What is a netbook? How can you really define a netbook?

I was quite amazed just the other day when i was telling my friends I’m looking to buy a new netbook and I’m still undecided if i should get one now or wait for the winter sales period and maybe get a good deal then. Amazed because most of them had no idea what a netbook is, even though they work in IT related domains.

Thus, I decided to write a short post and try to give a definition for the term “netbook” and also explain what i believe a netbook really should be. Because there’s no “of the book” definition for this word, as it’s fresh and emerged only 2 years ago.

Netbooks are all around us, but most of us don't know what a netbook really is

But, in most cases the term notebook is used to name portable sub-netbooks. Intel was one of the first to use it in order to define Atom powered laptops.

That’s one way to define it and some don’t agree with this approach (including me) as they consider that computers should also meet other criteria in order to be tagged as netbooks. Wikipedia for example calls them a “relatively new category of small, light, minimalist and cheap laptops.” That’s a little better, but still not enough.

I for one consider that a netbook should mark the following points:

• compact and light device: a netbook should be easy to carry around, should not weight more than 3 – 3.5 lbs and shouldn’t be either bulky or have a too big profile.
• great autonomy: netbooks should be portable companions that could allow you a decent battery life. And decent for me is at least 5 hours, with Wi-fi on.
• a netbook must have good connectivity options: with the integrated Wi-fi module being crucial, either 802.11 b/g compatible, or even better one prepped for 802.11 draft n . Bluetooth and 3G are also welcomed, although not necessary a must.
• should be cheap . There have been portable devices that met the criteria above before, but they had hefty price tags. That’s why netbooks should have decent prices, somewhere between 200 and 500 bucks.
• easy to use devices. There’s no reasons having all the above qualities if the end device is hard to use, has a tiny crowded keyboard, a bad touch-pad or a small low-resolution display.

Of course, when you buy a portable device light, cheap and usable, you won’t expect much in terms of performances.  And it’s true that netbooks aren’t as powerful as most of the bigger laptops, but, they arestill good enough for Web-surfing, watching videos online and offline (the modern one can easily play HD ready content – 720p), listening to music, using everyday applications like a text reader (Microsoft Word for example), etc. They’re not meant for gaming (although older games can run decently on them) and resources hungry applications (like rendering software, virtual machines, etc etc).

In terms of operating systems, most netbooks these days come with Windows XP. There are some with Linux distributions (like Kubuntu), and there are OSes special made for such devices currently under development, from Google or Intel . They’re to hit the market in the near future, along with the new Windows 7 Started edition, a basic version of Microsoft’s OS optimized for netbooks .

There are other things you should know about netbooks too:

• screen size: right now the mainstream netbooks have 10″ displays with 1024 x 600 px resolution. Last year 9 inchers were the top notch and in a couple of months lots of netbooks with ~12″ screens and bigger resolution will hit the market and will probably turn customers attention in their direction.
• in terms of hardware, most netbooks have Intel Atom CPUs (low voltage processors, with one or two cores). New platforms for netbooks will surely emerge in the future, like the fresh Nvidia Ion that offers better graphic performances . Especially since Intel prepares the Pine Trail line of processors to replace the Atoms from fall 2009. Besides that, most netbooks come with 1 GB of RAM and 160 GB hard-drives. But you can easily add an extra 1 GB of RAM or buy a bigger storage drive or even and SSD.
• keyboard and touch-pads are important also. The first netbooks were so small that these were incredibly hard to use unless you had tiny fingers. Things changed now and most netbooks offer keyboards nearly as big as the standard ones and even keyboards with independent keys. You will still need some time to addapt and get used to these keyboards, but after a couple fo hours, everything should be just fine.
• a netbook has no internal disc drive (there are external ones that can be connected via USB).
• netbooks usually come with a couple of USB slots, Lan Ethernet slot, card reader, VGA output and even webcam.

A 15: notebook (left) next to a 10

There would be many other things to say, but it’s time to wrap up. In the end, netbooks are portable, compact and cheap devices, but powerful enough to run regular every-day applications . They provide most of the features you would need from a portable device, but are not made to become your primary computer. They’re more something like a secondary travel companion .

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