16 Breakthrough Notebooks: A Look Back

"The Asus Eee PC is widely recognized as the computer that sparked the netbook craze in late 2007. But in 2005--long before the Asus Eee PC came out--Nicholas Negroponte was touting his concept of a $100 laptop at the World Economic Forum (a Swiss nonprofit foundation) in Davos, Switzerland. Negroponte's dream eventually became the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO, which sells for $200 and is meant to put an Internet-capable computer in the hands of every underprivileged child in the world. The public responded positively to the idea of a laptop with a hand crank that would sell for so little money. When OLPC offered the XO in a give-one/get-one scheme in late 2007, the enthusiasm for this little computer skyrocketed. Intel and Microsoft quickly followed the XO down the supercheap, superportable path, and suddenly the netbook was the fastest-growing segment of the computer market. The Eee PC may have reached market first, but the XO is the machine that caught the public's attention."

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