Walt Mossberg-an American journalist who is the principal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal called netbook a “relatively new category of small, light, minimalist and cheap laptops.”  By August 2009, CNET called netbooks “nothing more than smaller, cheaper notebooks.”

As far as I know, the term Netbook was first used by the Canadian ATIC Company in June 1996. At that time, it is sold as “available online” notebook in the North American market. Later, the trademark was sold to a notebook company of US-Canada (Toronto, California) as a trademark of notebooks to use until now. The emphasis was put on multi-functional, direct Internet accessible as well as portable Network-linkable notebook.

Designed especially for wireless communication and internet surfing, this kind of mini notebook with competitively lower weight and lower cost has been enjoying a good market volume. Thought there is extremely distinct difference between notebook and netbook, I do believe tens of thousands of people will undoubtedly deeply attracted by this smart and brilliant gadget. Indeed, netbook-the mini notebook will widen the personal computer market around the whole world.

Due to its promising potential larger market demanding, nearly all the famous companies have launched their own brands. The pioneering ones on the present market are the following ones:

Eee PC (ASUS); Aspire One (Acer); X110 (LG); Wind PC?MSI ?

Inspiron Mini 9/VYE Mini-V/OLPC XO-1/One A110 (Dell)

HP Mini 1000, HP Mini 2140, Skytone Alpha-400, CloudBook, Classmate PC (HP)

M912 series/T1028 series/S1024/M1022 series (GIGABYTE)

IdeaPad S9/IdeaPad S10/IdeaPad S10E/IdeaPad S10-2/IdeaPad S12 (Lenovo)

OpenBook (VIA); Elegant Q120C (Shenzhou); BiG1 (Founder)

Imini S1(Tsinghua Tongfang); X101(Haier); NC10(SAMSUNG); U101(BenQ); NB100 (Toshiba); T10W(Harni);

VAIO VGN-P13GH/VAIO VGN-P15G (Sony)

Of course, every coin has two sides. The mini notebook-netbook is no exception. Its outstanding advantages contribute to its popularity among common use.  Firstly, its high integration and little heat generating features make it a lower-failure-rate gadget. Secondly, netbook is a lower power-consumption mini notebook, which contributes to its long life span. Thirdly, the stylish and elegant design caters to the tendency towards fashion not to mention its easy-to-carry function which allows people to take it wherever and whenever with ease. The last factor is of course the unbeaten price. At present, the lowest one belongs to the Arthur Wood’s $293, and the international prices of brand Lenovo is $588 while HP enjoys the highest price of $661. The trend is to be more lower-priced and greater functioned.

Of course, netbooks’ disadvantages also cause it to be hard-to-accepted by the professional for its PC professional office performance cannot be compared with a real notebook. Use it to design something is nearly am impossible tough. Moreover, to the game fans, its weaker 3 D gaming performance makes it hard to be appreciated.

On the whole, your choice depends on your needs and budget. If you only use it to surf the Internet, chat, play stocks, watch TV and movies, play simply games as well as use some office software, a smart netbook is your ideal top choice. While if you want to play more advanced and complicate 3D games or use one to do 3D modeling, it is better for you to purchase a laptop or desktop.

Why not come to Chinazrh to have a look at its sea of various laptops and netbooks at amazing price. What you will enjoy is not only its various high quality products but also its considerate and thoughtful service. You will never regret your sensible choice.

A Netbook is a new type of laptop computer, defined by size, price, horsepower, and operating system. They are small, cheap, under-powered, and run either an old or unfamiliar operating system.

Netbooks run either Windows XP Home edition or Linux (not only is Linux unfamiliar to many, but the versions of Linux on Netbooks are not the mainstream popular distributions). They do not run XP Professional, Vista, or OS X. Microsoft arbitrarily restricts Netbooks from running the Professional Edition of Windows XP. Likewise, Apple arbitrarily restricts OS X to Apple hardware and it has never played in the low-end realm that Netbooks occupy.* Vista requires too much horsepower to run well on a Netbook. HP has been the only company to offer Vista on a Netbook. The price, however, was so high that it’s debatable whether such a machine qualifies as a Netbook.

The market for netbooks — small notebook PCs with even tinier prices — exploded in the third quarter of this year, according to market researcher DisplaySearch LLC, as vendors aimed their wares at students during the back-to-school season.

The global market for netbooks, also known as mini-notebooks, was 5.61 million in the third quarter, up 160% from the second quarter, according to a statement today from DisplaySearch, an Austin-based research firm.

Acer Inc. displaced Asustek Computer Inc. (Asus) as the netbook market leader for the first time during the quarter, taking 38.3% of the market, compared to 30.3% for Asus.

Netbook global sales in the third quarter of 2008 hit 5.61 million units, an increase of 160% from the second quarter. Acer was at the top of the list with a 38.3% market share of all those units. With a 2008 sales level of 14 million units (over 2007’s one million sold), the market for netbooks is still relatively small, but the growth is explosive. The question is this: how much margin are manufacturers gaining on these small-priced PCs? In the latest quarter, HP was in third place and Dell was in fifth place, but Acer and Asus are completely stealing the show. If the netbook trend follows in 2009, Acer — the king of low retailer PC prices — should stay on top until this fad is over.