Since their introduction at the beginning of 2008, so-called netbooks have had a sudden, meteoric rise; sales have surpassed all projections, and new launches have dominated much of the gadget press. How did this happen all of the sudden, and why? Can the netbook growth phenomenon possibly continue unabated? In the second installment of this series, Ars explores the past, present, and future of the netbook form factor. Part I, entitled “WEee have lived before,” explored the surprisingly long history of netbook-style computers, from their origins in the early days of x86 to the long hiatus before the rennaissance that created the modern netbook. This second article will explore the netbook’s resurrection over the last few years, through the OLPC, Classmate, Nanobook, Eee, and Menlow platforms and devices.

WEee have lived before: the TL;DR version

In Part I, we explored three distinct approaches to the netbook, exemplified by the HP 200LX series palmtop, Psion’s 5 series palmtop and 7 series “Netbook,” and Toshiba’s celebrated Libretto. The LX used 80186 hardware, the Psion devices used ARM and a custom OS, and the Libretto used laptop hardware and some very fancy engineering, to achieve somewhat the same ends. For a combination of reasons involving undesirable spots on the continuous tradeoff between performance, size, and price, all three approaches substantially failed. Netbooks would have to wait for their own platform, and the form factor quieted for a number of years, from 2000 to 2007.

Intel, meanwhile, took note of the engineering success achieved by OQO’s Model 01 computer, which ran Windows XP on a 14-ounce brick with a five-inch screen and a slide-up keyboard. Although the Model 01 accomplished this feat for $2000 using a Transmeta processor, Intel seemingly reasoned it could do better, and along with Microsoft, produced the UMPC, its first attempt at an x86 ultraportable form factor. The result was underwhelming, partially because the process technology wasn’t quite there, but more because of the unfortunate decision to go without a keyboard, which constrained the use-case considerably. Intel had chosen the wrong role model for its platform, and tried to do too much, too soon. Clearly, something different needed to happen for low-cost, ultraportable x86 computing to really take off.

OLPC: technoevangelism brings the netbook to the world's poor

The OLPC X0

The answer came very indirectly, and from an unlikely source: a nonprofit with big dreams called One Laptop Per Child. Its founder, Nicholas Negroponte, also the founder of the Media Labs at MIT, had a vision of a world in which laptops would be cheap enough to bring the advantages of modern education to the world's poorer schoolchildren. In service to this vision, at the World Economic Forum in January 2005 Negroponte's project announced a new laptop called the XO developed specifically for children in the developing world. The XO sported minimal hardware that was considered obsolete for PCs in the first world: an AMD Geode processor, 1GB of flash, a tiny LCD touchscreen, USB, and WiFi. It ran a custom Linux variant and sported a battery which the designers envisioned recharging with a hand crank.

The XO was intended to be manufactured in fantastic quantities, to allow economies of scale to reduce its price to the staggeringly low sum of $100. With the cost of laptops reduced to a single Benjamin, developing countries with little infrastructure could deploy them rapidly and extend the digital revolution to all their children. Brazil's entire child population could be supplied with laptops on a continuing basis, one per child on entering school, with the proceeds of an endowment typical for a single top-flight university in the USA. These laptops could replace much of the more expensive books-and-chalkboards infrastructure of traditional education, allowing countries to turn out whole generations of well-educated, computer-literate youngsters and make the quantum leap to developed status in one fell swoop. To Negroponte, the project was nothing less than the key to developing humanity's potential for the majority of its members.

Model OLPC XO-1 Screen 7.5" 1200*900 dual mode color/grayscale Processor AMD Geode 500Mhz Storage 1GB Flash Memory 256MB Battery Life Disputed, about 4 hours with color screen Weight 3.5 pounds OS Fedora Linux with "Sugar" UI Price $188 cost to build, available to consumers for $399

Direct sales to first-world consumers didn't fit with Negroponte's altruistic vision. While some first-worlders would probably have been interested in buying one, Negroponte and the OLPC project initially dismissed such an option as a dilution of the project's duties to children in poorer nations and a compromise of its nonprofit philosophy. The OLPC was an education project, not a technology project. While OLPC later relented and introduced the barely functional "Give One Get One" program, this was more a reaction to the project's floundering finances and practical failure to distribute computers.

The project was a bright flame, to be sure. Within nine months of its first announcement, the laptop was being touted by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and had the sponsorship of Google, AMD, Red Hat, and others. The UN jumped onboard officially in less than a year, and countries like China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand began to show interest. Negroponte's initial goal of producing 100 million laptops in the project's first two years of production started to sound like a possibility.

Then, reality set in. Working prototypes of the XO didn't emerge until May 2006, by which time the expected price had risen, first to $130 and then to $188, robbing the project of its shockingly low price tag and sapping much of its third-world appeal. The beginning of volume production, which was predicated on firm orders for five or six million units, some billion dollars in initial commitments from host governments, was delayed until 2007. Worst of all, the hand crank proved to be unrealistic, and, after being replaced with an external foot pedal, was scrapped altogether. Meanwhile, criticism on pedagogical grounds of OLPC's general idea of better education through laptops accumulated, as did some embarrassing stories of failed of trial projects.

Classmate: Intel’s answer to OLPC was a repackaged UMPC

Intel's Classmate PC

Intel’s watchful eye took notice of the OLPC project. While Santa Clara initially dismissed the XO as a "gadget" without the capability to run the PC applications users would need to improve their lives, the CPU giant quickly decided to start a competing project in early 2006. It will probably never be clear what Intel’s true intentions were in starting such an initiative. While a genuine concern for education is not out of the question, it’s more likely the decision stemmed from a desire to bring cheap computers to poorer nations in volume, to scuttle the OLPC’s vision by sapping its energy, or both. It is, however, unlikely that Intel intended its competing project to be a trial run for a netbook form factor in the first world.