It actually was done in the Intel days, and it was also wildly popular -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC

microtonal 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I had one, but even for those days it had a mediocre screen, mediocre keyboard, mediocre CPU, and mediocre slow storage. The MacBook Neo has none of that.

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lowbloodsugar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hilarious comparison. I bought one. Unusable garbage. Tiny screen. Unusably slow. 8 second battery. Awful keyboard.

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benoau 4 hours ago | parent [-]

...and yet this sparked a revolution called netbooks that took over a full 20% of the laptop market at their peak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook

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doubled112 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They sold well. In my experience working at Staples at that time, small and cheap beat any other consideration for many customers. Hard to argue with a $99 PC.

A few months later, they'd realize it wasn't working out, come back, scream at us, and buy something bigger and faster.

I really liked the MSI one I had, but I knew what I was getting into.

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vel0city an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, a ton of people bought them. Then they took them home and used them. Then they bought something else.

Now we don't really have mass-production netbooks anymore.

	▲	regularfry 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Part of that was incidental factors. The 701 happened partly because of a glut of cheap, standardised screens designed for that first generation of in-car dashboard sat-nav systems. It didn't help that those screens weren't particularly good.

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fragmede 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even Apple made an 11" laptop in that era!

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lowbloodsugar 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, I did buy one =)

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baal80spam 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You must be joking. I had Eee PC, and it was terrible.