What is the Difference Between Laptop and Netbook?

By Ed Fry 

So what is the difference between laptop and netbook? A laptop includes a battery for portable power and a touchpad instead of a mouse for input.

Mini laptops (also called a netbook, subnotebook or ultraportables) take these ideas further still, creating a new market above handheld computers, smartphones and personal digital assistants. Mini laptops aren’t as powerful as bigger notebook computers, and lack the power for big, demanding programs as well as an optical disc drive - so no CDs or DVDs. In short, the difference between laptop and netbook is a netbook is smaller, lighter, cheaper (on the whole) and simpler.

Industry analysts are torn whether or not subnotebooks will cannibalize the laptop market, some suggesting that a mere 10% market share will be taken. Unlikely; whilst mini laptops can perform dozens of tasks to identical or similar standard of larger computers, they will (for the time being) be limited by battery size, processing power and storage space, the difference between laptop and netbook is pronounced enough not to make the former obsolete.

If you’ve got a laptop, even reading this on one, lift it up.

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