History of Netbook

The concept of the netbook stems from subnotebooks, while the term itself was introduced by Psion in 1999 and re-introduced by Intel in the first quarter of 2008 shortly after they withdrew from the OLPC Association.
In 2007, Asus unveiled the Intel Celeron-based ASUS Eee PC range running a customised version of Linux (or, user installed, Microsoft Windows XP) on a 7 inch color screen.[citation needed] These machines measure just 8.9 × 6.5in and have less-than-full-sized keyboards. The Eee PC has been a top seller on Amazon.com[4] and is often sold out in retail stores. The EEE's success is largely attributed to the relatively low price (around $350/£230/€300) compared with standard-sized laptops, which easily priced above $1000 at that time.

In mid February 2008, Everex launched its VIA chipset based CloudBook, running gOS. The CloudBook is based on the VIA nanobook reference design. Unlike its closest competitor, the Eee PC, the CloudBook uses a hard-disk. The design of the cloudbook is optimized so it can be held in one hand while typing, or in two hands when using the mouse-cursor control, with the left thumb controlling the two "mouse buttons", and the right thumb a small trackpad, both mousepad and keys are placed directly under the screen.

On April 3, 2008, Microsoft announced a program to extend the availability of Windows XP in "ultra low-cost PCs", past its original deadline for ending the support of this operating system, as long as hardware developers deploy it on systems with limited hardware specifications. Commentators have seen this announcement as a market movement both to prevent mobile PCs eating market share of full-featured desktop and laptop PCs, and to stop the advance of Linux installations on this format.

In June 2008, MSI launched the MSI Wind PC, with features such as Bluetooth and a 10" LED, backlit, 1024x600 screen. This new laptop is the first built with Intel Atom low power technology and competes with the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC which has a 8.9" screen and is capable of a higher resolution. Both laptops are offered with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (from Novell) and Microsoft Windows pre-installed; HP offers Windows Vista on their laptop while MSI ships with only XP Home edition

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