Remember H/PC's, you know, the netbooks before netbooks. Why

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Remember NEC MobilePro and HP Jornada series H/PC's. I have a MP900 personally, but anybody have a Jornada, how do you like it? Even though the new ones are more powerful I still like the touch screens on the old ones. Anyway, why was there a sudden resurgence of interest in incredibly small computers?

[fast]

Asus is the reason for the resurgance. Though one could simply say the market was ready for them since they can now produce them at a price most people would be willing to pay for them.

I used Jornados for work some time ago. Apart from their asinie lockups they were great, the damn things locked up every couple days. It was then when I realized how much I like Palm.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I always thought H/PC's were pretty cool, but never even got to see one in person back when they first came out.

As for netbooks, I feel that they're convenient but mostly utterly useless for anything other than a glorified portable DVD player or internet browser.

[Lokkenjawnz]

Netbooks took off because they fill a niche very well, and there's really nothing else that fits their niche. I've got an EEE PC 701, the original ASUS netbook and it's certainly not as powerful as the newer ones, but it's still impressively powerful for such a little thing. I've been using it off and on as my main computer because my powerbook's been out of commission, and I don't think I've ever had any issue with it based on its power and such. I almost always have firefox open with 30-60 tabs open at a time along with pidgin, and I can still run any of my emulators up to the N64, and they run pretty well too. The only real downside is that the battery life is pretty paltry, but the newer netbooks have far superior battery life, and are more powerful, so that issue has been addressed.

Crap, that kinda came out like an infomercial. I originally got this thing just as a computer to take with me to class, but damn it's really outdone itself. They're definitely not for everyone, but if you need something nice and portable that's actually got a decent bit of power, they're the way to go!

[fastbilly1]

I have an EEE 900A, but really wanted to buy a 7 series. I bought it mostly to replace my dying Palm Pilot/keyboard since Zodiacs are getting more and more expensive. I use it for typing and general webbrowsing, but I do fit the occasional SNES game in the routine. I opted for eeebuntu, but thanks to work giving me a mobile broadband card to play around with, it is about to be XP again. What virusscan do you use on yours Lokkenjawnz - or do you just run free and reinstall every once and awhile. I get a good 4 hours of life out of mine, though I could get more if I was not online and just typing.

Mod Man, wait till you use one for awhile. I am not a fan of laptops, since they get so hot that you cant use most of them on your laps - I am a desktop man by trade. But a netbook lets me work on the go and it is only warm to the touch. That alone makes it infinitely better than a laptop to me. Also my briefcase now ways 4 pounds, when it did weigh 12. Trust me, big difference when you lug it around atleast 8 hours of the day.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Trust me when I say I like to carry around large and or obsolete hardware regularly, heck I spent the last few weeks carrying around my OG Gameboy in my pocket because I wanted to beat Zelda, Metroid and Castlevania 2.

[otaku]

I think people releazied they don't need much power to surf the web and run basic apps which is what most people do and mobility is nice and has been growing for awhile throw in a low price in this climate and you have strong sales.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Exactly why I use a MobilePro 900 i bought for 50 bucks a while ago on Craigslist. Surfs the net fine, I bought a 5 dollar office suite for it, already had a 16gb Compact Flash card for all my data.

Works great for pocketDOS and Doom, net surfing, music listening, typing up a school paper, and video watching if you dont mind it a little slow and the ghosting from the refresh rate.

Plus with the extended battery I get 18 hours tops runtime with about 12 hours being the norm, and its instant on like a PDA, no waiting for startup

[Jrecee]

I have no idea what a netbook is or what purpose it serves, and I'm not going to return to this topic to find out. I hate learning about new technology. I am trying to begin my descent into senior citizenhood.

[Ramatut4001]

I just got an Asus EEE901XP. I put a 2 GB stick of RAM in and replaced one of the slow solid state drives with a faster 32GB one. It runs Windows 7 pretty well. I turned off some of the fancy aero stuff but it ran fine with it on.

I've never been interested in laptops before but somehow the smaller size and increased battery make a netbook appealing to me. I sit out in my yard with it and read racketboy while I smoke cigars. It actually plays some games as well, though I'm not exactly trying to play Crysis.