The New Small Laptop – Introducing The Netbook

In the last couple of years, the computing world have bare witnessed to the rise of a new range of small laptops. These new class of mini notebooks have been able to capture a fast growing market. The best small laptops for consumers today are called Netbooks. Lets take a brief look at what a netbook really is.

Size Does Matter For Small Laptops

Netbooks are small notebook computers. They serve the market segment between ultra portables and normal laptops. Ultra portables can be classified as computers which are less than 9″ in size. Normal notebooks are those in the range of 13″ and above.

So, in essence, netbooks are laptops which are in the range of 9″ to 12″ in size. This makes them fit just nice for majority of the consumers. They are neither too small nor too large for the masses.

The New Small Laptops Battery Keeps Going And Going

Size is not the only specification used to describe the netbooks. Another important quality of a netbook is the power consumption. A netbook, is a power saving machine. At the moment, a netbook is able to run at least 6 to 8 hours from a single charge.

Of course, this also depends on the battery in use. At the minimum, a netbook is packed with a 4 cell battery. This smaller batteries, will provide around 4 to 5 hours of usage time. The latest netbooks today come with 6 cells battery.

Smaller Laptops, Smaller Brain Power

In order to save power, these mini notebooks needed a processor that does not consume a lot of power to run. Hence, the widely used Intel and AMD processors are not suitable for it. The first generation netbook from ASUS did ran on Intel Celeron, however. Since then, Intel have produced a new set of CPU chipsets called Atom. Today, Intel Atom is the widely used CPU on almost all netbooks.

Internet Connectivity Is A Must For Small Laptops

The term Netbook probably came from the words Internet and Notebook. That’s what netbooks are meant to be used for ultimately. A notebook for the Internet. As such, another main component of these interNET noteBOOKs is the network interface. All netbooks are equipped with wireless networking.

They are supposed to be able to run at minimum an internet browser. This is why the first generation of netbooks have very little memory and hard disk space. They were not meant to run any other normal applications. Everything, except for the OS and web browser, was to supposed to be on the web with netbooks.

Today, netbooks can run more than just the browser. Most have 1GB of memory and 120GB of disk space. You can practically run almost all your normal applications in today’s netbooks.

The New Small Laptops Give You Value For Money

The first generation netbooks were inspired from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. OLPC project tried to develop a $100 laptop for world’s poorest children. Intel and ASUS partnered together in 2007 to produced the first Eee PC netbook.

Netbooks do not meet the OLPC objective in pricing. They are, however, still carry a very affordable price. At the moment, these subnotebooks have a price range of $300 – $500. This is probably one of the most prevalent reason why the netbook market is growing so fast today.

So, what makes a netbook? These new small laptops are notebooks which have 9″ to 12″ displays, batteries that lasts for 6 to 8 hours, low power consumption CPU, Internet connectivity, and relatively low price.

Are you in the market for a low cost netbook?