer in 2024. 💀
It was super cool back in the day, but for 2024 standards it's definitely a torture device. Yet, something worth mentioning about my Aspire One is that, even after 14 years using it, the battery is working perfectly. Back in the day it lasted like 3 hours disconnected and after all this time it can survive 1 entire hour before needing to recharge.
Even though it drives me crazy, after so many years together, i've grown fond of it but i do hope i can upgrade in the next years because such hardware can't run windows 10 not even to save its life and windows 7 is already a relic
Still have my Aspire One from 2008, maxed the RAM to 2GB, upgraded the hard drive to 750GB, and running Puppy Linux. Going strong.
1:06:19 That's why the Toshiba netbook worked better - it was a dual core Atom, whereas all the other ones were single core.
I still use a netbook on a regular basis! Can’t say it’s unusable. I didn’t even know why I began using it considering I have a gaming laptop 😂
eee pc x101ch in white is still my goto for music device to take on holiday
I too still use a netbook, I find it useful for some things. I like them for typing things up relatively distraction free and/or for playing music. They can still be quite snappy when paired with a lightweight linux distro (lxle is my fav)
for the lower tdp
3:44 i actually loved this, this laptop was my childhood, unfortunately i spilled milk all over it and it doesnt turn on
If you still have it you should try repairing it.
i have all of those laptop as of now and it's still useful today in 2024 Bro. And for me it's not garbage.
1:25 brat vaio
I had an Acer Aspire One as my only computer from 2010 to 2014 or so when it finally broke. I loved that damn thing. Unfortunately it really did not hold up well to being used for university. But one of the tricks I used to be able to do with it was running it in a mode where it could play music with the screen closed, sticking it in my bag with headphones plugged in and using it as basically a massive MP3 player, between the demise of my iPod and getting my first smartphone. I also loved being able to take it on the train to write without it being jammed up against my chest the whole time. I’ve never been tempted by a Chromebook of equivalent size though because there was just something special about having a fully capable (if dog slow) tiny PC with me all the time.
Funny, my grandparents have the exact laptop you showed in the intro, just in a cool red/brown color instead of black. I think it looks very classy and timeless.
the Nintendo 3DS XXL at 6:43 🫠
Specifications for each laptop:
8:48 - Netbook #1: Asus Aspire ONE D255 Specifications:
CPU: Intel Atom N450 (@1.66ghz, 1core, 2 threads)
RAM: 1GB
HDD: 160GB HDD
SCREEN: 10.1inch
Windows XP
34:20 - Netbook #2: PC100 / CloudNet Go Specifications:
CPU: Intel Atom N270 (@1.6ghz, 1core, 2 threads)
RAM: 1GB DDR2
HDD: 160GB HDD (Fujitsu)
SCREEN: 10.6inch (1024x600)
Windows 7
56:54 - Netbook #3: Toshiba NB520 Specifications:
CPU: Intel Atom N570 (@1.66ghz, 2cores, 4 threads)
RAM: 2GB
HDD: 320GB?
SCREEN: 10.1inch
Windows 7
That power point presentation is so peak
Actually, I'm still have one of these. Helped me a ton at school with typing all the notes during classes. It could be around 10 years now. It is very worn out and running on WinXP. I still use it as typewriter with Open Office. Yes, it isn't enough, but it works and still usefull from time to time.
OMG, the Eee PC! This little gem was amazing! It came with the most horrible custom Linux-like crap installed, but I managed to turn it into a Hackintosh that ran faster than my iMac G5! Using an external monitor and keyboard, I actually made some tunes on this thing running GarageBand. Oh, the memories!
Im glad i stayed up till 1 am waiting for this. Thanks aussie frog
Supermium is cool. Modern backport of actual Chromium builds running all the way back to the XP.
That last netbook would make a good music player.
You caught me! Linux user here!
I'd recommend MX Linux for older and extremely underpowered computers.
He's back!
Awesome video! Love seeing these old machines. :D
That unbranded one is a rip-off of the Sony Vaio FW Series, of which I own one. It's not the best rip-off I've seen, but it does definitely try its best.
Netbooks always fascinating!
Gee, those touchpads are a lot smaller than the one on my 2024 Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 Chromebook.
Ghost was a very popular disk cloning program in the 90s. You could either have two HDDs in one machine (source and destination) or make a special netboot floppy and ghost over a network. back when I was in school I volunteered to set up a new lab of PCs, so we ghosted one win2000 image to all 24 new boxes.
Oh boi... I'm still using that same model of aspire one. The ram limitation suck, the cpu and cooler assembly suck even more, but once you load it with an ssd and some flavor of linux or bsd it works like a charm. I keep mine as a spare terminal, gps and dosbox machine.
I had an Acer aspire One that I bought in 2010. It was the first computer I had with a built-in webcam, so I could go on chat roulette with it. I was also really amazed at how long the battery lasted without it being plugged in. I had owned laptops before, but as I'm sure you know with computers of that era, you could only go a few hours before you needed to plug them in.
