The rise of the netbook

Over the past few months small, inexpensive notebook computers, often referred to as ‘netbooks’ have become increasingly popular. These miniaturised PCs have been designed to revolutionise the way computers are used on the move.

You have probably noticed reviews of the likes of the Asus Eee PC and MSI Wind in Computeractive’s reviews section, but you might have wondered whether they offer a real alternative to a larger, pricier notebook. In this feature we’ll take a look at the tiny notebook phenomenon and reveal everything you need to know.

Before looking in more depth, it is important to understand exactly what is meant by the term mini-notebook. So-called ultraportable notebooks have been around for years, but in order to pack power into a tiny case these normally used expensive technology that pushed their price well above £1,000.

These are still available, but with such high prices they are generally the reserve of business users with deep pockets and we don’t often review them in Computeractive.

When we talk about mini-notebooks in this feature we mean those developed using new low-power processors, and which cost less than £400. This new type of mini-notebook has become increasingly popular since the very first one, Asus’ Eee PC 701, appeared in the summer.

What’s in a mini?
Mini-notebooks are characterised by their size, and most have small screens measuring between 7in and 10in diagonally. The smallest, such as the 7in Eee PC 701 have a display resolution far lower than that of most notebooks, but some more recent models have larger 9in or 10in displays with a higher resolution.

Some mini-notebooks use traditional hard disks while others, such as the cheapest Acer Aspire One use a solid-state drive (SSD). See our review here. These use the same kind of memory found inside a USB memory key to store files and other information.

These don’t have any moving parts, so they are shock-proof, but as prices are high they usually have a lower capacity than hard disk models. As a rule, most mini-notebooks with a hard disk can store at least 80GB of files, while the SSD models vary between 2GB and 20GB.