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I remember as a kid I really wanted a netbook for some reason, and I really don’t know why. Maybe it was the tiny size of them that made me want one. Every time I went to a store with a electronics department, I would go there and just look at them, and imagine all the things that I could do with a laptop that small, stuff like carry it around with me and just, use it. And like sure, I already had a big bulky 2000s era laptop that I would use, but what is the fun of that? It was huge and unwieldy as fuck to carry, with a battery that barely lasted 2 hours and a dusty copy of Windows XP. I was already sick at the look and feel of XP, and I was desperately wanting something new. And Windows 7 was that new thing that I wanted. The Aero look was awesome, and I really really wanted to use an OS that looked just like that. Sadly, the laptop I already had didn’t like running Windows 7, and my parents would always refuse to get me a newer laptop because I already had one “that worked”.

These netbooks would probably frustrate me more however. They ran Windows 7 Starter, which was the shittiest version of Windows of all time (proceeding Windows 11, of course). It was stripped down to the bone. You couldn’t even change the wallpaper on that OS, which meant that you’ll be reminded of the fact that you cheaped out on the laptop. But to my knowledge, aren’t these laptops just, regular laptops? There is nothing stopping you from ripping out the stock OS and replacing it with regular Windows 7 or Linux if you so wanted.1 At least they aren’t like the Surface RT tablets, which were these horrible tablets that are not x86 based, instead using some weird ARM SoC. They are so bad you can still find many of these floating around on Facebook marketplace, for a very very cheap price since you can’t really do much with them (without hacking the shit out of them). I think the holy grail of netbooks that I remember seeing was probably the very small Sony Vaio P things that I would remember seeing back in the day (and god, I really wanted one so fucking bad). These were really really small and very portable, perhaps too portable even. These were outrageously expensive however, and well, there was no way in hell I could’ve ever gotten one of those at all, lmao. Green Ham Gaming made a video taking a look at one of these netbooks, and while it was underpowered, it was very very neat to look at, at least. I really wish that Sony would make these but with modern hardware, imagine what things it could do with a Apple Silicon equivalent CPU, holy shit. 2

I would eventually get my first taste of the netbook experience a couple years later however. So my sister’s school was part of a government program to offer cheap and affordable laptops for every student, and she eventually would get one for free™. To be expected, these laptops are not great. First of all, they ran Linux, but the government was like “we need to make sure these don’t get bricked!” and then proceeded to lock down the OS so hard. You couldn’t even update the OS without root permissions, and the only account that had root perms was the “Support account”, which was of course locked behind a fucking 15 digit password because fuck you. Another cool thing about these laptops is that the internet on these things were censored, which means that trying to search some stuff would inevitably lead to a pop up, saying that “Sorry! This content is blocked”, which sucked lmao. Another not-so-great feature of these laptops was the fact they had anti-theft software installed on to them. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that these had the tendency to just, lock themselves out. Eventually these laptops would be phased out, since it was found that most students really didn’t use them for education it turns out. I remember that one netbook fondly despite all the bullshit that I had to deal with it. I managed to get Minecraft running on that thing a while back, and while the experience was terrible, it was still Minecraft, and it fun. Eventually this laptop would become too old for the modern internet, and the OS outdated, which would cause this laptop to become abandoned and left to rot on a shelf. I should make a post about this laptop someday, but not today.

The role of the netbook was eventually usurped by the smartphone, by those cheap ass Windows laptops that are sold at like 300 dollars, and awful locked down Chromebooks. And out of all of these, I really really hate the Chromebook. You can’t replace the browser with something else, you can’t really access the system files, you can’t really do much with anything. And sure, the higher end Chromebooks are probably awesome (god knows how much I wanted a Pixelbook just to get Linux on them, lmao), and you can get Linux apps running on ChromeOS, but that still doesn’t change all the bad that these devices have. Being real however, I think the smartphone did significantly more to kill off the netbook than the Chromebook tbh. Once mobile browsing got good enough, most people just jumped ship for the most part. And then smartphones got ruined when every website started trying to move to apps. And the cheapo Windows laptops are also terrible, but at least with those you can install a fresh copy of Windows 10 LTSC on them, or even get Linux or something.

Tangent 1: so I am employed i guess?

finally got a job after 2 months of suffering through Indeed’s never ending ghost-a-thon. Fucking hell. I guess I won’t have as much free time to write on this blog (or to do much however), but I guess I will finally have money again, lmao.

Also god I fucking hate Indeed so much, it is genuinely hell.

tangent 2: so uhh, maybe windows 11 ltsc is not bad after all

So a couple days ago I decided to replace linux on my laptop with windows again, partially because i was starting to get a bit frustrated with linux recently, and mostly because i wouldn’t have a lot of time to spend on random linux fuckery compared to in the past (what job does to a mf). windows 11 ltsc is pretty good if you need windows that isn’t as shit, tbh.

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  1. I mean there are some ARM netbooks but these suck and you never really see them at least where I live. For the most part, most netbooks would be those shitty samsungs or acer netbooks.↩︎

  2. I know that GPD makes some smaller laptops like these, but those are x86 based and not really great for battery imo (also not to mention the fact that these are made for gamers for the most part). Also holy fucking bingle, look at those prices, lmao ↩︎