If it, and netbooks as a hardware category, failed, it was because in the end they turned out to not have been worth it. I used a netbook happily for about a year or two, it cost ~$400 if I recall correctly, and afterwards I donated it to my sister who I think used it for a while as well.

That's at least $150/yr for a low end product fun but uncomfortable product. After the netbook I upgraded to a Macbook Pro that was $1250, and I used it for 8 years, after which I also donated it to my sister, and she's still happily using it. That's a roughly similar $150/yr, but for a best in class product with great comfort and wide usability.

I wonder if anyone used a OLPC's for more than a year or two.

For "cheap," netbooks as a category have been replaced by your run-of-the-mill entry-level laptop. The cheapest Dell Inspiron starts at ~$300. $400 gets you an Intel i3 or an AMD Ryzen 3, both of which are leagues better than an Atom.

For "small," the category was replaced by Ultrabooks as people realized that it's usually better to have a thin laptop that doesn't force you to compromise on the display or keyboard size.

I remember traveling with a netbook so that I'd have a computer I could use for tickets and reservations, and even for that, the low resolution 8-10" netbook screens were painful. 12-14" Ultrabooks with >= 1080p panels are much more comfortable, and the weight is comparable.

To be fair, you're comparing netbooks then what what we have now. At the time, the pokey, sluggish Atom was the best you could get for a lightweight system and longer-than-usual battery. Remember... the common alternative to a netbook then were awkward 1-2 inches thick 'desktop replacement' style monstrosities unless you wanted to pay a LOT of money relative to performance... and netbooks were $300ish versus $1200+ for laptops at the time. I was grateful for my netbook and they really did seem to push portables into becoming better at being... well, portable.

To be fair there were fairly compact/light* laptops at the time from a variety of manufacturers. But the period between, say, 2000 and maybe the late 2000s in particular laptops were becoming common but you had to make serious tradeoffs between price, size/weight, performance, and other features.

* By the standards of the time

I've had both a "subnotebook" (a Fujitsu) and a small Chromebook. The <13" form factor can be nice for travel but, in both cases, I ultimately came to the conclusion that the compromises relative to a 13" form factor that didn't weigh that much more just wasn't worth it.

The Asus eeePCs were great for the time as a beat-around little on-the-go laptop, when most laptops were still 15 or 17 inches and weighed 5-10 pounds.

I really enjoyed the one I bought in college - it actually fit on those terrible fold-out desks that lecture hall seats have.

Didn't netbooks as a category just merge into cheaper laptops? I doubt they were unprofitable for the manufacturers.

I'll bet the children in Africa etc with the OLPCs used them for several years. They can't switch to a MacBook.

They didn't really do much in Africa eventually, if anything at all.

but not anyone's OK with spending $1250 upfront

if you earn $250 a month in a developing country, $1250 is like 9-month pay (* calculation may be wrong --- gotta sleep?)

Sure, but it is just an extreme example of the TCO of the OLPC being comparable to a high end professional grade laptop. It was just a very hard problem to solve, and the technology was not quite there yet.

Definitely not suggesting kids in Africa should just buy macbook pro's, but $100 is also a lot of upfront cost for a product that's actually not that useful and destined for the wastebin within a year or two.

I do hope I'm wrong and it brought some cool technology too some kids far removed from the big cities.

I wouldn’t have wanted to take a MacBook round outback Australia for months.

A netbook, feh, doesn’t matter if it breaks.

I think you underestimate the build quality of the Macbook Pro, it is quite literally the best laptop ever created, if they produced them now with modern chips and monitors, developers would buy them by the thousands and possibly macos would still be the developers os of choice. I wouldn't hesitate to bring it to the outback. What do you think would happen to a macbook in Australia?

I assume he's saying that if he needs a minimal laptop, he'd bring something pretty cheap and disposable--as I've done on trips. I've certainly brought a cheap Chromebook on some trips even if I use a MacBook at home.

"Netbooks as a technology for the most part"

I know people that created books and websites on a netbook, who got though school and business meetings with them. I never seen that for a smartphone.

People absolutely get through school and business meetings with smartphones.

If you visit a community college or know someone who teaches at one, a surprisingly high percentage of students do their homework and write papers entirely on their phone. It's kind of amazing.

ergonomically, that sounds like torture to me