#netbook history

It was sometime in the middle of 2007 that we first heard of the term netbooks. [caption align:aligncenter] The 9″ Laptop Round Up (2008) [/caption] By early 2008, the netbook craze went along with many other brands joining the fray (Read: 10 Things You Need to Know about the Asus Eee PC). Asus sold over 300,000 units in four months and continued by releasing several iterations of the 7-inch, 9-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch netbooks (Asus had 30 models of the Eee PC!). Intel's Role with the Atom The original netbooks were powered by Intel's Celeron M with a single-core processor running at 630MHz. Intel was already working on a netbook-specific processor and by Q2 of 2008, they announced the Intel Atom processor. Despite this, the limited processing capability meant that netbooks were only meant for basic stuff like web browsing, word processing, worksheets and media playback (although back then, I managed to do a little bit of Photoshop as well). Intel was aggressively pushing for Netbooks due to the fact that its Atom processor was in the middle of it all. Netbooks were eating market share from regular notebooks too due to the price point. Read more in our articles including "The Rise and Fall of Netbooks" and "TECNO POVA Curve 2: Top 4 Best Features".