Laptops and Netbooks, we hear these terms all the time but the differences between them are slowly diminishing.
Generally we think of Netbooks as having a screen size of up to 10.1 inches but if the release of yet two more ‘Netbooks’ with larger screen sizes is anything to go by, and it is, we can no longer classify Netbooks by size alone.
The Acer Aspire One now has an 11.6 inch widescreen display whereas previous Aspire One models came with an 8.9 inch or a 10.1 inch screen size.
The Aspire One will have a full size keyboard to go along with its larger display which is pretty handy. One problem with the smaller sized Netbooks were the tiny keyboards with keys that only the nimblest of fingers could manage to manipulate with any degree of accuracy. Yes we welcome the larger keyboards.
Rival company Asustek are also about to release an Eee PC Netbook with an 11.6 inch screen.
Dell has already done this with their Inspiron Mini 12 which has a massive 12.1 inch screen, well massive as far as Netbooks go.
Remember Asus was the first company to produce a Netbook back in 2007 and in doing so sparked a Netbook war. Companies have been producing a never ending stream of Netbooks ever since so that now we are spoilt for choice.
Once they had exploited just about every imaginable combination of designs, colours, and specs, they had to come up with something new to whet our appetites and keep us hungry and one way to do this was to increase the screen sizes and of course the keyboard sizes.
So nowadays, we really have to differentiate Netbooks from Laptops more by functionality than by size.
Netbooks are neat little devices we can carry around to consume content and write a few emails whereas on Laptops we can also create and edit content, so in effect, Laptops are really like mini desktop PCs.
So what is coming next?
Well no doubt more of the same except that Netbooks are likely to get even cheaper. The new AMD Athlon Neo processors and the Intel CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processors are more energy efficient, give us more battery time and they cost less.
This means that new ultra thin low cost Laptops which of course will perform better than standard Netbooks could be the next “in” thing and will force Netbook producers to drop their already ultra low prices even more.
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