I never did any heavy work on it. It was just for word processing and web browsing and stuff with only a few tabs open at a time. At the time I figured that if I was in a program like nursing school or something and had to do online training programs, it would totally be all that I would need.
My ex had an EeePC and she absolutely loved it. Her friend set up a custom version of Linux for it that he somehow optimized for it. When she went to college, her dad had an insisted on picking out a computer for her, instead of involving her in the process, and he got one of those gargantuan laptops that she hated hauling around. So she bought an EeePC for taking the classes and normal day-to-day use.
So idk if somebody has commented it yet but there never WAS an MS-DOS 7.1, not officially. The MS-DOS with some early versions of Windows 9x is called MS-DOS 7.0, but it was never released as a standalone product. But a custom "MS-DOS 7.1", based on the version of MS-DOS from Windows 98, was created by a bunch of people over in China called the "China DOS Union". It gets used as a "modern DOS" like FreeDOS does now, the same group made a minified version of Windows 3.11 that fits on one floppy disk, and that's all I know about this.
I used those netbooks as music players, old consoles emulation and to watch movies. They can still do that. I remember I found a working HP netbook on the trash in 2018
I had the opportunity to use such a Toshiba NB 520 for some time. In general, the computer was really useful for undemanding tasks, the battery life reached a real 8 hours, it worked without problems on trips as a machine for copying files from camera cards to disks, or searching for something on the Internet, or as a computer for diagnosing cars, after installing dedicated software. The main problem was the amount of RAM, the 520 had a serious limitation in the amount that could be installed, and a low screen resolution, so some programs stuck out beyond the screen and you couldn't get to buttons like ok or cancel. And as for the speakers, you're right, some of the better sounding in this type of equipment, because they were made in collaboration with Harman Kardon
0:32 - I had this laptop! It was actually the first ever laptop I used! (And I watched the angry birds movie on it haha)
man I wanted that Aspire One when I was a kid so badly, there was a version that came with a pentium and it could run minecraft at 20fps and that was gold at the time for me!
Dude your videos are so entertaining! Would love to see more!
Ffffff yes, another vid, ive got frokfrdk withdrawal 😂
I have a net book i bought in 2019 from some no name brand. It has 64gb of memory, 11 inch touchscreen & an intel Celeron 4000.
It serves my needs. I save & view dashcam video, file taxes, applied for jobs, went on virtual job interviews & a bunch of other mundane tasks.
Somethings, like filling out certain job applications, requires an actual PC. But i don't want to drag out out a heavy 15 inch laptop.
My netbook is getting up in age & I'm looking for a new one. But finding an 11 inch laptop with a halfway decent processor is unnecessarily difficult.
I had an Acer Aspire One D260 back in 2011, and it was much cooler back in the day, originally had Windows XP on it, but I installed Windows 7 and managed to get Minecraft and GTA SA running at 'playable' framerates.
Minecraft only ran whilst it was in the early alpha stages though, as an update came along at some point that removed compatibility for that particular integrated GPU.
It may have been underpowered, but it allowed me to learn the ins and outs of computers and since then I've built a number of computers that I can play actual games on.
Had a massive smile when you first bought the Acer on screen, so many memories flooding back.
I had a dell netbook w/ an atom processor and windows 7 starter. Got me through the last 6 months of undergrad when my hp died, but it was intended to be my grandmas laptop long term. She used it for meeting minutes and web browsing tasks. She gave it back once she got an iPad. I ended up using it in an intro to python course in 2018 and worked great with upgraded single 2gb ram. Donated it to free geek in 2020. Hope it helped someone or was recycled to fix more powerful devices.
Netbooks were FANTASTIC hackintosh's and mint machines!
I had a pre-netbook netbook. I affectionately referred to it as the paving slab and it ran Windows ME. Perfect DOS machine!
wait wait wait wait that NEC laptop you dropped 50 mins into the video... that was it!!! kismet
great video as usual, always a good new a frokfrdk new video. Greetings from spain
I own such a tablet PC, the HP Compaq TC-1100. In my opinion those are criminally underrated. I'm still using mine for sirious tasks.
The Aspire One was my first ever Notebook in 2015. I cannot express how much I hated that slow peace of junk😅
Those HP entertainment PCs are nice when cleaned up.
I have an HDX 9000 "The Dragon" complete in the box, and I upgraded an HDX 18, which has a Core 2 Quad QX9300 which is still way more powerful than Celeron budget laptops sold. now, with SSDs and 8GB of RAM.
Late 2000s was a great time.
Solving the heavyweight browsing, here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, my netbook x100e tuned with 4GB RAM and SSD is loving Windows 7-64"pro" (original), a second monitor and a remote desktop for linking to another computer running another Windows Pro.
I loved my Compaq Mini 110c, it was really portable and had long battery life thanks to having a big 55Wh battery. It's an older one so it came with Windows XP which ran great on the Atom N270
we missed your videos!
