Do they not need more to function properly?

mines 60gb

LOL

As per their whole ideal – lightweight operating system, running few progs at a time and using sensible less memory-intensive programs, you can stretch 1/2 or even 1 Gb pretty far.

That and they're cheap.

Add more.

Yep most only run XP so 1GB is fine for what they are intended for (web, email, some light Word/PowerPoint use).

Having said that I upgraded our Samsung N110 to 2GB – just because it was easy and cheap to do so.

Actually it is a restriction from MS believe it or not to manufacturers of Nebooks. If I can be bothered I will even find the stupid page on their website listing the restrictions.

BTW you can still upgrade the memory but for most it means you will have to throw away what's in there as it is in two 512MB chips.

As vrapan says. When netbooks came along Microsoft offered the manufacturers a new, cheaper licence type for XP for "low powered computers".

Machines qualify as long as they have a single core low power CPU, no more than 10" screen, 1GB RAM, 160GB HD (32GB if SSD). Hence all the netbooks out there that are to that spec – manufacturers can offer higher specs but the extra cost of putting regular XP on there would add a chunk to the price.

Windows 7 is much the same deal but relaxed slightly around CPU and HD size – still a 1GB memory limitation though.

Damn, that means my PowerBook running OS 10.4, with Adobe CS, among other things, is incapable of running Photoshop files up to 100Mb, what with it's meagre 80Gb h/drive and 1Gb RAM, then. Must be a figment of my imagination, then.

you can still upgrade the memory but for most it means you will have to throw away what's in there as it is in two 512MB chips.

Mine was a single 1GB SODIMM which I sold on eBay for a tenner to offset the £20 the new 2GB SODIMM cost me 😀

…my PowerBook running OS 10.4, with Adobe CS…

Blah, blah, macs are great, blah, blah.

I didn't realise that PowerBooks were considered netbooks (i.e.very cheap ultra-portables with long battery lifes. 🙄 )

Cos you dont really need more than 1gb to browse the web

It's horses for courses really. You don't buy a netbook if you need a powerful machine for photo or video processing. It's why my wife has a desktop PC for 90% of her work and for when she's travelling she has the netbook to download photos and do email.