Comments on: The World’s (Very) First “Netbook”

By: mto from ma

mto from ma — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:22:14 +0000

Hi,
I still have my Libretto 70CT. It’s a little jewel – beautifully made – sturdy, solid. I just booted it up and it works as well as the day I bought it.

Mine runs Win98 (I think pre-installed, but maybe I upgraded, I forget). It appears I bought it in early ’01.
I bought it for traveling in Europe, and it was fantastic – used it for several years thereafter in my travels.

Yes, it was expensive at the time, but keep in mind that full-size laptops then were MUCH more expensive in relative dollars than they are now.

@foojah – at the time, the point was not cost, it was the CONVENIENCE/portability of such a small light laptop, keeping in mind that a ‘regular’ full size laptop at the time was around 6 or 7 pounds.

Since I travel a LOT and have a bad back I’ve since owned a Sony Vaio sub-mini from 2002 which I still own, and I am now looking at the ASUS EEE netbooks.

Just dug the Libretto out from my stored stuff, which is why I was Googling it and found this article. I was thinking of putting it on Ebay, but I’m now actually considering trying to install a wireless PCMIA card modem just for the heck of it.
@LibrettoWorld – what do you think?

Even if I could just use it for e-mail, it would be faster than my iPhone, at least for typing. I know they still have Lib 70 drivers on the Tosh site!
But, I am NOT up for switching to a Linux OS.

I have tiny fingers so the keyboard wasn’t much of a problem, I actually have trouble typing on a full size desktop keyboard, but I imagine it might have been for men with big fingers.

By: jordydavis

jordydavis — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:12:38 +0000

What about the HP Jornada? I remember those and they were pretty much a netbook, where you could get them extremely cheap on ebay.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:40:55 +0000

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

http://bluetoothspeakerphone.net

By: Librettoworld

Librettoworld — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:03:15 +0000

IMHO the Libretto is the mother of all netbooks. But, the 70ct is njot the forst one. On http://www.silverace.com/libretto/ you will find the history of this magnificant mini laptop.
Myself, I also dedicated a website to the Libretto, because there should be a place where Libretto owners and lovers can still get help for the little laptop.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:31:10 +0000

I had one of these, I used it for web development on the bus to and from uni. Homesite, Photoshop, Netscape .. I pushed the damn thing to its (admittedly easy to hit) limits!

I loved it to bits … but it got stolen

By: afunbee

afunbee — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:52:38 +0000

I have a Mitsubishi Amity subnotebook. 122Mhz, 48MB ram, 640×480 screen. I recently installed Damn Small Linux to replace Windows 95. I use “elinks” (command line web browser) which gets to most sites that I access. I installed a Wifi card for wireless access. Battery life is poor and I was unable to run off Compact Flash to IDE adapter to go solid state.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:44:40 +0000

@Peet:

It really depends on your perception of what a netbook is, but I doubt that the Atari had wireless netbook capability, or even a full-blown mainstream operating system as I would consider a netbook to have.

@beazer:

I didn’t consider the models prior to the 70CT because of its lower processing capabilities as opposed to the faster (and, inherently, more Netbook-ish) 70CT that surpassed it later on that I featured here.

By: beazer

beazer — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:09:21 +0000

And there were earlier models than the 70CT. These were great at the time – I used it when I was travelling to remote offices, plugged in an external monitor and keyboard when I was in the office, or tried to coax as much battery time as possible on flights.

I reckon the usage would be similar to todays netbooks, just the technology has got a lot better now.

I don’t use it much, but my 50CT still runs (on a current linux distro – I ditched the Windows install years ago).

By: Peet McKimmie

Peet McKimmie — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:21:25 +0000

I have an Atari Portfolio from 1989 with a modem card, running Lynx. Surely *that* is the first “Netbook”?

By: John

John — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:53:10 +0000

When these came out they were terrific for executives that were always wanting something small and portable. Larger laptops were too much to lug around, but this thing was ideal. We put our 3270 emulation software on it so they could have “PROFS”, an IBM application that provided email as well as other functionality.