Rather well actually. It's funny how short some peoples memories are, but netbooks were very well received.
Popular enough that Intel rushed through some low powered x86 designs for fear of ARM taking off.
Popular enough that Microsoft rushed through changes to Windows XP (both in terms of software code and licensing) for fear of Linux taking off.
In fact they were so successful that complaints were often made against Apple for having no such device (this of course was before the MacBook Air and iPad. Neither of which are netbooks -obviously- but between the two they covered enough of the form factor to keep most of the complainer quiet).
Granted the demand for netbooks have since fizzled out, but they were hugely successful at the time and did the start of the popularisation of users switching away from heavy "powerhouse" hardware to more portable devices for lighter work loads. Credit for which belongs largely to ASUS and the EeePC, which was basically the first consumer netbook - though similar hardware was being built by the One Laptop Per Child scheme - amongst others.
It's also worth noting that ASUS never sued Acer and other OEMs over pathetic design patents over netbooks. And how Diamond Multimedia never sued Apple over portable music players (one could argue the original iPod shared a lot of similarities with the Rio PMP00[1]).
It's not short memory, Apple blogs have been waging a campaign against netbooks since their heyday, just like they wage campaigns against phones bigger than 4 inches and tablets smaller than 10", TV boxes with support for keyboards, styluses, royalty-free video codecs etc. etc. Basically if Apple isn't in the market (yet) then it needs to be torn down, otherwise Apple looks bad.
Popular enough that Intel rushed through some low powered x86 designs for fear of ARM taking off.
Popular enough that Microsoft rushed through changes to Windows XP (both in terms of software code and licensing) for fear of Linux taking off.
In fact they were so successful that complaints were often made against Apple for having no such device (this of course was before the MacBook Air and iPad. Neither of which are netbooks -obviously- but between the two they covered enough of the form factor to keep most of the complainer quiet).
Granted the demand for netbooks have since fizzled out, but they were hugely successful at the time and did the start of the popularisation of users switching away from heavy "powerhouse" hardware to more portable devices for lighter work loads. Credit for which belongs largely to ASUS and the EeePC, which was basically the first consumer netbook - though similar hardware was being built by the One Laptop Per Child scheme - amongst others.
It's also worth noting that ASUS never sued Acer and other OEMs over pathetic design patents over netbooks. And how Diamond Multimedia never sued Apple over portable music players (one could argue the original iPod shared a lot of similarities with the Rio PMP00[1]).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300