“Goobery”.. wow this reminds me of me.
seeing that white Eee PC with the textured shell immediately took me back in time because I had one of them back when I was in high school, I got tired of how slow it was with the shitty Windows 7 Starter install so I put Linux on it, which started my life-long love affair with alternative operating systems
aaaah, the eeepc. My mum got me one for christmas when they were new. For small teenager hands the keyboard was amazing😂
Ah, the nostalgia 😅 i remember having one of those, a Lenovo model. Had to look into my inbox for the name, it was an IdeaPad S10e. Bought it in 2009 for 199 euros, it came with 512 MB soldered RAM and a built in 4GB emmc… the invoice says I ordered a stick of 1 GB DDR2 right along with it as it had one dimm slot. no OS, so I put ubuntu on it. Used it quite a lot for university, loved how small and light it was compared to most laptops back then. But the 10 inch display and small trackpad were definitely a limitation, and it had an annoying fan noise under load. I remember using it with an external monitor and keyboard when at home if I didn’t feel like turning on my loud PC.
Apparently I sold it on Ebay for 11 euros in 2019, by that time ubuntu was not really useable and could not be updated, so i put some very light weight distro on it.
I got really nostalgic about the first netbook as it was my first ever laptop. My dad used it for a long time and then gave it to me (with Windows 10 installed! I've never used anything that horrible before...). I used it for a long time, although making it bearable with a lightweight Linux distro.
22:53 "The little Intel Atom, running Windows XP, it's watching TH-cam at 480p"
Why does that rhyme 😭
Because you rhymed P with P.
@@LakoIsFun true...
(it was a rhetorical question but true indeed)
Think i found another channel I'll enjoy quite a bit, as a chronic laptop hoarder i shall enjoy this
I bought a dell mini 10 back in 08 for school. It wasn't anything special but it did the basics alright. 160gb HD, 1gb ram, Win XP, and a decent number of ports.
I have a Samsung n110 I bought in 2009. It was useless browsing the web even 15 years ago, more so today. I still have it though and the battery still works. I even find it useful as a terminal pc for network engineering tasks making use of its built in ethernet port which is rare today.
Looks like this Netbook deserves a C64 Laptop makeover swap alternative. Think over this as an excellent idea I came up with no one else did.
19:31 it's not called internet, in windows xp when a web browser is pinned to start it shows "INTERNET" label and browser's name is right under that label.
Back in 2010 when i was in 7 th grade, in Greece they would give us (only the 7th graders) notebooks for free in a way to try to digitalize or modernize the schools, we would bring those things to school and try to do classes. It pretty much didn't work and it was canceled so we were the only 7th graders to ever get those notebooks. i had the acer aspire one, it run dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu, which was my first Linux experience & Laptop experience.
This netbooks with Intel chipsets run better than my Acer Aspire 1 with an AMD C-60 APU, cant even play youtube at 240p
I use my 2012 VAIO netbook as a home server, for file sharing and most of self hosted services works perfectly.
The first laptop is what I was rocking back in 2008
The white ASUS I'd try cleaning with an old toothbrush instead of a microfibre cloth, gets into the texture pattern better.
I still have my Sony Vaio P, never marketed as a Netbook but had the same Atom processor and performance. It was slow but tolerable with an SSD upgrade, and I even used it as my main PC for a few months when my desktop had a motherboard issue, and it was small enough to fit into my jacket pocket between college classes.
It had the full version of Vista home that I actually upgraded to Windows 7, and that ran smoother, and while the Linux based quickstart mode didn't have a ton of functionality it had the same UI as the PS3 and Sony's cameras and Bravia TVs had in the era, I believe it was intended mostly for quick browsing your camera photos in your hotel room, with the SD and Memory Card slots.
i love nuggbooks so much, ive been meaning to do an arch32 eepc forever
The Sony Vaio that was out in 2010-2011 was a beast of a laptop. Biggest con was the battery and charging port. I still have it I just need it repaired. The amount of Skype and Oovoo done on that laptop was crazy lol. Even had the newest FL Studio at the time and rarely had lag.
I still have my acer aspire one aod270! Made in May 2012. Granted the hinge is borked, but it works. Upgraded the ram to 2gb of ddr3 ram. That's all the upgrading I did for it
Wow that Toshiba design really has a nice design. I would've loved owning it back then! I owned an Eee PC btw 😂 lol
netbook 2 i have that same one they where selling back in like 2010 on ebay for like around 290nzd free shipping brand new was a good deal at the time i still sometimes use it
you can run games a little better on it if you install modded GMA drivers
The only real limitation of Atom Netbooks was not the anemic performances of the processor, which are actually fine for office type work, but the artificial maximum RAM expansion of 2 GB Intel baked into the Atom to avoid competition with their other CPU lines. I've had netbooks, loved them to death, worked a lot on them on the road, but today they can't even load a webpage because of that severe memory restriction. Too bad, because they were actually very usable under linux.
Windows 7 Starter actually makes perfect sense, as it's not as resource heavy.
If I install a VM for basic tasks that requires Windows, I'll always go with 7 Starter.
I managed to get a bunch of starter keys from a store that scrapped their unsold netbooks not that long ago.
Main downside to Starter is... You can't change your language.
As for Minesweeper..
You only get to reveal the blank squares if you click one of them.. Not if you click a square that's touching a mine