It was October 2007, and Asus was preparing to launch its then unknown Eee PC. It had a 7-inch color screen, an Intel Celeron processor, 4 GB of space, a small keyboard, and a customized version of Linux all in a small 8.9 x 6.5 in package. It actually looked like a laptop; only, it was much smaller and much less powerful that traditional laptops. The one thing that it had going for it at the time was its incredibly low price.
Here was a small, portable notebook that could do simple word processing, had wifi for quick internet access, all at less than US$ 400.
Some people scoffed at the thought at first, but then, a lot of people started buying the Eee PC. After a while, other manufacturers began releasing their own versions. MSI had its Wind, Acer had its Aspire One, and HP its Mini-note. The netbook was now gaining traction in the mainstream. Dell then introduced its Mini 9, and Samsung and Sony soon followed suit.
Now, instead of having super slow processors with limited RAM and limited disk space, new netbooks have relatively more powerful processors, big hard drives, and enough RAM to run Windows XP properly.
What started as a niche product has now become the tech world’s newest darling. The future looks great for the netbook.
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