PCWorld: Laptop Prize Fight
“Portability is crucial to a netbook. Small and light with super battery life, netbooks are meant to get you online when you’re on the go. Most have one of Intel’s Atom CPUs, which are more energy-efficient but far less powerful than the processors that larger laptops use. This is fine for checking e-mail, visiting Facebook, and tweaking business documents. Digital video and 3D gaming are not their forte.
With diagonal screen sizes of 9 to 11 inches, they offer limited resolution, so forget photo or video editing, large spreadsheets, or any other work that requires a fair amount of desktop real estate. The good news is that a small screen and an anemic CPU mean lots of battery life; a good netbook will run more than 6 hours be tween charges, and some models last almost 10 hours.”