What are netbooks and smartbooks?

Wednesday, 09 September 2009 14:00

A netbook is a small, lightweight portable computer. The main difference between a netbook and other portable computing devices is that they typically rely on online services and applications which do not require heavy and powerful hardware on the computer itself. For example, most netbooks do not have an optical disk drive (CD or DVD) and so rely on software to be transferred over a network or through a USB device.
Craig Derbyshire of Ultimate-Netbook, suppliers of mini notebook accessories and netbook accessories said, “Netbooks were originally designed as lightweight devices for use as ‘cloud computers’. This means that they were intended to be used with wireless internet for the purpose of web browsing and sending and receiving email. Many have no significant hard drive or disk drive and so documents, photographs and other material are stored online and accessed via the internet on a netbook device.”

Laptop computers, in contrast, are designed to be a portable alternative to a traditional desktop computer. They have most of the same hardware as a desktop and offer all the functionality you would expect from a traditional home PC. Whilst the battery life on a laptop is not as long as a netbook it can carry out significantly more functions as it has a much larger hard drive, faster processor and better graphics and sound abilities.
The new kid on the block in 2009 is the “smartbook”. A smartbook combines the words ‘smartphone’ and ‘netbook’ and it is between these two devices that a smartbook lies. Smartbooks will be launched in the next few months and will deliver features generally found in smartphones in a slightly larger device with a full keyboard.

Mr Derbyshire added, “Smartbooks will have features similar to that offered by the smart mobile phones. They will range from small touchscreen devices right through to larger twelve inch screens with a full keyboard. They will generally be suited to users who want to use the device to access multimedia content such as the internet or television on-the-go.”

Smartbooks are likely to be launched by the major mobile phone companies in the first instance along with a wireless data plan.