netbook, informal classification used in the early 21st century for a variety of small low-cost mobile personal computers (PCs) used primarily for e-mail and Internet access.
Netbooks split the difference between traditional full-service laptop PCs, or notebooks, and smaller, more-limited devices such as smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Most models retailed for significantly less than traditional laptops, weighed less than a kilogram (less than two pounds), and typically featured display screens that measured only about 25 cm (10 inches) diagonally. Keyboards were up to 20 percent smaller than those used on standard laptops. Early netbooks ran either Microsoft Corporation’s Windows XP Home Edition or a custom configuration of the free operating system Linux. Typically, netbooks supported Internet communication via high-speed Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Their size precluded optical storage devices, but they usually included slots for solid-state flash memory cards.
Netbooks, by virtue of their limited memory and processing speed, were ill-suited for most conventional computing tasks, though many models ran limited versions of basic business software. They offered highly portable access to e-mail and the Internet and were ideal for “cloud computing”—in which software applications were run over the Web rather than from the computer’s operating system and files were stored online rather than on a local hard drive.
The term netbook was coined by Intel Corporation, an American integrated circuit (IC) manufacturer, in the marketing of their Centrino Atom processor, a low-power IC that was used in all of the first-generation netbooks when they came out in 2007. Less than a year later, most major PC manufacturers had introduced netbook models, and sales of netbooks had grown to rival those of other portable electronic devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone. In the 2010s, as laptops became less expensive and smartphones and tablets became more powerful, the distinctive market niche for netbooks disappeared.