Current netbook alternatives
 

I miss traveling with my old Toshiba netbook. It's the perfect size, weight, and battery life. I thought about buying an SSD drive and upgrading the OS to Win 7, but I doubt it's worth it since the RAM is maxed out at 2 GB. So I'm looking for a replacement although I'm not sure it exists.

What the netbook has that I want:
size: 10.1" screen or not much larger
weight: 3 pounds or not much heavier
battery life: 9 hrs but can live with 7-8
hard drive: 160 GB--doesn't need to be larger
USB ports: 3--has to have at least 2
RAM: more than 2 GB, probably at least 4

I'm leery of the hinges on 2-in-1 models since too many friends have had problems with this design; and I'll never use a touch screen. Unless I find a closeout model with Win 7, I plan to downgrade to it since I don't like Win 10. (No need to get into a discussion of why.)

What I don't want: Mac, Microsoft Surface, Chromebook, or tablet. None of these meet my needs, so please don't suggest them.

Any suggestions for under $1,000? Or am I looking for something that doesn't exist?

I didn't know they still made netbooks!

XPS 12 or 13?

I believe the Thinkpad 11e will meet your expectations, we're going to be deploying about fifty of them to contractors working in the field this year.

Although the pricing is wonky, the Atom based version is more expensive than the Core M version.

I'm not sure how else to describe these little 11.6" Atom Windows notebooks.

They stopped calling cheap small notebooks "netbooks" several years ago, but they never stopped making crappy, inexpensive, low-end notebooks.

And ChromeBooks, which are a slightly less crappy way of making cheap notebook without Windows.

The 10.1 size is mostly dead; virtually all of the cheaper machines are 11.6" and there are a few 10.8" models.

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Three machines worth looking at:
* HP Stream 11 (the closest to a traditional netbook, and dang cheap - the 32gb eMMC storage is really, horrifically slow.)
* Dell Inspiron 11 (although it's technically a 2-in-1)
* Lenovo Thinkpad 11e (already mentioned)

The term is as good as any.

Until you got lower on the list I was thinking Asus T100HA, but the USB port requirement mostly kills it (though you'd technically have 3 total available when docked between the full-size on the keyboard, the micro-usb via OTG and the USB-C via an adapter). I'd say the 3 previously mentioned options are probably your best bet, or maybe something Chinese like an Onda, Teclast, Chuwi, etc (though most/all are going to have touch screens).

you said you dont want to get an apple.... but you can get a macbook air 11" and install windows on it. and it'll run better than any other machines that still exist in this class

Meh; it's not much smaller than the XPS 13 or the Lenovo X250 (or X260 soon) and both are cheaper in comparable configurations and much faster, and it has a major shortage of ports, and it's 4x as expensive as the HP and 2x the price of the little Lenovo or 2x-3x the little Dell depending on configuration.

Worth it if you want a tiny MacOS machine, but I really don't get the appeal of getting Apply hardware and then running boot camp -- second-rate experience compared to MacOS on the hardware, and second-rate experience compared to a machine engineered to run Windows.

I have an HP Stream 11... I wouldn't buy one unless you have the stomach to pry it apart with a credit card and replace the OEM Broadcom Wi-Fi card. I found mine much improved after installing an Intel 3160ac card, which also necessitated installing another antenna for the Bluetooth.

Thanks for all the recommendations. The Dell, Thinkpad, and Lenovo are worth checking out. I want to play with the keyboards before buying anything. (I'm a long-time Toshiba fan and have always liked their keyboards best.) The HP Stream doesn't have enough RAM or large-enough hard drive.

For those of you wondering about the term netbook in the title, I didn't know what else to call what I'm looking for. I realize no one makes them anymore but figured the people who frequent this forum would know what I'm talking about.

I was looking for a travel notebook recently. I ended up settling on a used/refurbished ThinkPad X220 from Arrow Direct. 12.5" screen, 3 pounds, Core i5 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Win 7 Pro, Grade A condition. Cost me about $200. Battery life seems to be 10-12 hours. Has the fantastic ThinkPad keyboard (before they switched to the chiclet style). Blows a netbook or ChromeBook out of the water. Honestly, now that machines have SSDs, it doesn't matter if the CPU is a generation or two old unless you're doing seriously CPU heavy work. And 8GB of DDR3 RAM will cost you $30, or 16GB for $60. The vast majority of people don't have a need for anything more.

With the transition to ULV processors, a full power i5-2520M or i5-3320M processor from a couple generations back are only marginally slower than a mainstream i5-6300U today.

They're all way the heck faster than the Celeron/Pentium CPUs in the netbook-like machines... like 3-4x faster, which will be noticeable to anyone.

The big disadvantage, for some, to the older machines is battery life -- this is less pronounced with the X220/X230 (which for their generation had great battery life, especially with the extended battery) but then again the X240/X250 have absurdly good life now. Also, with 3rd-party refurbished machines you never know what kind of condition the battery will be in -- sometimes great, sometimes worn out.

Still, for $200 plus a little ram, a cheap SSD, and a replacement battery, bringing it up to just under $500, an used X220 beats a lot of newer systems in that price range.

Agreed. The machine already had an SSD for the $200 price, and the battery seems to be in great working order, but with the refurbs you never really know. I bumped up the RAM to 8GB, so $230 all in.

I'd give the Dell E6220 and E6230 a look on Arrow Direct as well... like the X220, it's not the thinnest/lightest in the category but it's rock solid and excellent value in the ~$200 range (not seeing any with SSD in that price range, but still).