It’s actually quite easy to answer definitively; a netbook is a computer designed for getting online. Every detail, every last feature it has is developed so that you can hop online and do things people do there. Have a video conversation through Skype, read your e-mails and check Facebook twelve times an hour. The stereotypical internet user does these things and that is why the stereotypical netbook performs them well.

A notebook is more like a generalised piece of hardware. It often has every part a desktop computer has or at least is comparable to one in performance. For instance, they have a strong processor capable of handling all the tasks you would otherwise do on your desktop. It has a video card strong enough to hardware accelerate high definition movies and play games.

A notebook is what you get if you don’t have space for a desktop computer, or just want to make it portable.

The typical customer who buys a netbook operates on a small budget. They don’t have a thousand dollars to spend on a computer. They don’t even have to have such an amount; they wouldn’t use the features. For this reason, netbooks lack features laptops often have.

A big resolution screen for starters. The default 10″ netbook screen resolution is 1024 x 600, which is just enough to show most websites. The 10″ screen is not all that great quality either, it loses colors at steep angles quickly. All in all, a netbook is not something you run applications that require lots of screen space on.

A netbook doesn’t have an optical drive. That’s right, you can’t insert a DVD or a CD into these machines (but you can get an external DVD-RW for a one time low price of $49.99). Why? Because they are so small (due to their small screen) that if they had an optical drive, there would be no space left for other internal components like a motherboard, or a battery. That wouldn’t be very cool, would it?

Netbooks don’t have big hard drives. Put yourself in the shoes of a customer who uses a netbook every day. The processor is too slow to play full high definition movies. The entire music collection takes about 5-10 gigabytes and all the programs and applications use another 20 GB. Thinking like a netbook user, would you be willing to pay $50 extra just to turn a 160 or 250 GB hard drive into 320 gb or 500gb? Quite frankly, you would have just as little use for the extra space on the bigger hard drive as you do for the 60-80% of a smaller hard drive. It would be a waste of money, wouldn’t it?

Netbooks are generally cheap, more specialized laptops than the one you call a ‘notebook’. They have their ups and downs and they are not for everyone. For those who can tame one, they can be invaluable travel companions if not a primary computer.