Netbook for students

I don't have a good sleep last night. I am disturb a little bit because my daughter and his groupmates had their study and review session of their defense in our house. I prepared a nice dinner and breakfast for them. They don't sleep the whole night. Since first week of March , my daughter and his classmates are very busy. I don't really understand what they are doing because purely instrumentation and control engineering. I am also wondering each of them using their own netbook. I am asking them "How those engineering students before survived without a laptop and when computer was not yet in demand?"