What is a netbook? Is it just a portable mini laptop?

October 16, 2009 | News No comments yet

You probably hear the word netbook all the time these days. Do you wonder what is a netbook, anyways? Well, it is a kind of portable mini laptop, but to be more specific it is a mini laptop that is primarily designed to get online, and browse Internet. That’s were the term comes from:

Internet + Notebook = Netbook

The origin of the word netbook is not clear. It was used by Psion in 1999 as a name for their ultra portable mini laptop, but at that time it never gained any popularity. It was popularized by Intel just in 2008 and became widely spread with the production of Asus Ee PC. According to some sources term was invented by Intel and Psion is not mentioned in the story.

Nowadays netbooks developed into a seperate class of mini laptops. Shops list netbooks as subcategory of Laptops. For example here is the netbooks category on Amazon. Netbooks are smaller and cheaper than regular laptops, yet they are bigger than ultra portable mini computers (UMPC). UMPC are generally much more expensive as well. So we can define netbook as an inexpensive mini portable laptop.

Are you interested in netbooks? Follow up closely our netbook reviews blog and get latest mini laptop news and reviews.