These days Netbooks are getting popular and everyone seems to like a netbook. And since Google announced their Chrome OS for netbooks, it is gaining more popularity. Main reason of people going for Netbook is because they are very portable and cost efficient. Netbooks and notebooks seems almost similar but there is a lot of difference between them and before you decide to buy a netbook you must see and know these difference. Otherwise you may end up buying a netbook which might not be able to fulfill your need.
Here we compiled list of some important differences between 2 similar looking devices —
The first major difference is Power and Battery life. Netbooks are more power efficient and gives you more battery life because of its smaller size. But on the other hand if we talk about Computing power they are way behind the Notebooks. Netbooks are primarily designed for day to day jobs like Surfing, doing simple calculation, emails, managing simple document on the go. They are equipped with very low computing power or less capable Processors which can easily handle the low computing task and gives you excellent mobility with long battery life. For Business users , one very good use of netbook can be delivering presentation to your client efficiently as you don’t need much of resources to do that.
Storage capacity is another area where netbook differs from Notebook, to get optimal performance Most netbook are using Solid state drive these days. SSD are still very new and costly so to keep pricing low for your netbook manufactures are using low capacity SSD typically anything between 40-120 GB. Whereas in Notebooks you usually get 320Gb space at minimum these days. Many netbooks are using convention hard drives as well, and that gives you lots of space but by using that your netbook performance goes down because of obvious reasons. In case you using or buying a netbook with Solid state drive plan to use it’s available space efficiently or carry another external USB Hard disk for your storage need.
Another Aspect in storage only is Netbook does not DVD/CD drives, Due to size it is not feasible to attach an optical drive in an netbook. This is one limitation which is well known and already taken care of by providing extensive USB Support for Netbook users. Each Netbook which is available in market can use USB External drives and can even boot from USB Drive.
Now comes Size, though this is most important factor(as it seems) but we believe it will rank number 3 in the major difference list. Difference in size is so obvious that this is why netbooks are becoming popular. Most netbooks comes in 12 inches or smaller screen size. and notebooks are usually 14″ or higher in size. Pros of small size is you get more portability whereas on the con side you get less screen space and smaller fonts, also small Keyboard most of the times. Getting used to small keyboard and using it can prove quite difficult if you are a heavy user of netbook.
Price is another area where netbook beats traditional Notebooks, smaller size, non availability of optical drive, and less capable hardware is responsible for its lower price. This is how it became so affordable that every user can buy a netbook easily. In most of cases it is even cheaper than Desktop and even more portable than your laptop. Some manufacturers ship it with Linux instead of other paid OS to keep its cost further low.
Before purchasing a netbook be sure to ask for OS installed on it. If it is Linux it might be difficult for you as Linux is not so popular among users and you might need some time to adjust yourself for it.
To end this discussion we will suggest buying a ultra portable Netbook if you need it for Web surfing and other casual work where you don’t need a lot of computing resources.