Netbooks, being as they are more or less new on the landscape, currently have a few other descriptions put on them such as mini notebooks or ultraportables. With the expression notebook computer being synonymous with laptop.

Netbook computers, are considered to be included in the subnotebooks category, which is a rapidly - developing class of diminutive, lightweight, lower priced laptop computers that is created for common computing plus the use of web-based programs (they are enabled to connect to the web wirelessly).

They’re offered for sale more or less as supplementary devices that can work along with an individual’s every day computing resources. Other illustrative references can include: small, lighter weight, minimalist and cheap laptops; and also lesser, less costly notebooks.

Appearing during the pre-winter holiday season of 2007 - as scaled-down laptop computers engineered for low weight and furthermore, low cost - netbooks left out the cd/dvd drive, made due with smaller displays and similarly keyboards, and scaled back on specification and computational capacity.

Within the time since then, the netbook’s display sizes have had a variation ranging from a little less than 5 inches to a little more than 10, and with their weight in the 1 kilogram (2. 2 pounds) range.

By the middle of end of the decade netbooks had become more than a little bit more cost effective in comparison with common notebooks, to the almost unimaginable of having even been provided as a free incentive with the commitment to an Internet service plan by AT&T in Atlanta, Georgia

During the brief period since their release, netbook computers have been growing in size as well as features, while simultaneously notebook computers are being made lighter in weight and smaller. In view of that, physical traits like their length and width and how little they weigh probably will not be what can tell them apart.

The way it appears now, maybe a Netbook can probably be said to be a smallish, lower-powered notebook computer that has no optical drive(cd/dvd player/burner). However that will not likely be for too long either, simply because optical disc drives are being made ever smaller and will soon fit in a netbook computer. Add to that the rapid improvement of wireless connectivity in computers will make it so that external media like dvd’s and blu- ray disks can simply be done without.

Anyway, for the present time, the netbook computer could perhaps best be defined as a smaller, low cost notebook lacking an optical disc drive.