The term netbook became well known and very rapidly claimed over 20% share of notebook sales thanks to lower prices, less weight, and longer battery life. No compelling thin clients for the Internet emerged until Asus came out with the first version of its EEE PC in 2007. In other words, perhaps it was time for the return of the thin client, but Internet-style. This could be accomplished if data and applications resided in the cloud, accessed via the Internet. With the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s, there started to be talk of a “network appliance.” The hope was for a low cost computing device as simple to setup and operate as a toaster oven. I have often wondered if added complexity was the main reason for the productivity paradox, the observation that computer and information technology do not appear to result in increased productivity in the economy as a whole despite significant investment since the mid-1970s. The disadvantage is the added complexity of set up, operation, and maintenance. The advantage of desktop computers is the enormous flexibility to run a wide variety of powerful software. This drove a move towards desktop computers and eventually laptops which contained everything a user needed on the computer itself (known as “thick clients”). In the early 1980’s, computers became smaller and less expensive. A thin client was little more than a keyboard, display, and network hardware to allow a connection to the mainframe. Dumb terminals (also known as “thin clients”) were used to access mainframes. In the beginning, computers were large mainframes that were too big for offices or homes. Wikipedia has a nice entry on the definition and history of netbooks. In short: with the Acer c720 Chromebook, we finally have a good netbook. I then explain why the EEE PC did not satisfy these criteria, while the Acer c720 satisfies these criteria quite well. In this post, I draw on this experience to lay out criteria for a good netbook. I’ve thought a lot about netbooks over the years and have experienced various expressions of the concept with an EEE PC, an iPad, and most recently an Acer c720 Chromebook. It is more because I explore the key question: It is less because there’s little analysis of hardware components or comparison with other leading Chromebooks. This review is both less and more than a typical review.
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