What is a Netbook?

If you thought Notebooks or laptops were small, then try Netbook - the smallest version of a laptop yet. Weighing only 2-3 pounds the Netbook is not much bigger than a packet of tissues or nintendo ds. Its screen varies from 7 to 10 inches diagonally and the keyboard is around 80 % the size of a normal one. It uses a solid-state drive, rather than a hard disc drive.

The operating system pre-installed on most Netbooks is either Windows XP Home Edition or GNU/Linux, though many users seem to prefer installing their own choice of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. This miniature laptop is quite happy to run full office applications, though many users opt for cloud computing - in other words they rely on services and applications that are available on the Internet, since this way there are less hardware requirement.

Netbooks have become so popular that they are taking a lion's share of the market from full-sized laptops. Part of the reason for this is the price that at $350 onwards is much less than the average laptop. However there are a good percentage of returns that experts put down to the user's lack of familiarity with the Linux operating system.