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Netbooks and bad journalism
Apr. 17th, 2021 11:48 amThe Verge has a navel-gazing article about netbooks, those tiny, cheap laptops that were incredibly popular for a few years in the late oughts and then vanished utterly by the early teens. And by navel-gazing I mean that the author interviewed a few of his journalist friends, none of whom knew any more about the reason netbooks were popular than he did, and then wrote an article displaying his profound ignorance.
It's very simple, for those who are not narcissistic tech journalists: Netbooks were two things that both had a significant market, at a time when there was no other way to take the internet with you other than carrying around a laptop. 1. They were tiny. At a time when a regular laptop weighed five pounds and a big screen laptop six pounds, netbooks were just one kilogram. A netbook would fit in any old shoulder bag with lots of room for other stuff; a notebook required its own dedicated bag. #2, Netbooks were cheap. At a time when the cheapest full size laptops cost $600, and a decent thinkpad cost $1000, a netbook could be had for less than $300.
Size of course was a huge selling point. At the time, the only viable way to access your email and read the latest doings of your friends on Myspace and Livejournal was with a laptop. A tiny laptop that didn't need its own bag and wouldn't take up the entire surface of your table at Starbucks was vastly preferable, even if it was molasses slow and had a keyboard made for hobbit-sized hands. And of course, tech journalists and other professionals who needed to travel a great deal were always looking for a notebook that was smaller and lighter, so they wouldn't need such a heavy carryon bag. Some of them were even willing to put up with a crappy undersized keyboard to get that lighter carryon. Ultralight laptops had existed for a long time, but they cost a lot more than a standard laptop, and were hard to justify on a journalist's salary.
Cost was also a huge selling point. A $300 laptop made owning any kind of computer possible for the first time for a huge number of low income people all over the world who would otherwise never have been able to afford one. People who might as well be utterly invisible as far as narcissistic tech pundits are concerned.
Then in 2010 Apple came out with Ipads, on the one hand, and with Mark II of the Macbook Air on the other. And within a few years the entire technology industry followed in their footsteps as usual. Full sized but thin and ultralight laptops came down in price to $1000 or less, and siphoned off from the netbook market all of the professionals and writers who were looking for affordable-to-them small and light writing machines. Tablets and smartphones siphoned off all the people looking for devices to provide internet access which you could carry with you. Meanwhile, laptop makers started making full size laptops lighter and lighter, and selling them for less and less money, until the netbooks were left with no one willing to buy them.
It's very simple, for those who are not narcissistic tech journalists: Netbooks were two things that both had a significant market, at a time when there was no other way to take the internet with you other than carrying around a laptop. 1. They were tiny. At a time when a regular laptop weighed five pounds and a big screen laptop six pounds, netbooks were just one kilogram. A netbook would fit in any old shoulder bag with lots of room for other stuff; a notebook required its own dedicated bag. #2, Netbooks were cheap. At a time when the cheapest full size laptops cost $600, and a decent thinkpad cost $1000, a netbook could be had for less than $300.
Size of course was a huge selling point. At the time, the only viable way to access your email and read the latest doings of your friends on Myspace and Livejournal was with a laptop. A tiny laptop that didn't need its own bag and wouldn't take up the entire surface of your table at Starbucks was vastly preferable, even if it was molasses slow and had a keyboard made for hobbit-sized hands. And of course, tech journalists and other professionals who needed to travel a great deal were always looking for a notebook that was smaller and lighter, so they wouldn't need such a heavy carryon bag. Some of them were even willing to put up with a crappy undersized keyboard to get that lighter carryon. Ultralight laptops had existed for a long time, but they cost a lot more than a standard laptop, and were hard to justify on a journalist's salary.
Cost was also a huge selling point. A $300 laptop made owning any kind of computer possible for the first time for a huge number of low income people all over the world who would otherwise never have been able to afford one. People who might as well be utterly invisible as far as narcissistic tech pundits are concerned.
Then in 2010 Apple came out with Ipads, on the one hand, and with Mark II of the Macbook Air on the other. And within a few years the entire technology industry followed in their footsteps as usual. Full sized but thin and ultralight laptops came down in price to $1000 or less, and siphoned off from the netbook market all of the professionals and writers who were looking for affordable-to-them small and light writing machines. Tablets and smartphones siphoned off all the people looking for devices to provide internet access which you could carry with you. Meanwhile, laptop makers started making full size laptops lighter and lighter, and selling them for less and less money, until the netbooks were left with no one willing to buy them.
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