If befuddled consumers can't decide between a netbook and a low-priced laptop this holiday
season, manufacturers certainly aren't helping matters.
When the season's top netbook, the 12-inch Acer Aspire Timeline, has dimensions, memory (3
gigabytes) and pricing (around $600) that's similar to a 14-inch Toshiba Satellite dual-core
laptop, it's little wonder that buyers are having an increasingly difficult time telling the
two apart. In fact, according to a NPD Group report issued earlier this year, almost 60% of
consumers who bought a netbook instead of a notebook thought they would have the same
capabilities. Roughly the same percentage was satisfied with its netbooks, compared to 70%
of those who planned on buying a netbook all along.
"The notion of the netbook was that it was small, cheap and light, but because of profit
margins, they started to creep into the 12-inch category without beefing up the internal
components," says Jeff Fox, technology editor at Consumer Reports.
Netbooks were once featherweight, Linux-equipped toys with puny Atom processors and sub-$300
price tags. Even as bigger manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Samsung Electronics
entered the market and Microsoft's Windows operating systems became prevalent, netbooks
still remained small, affordable and long on battery life.
Samsung's N120, for example, has Windows XP, but it's only 10 inches wide, costs as little
as $320 and maintains a charge for six hours. Toshiba's Satellite U505 is small and only has
1 gigabyte of memory, but its $400 price tag nets consumers Windows 7 and 9.5 hours of
battery time. Though the battery on Acer's Timeline holds a charge for 10 hours, and its
Pentium processor offers 3 gigabytes of memory, its size and $550 price tag delete its
benefits.
"You want a small netbook that's a little underpowered, which is the tradeoff for price and
size and weight," Fox says. "If you're getting up around $500, there's little value in
getting an oversized netbook if you're losing the advantages of a netbook. It's the worst of
both worlds."
Toshiba and others are increasingly blurring the lines. The manufacturer rolled out its
Pentium Core Duo-powered, nine-hour-battery-driven Satellite T115 laptop in October. At 11.6
inches and $449, the full-powered laptop makes its memory-deprived Mini netbook counterpart
seem less like a bargain and more like a redundancy.
H-P put a little more breathing room between its Mini 110 netbook (10 inches, $350) and its
newly released Pavilion DM3 laptop (13 inches, $549), but that $200 gap shrinks quickly when
the latter's battery life (an estimated 10 hours) and memory (4 gigabytes) dwarfs the
former's (7 hours, 1 gigabyte).
In the same vein, the $250 gap between the Acer Timeline and the 14-inch Sony VAIO shrinks
like a bad sweater when comparing the Acer's offerings to the VAIO's 4 gigabytes of memory,
Blu-ray drive and 250 megabytes of extra memory for games.
The netbook should supplement your laptop by making less important information easier to
transport. And your laptop should be a bit more functional than a smartphone.
"If you're shopping for a portable computer right now, the first question you need to answer
is 'is it your primary portable computer?'" Fox says. "I can't believe we're to the point
where there's a 'primary portable computer.'"
Netbooks
1. Acer Aspire Timeline
Price: $549.99
Screen size: 11.6 inches
Operating system: Windows 7
Specifications: Intel Pentium U4100 processor, 3 gigabytes of memory, 320-gigabyte hard
drive, HDMI and VGA outputs
Pros: Large display and keyboard; 9.75 hours of battery life almost unheard of for a
netbook; laptop-esque hard drive and memory capacity.
Cons: Expensive for a netbook, dim display and, at 3.2 pounds, relatively heavy.
2. Samsung N120
Price: $319-$438.99
Screen size: 10.1 inches
Operating system: Windows XP
Specifications: AtomN270 processor, 1-gigabyte memory, 160-gigabyte hard drive, VGA output.
Pros: 6 hours of battery life, a larger keyboard than most netbooks, a svelte 2.8 pounds,
2GB memory upgrade available, outperforms many newer Windows 7 models.
Cons: Dim display and, while faster than its smaller cohorts, still relatively slow. Samsung
hasn't updated to Windows 7 on any of its netbook platforms.
3. Toshiba Mini NB205
Price: $399.99
Screen size: 10.1 inches
Operating system: Windows 7
Specifications: AtomN270 processor, 1-gigabyte memory, 160-gigabyte hard drive, VGA output.
Pros: 9.5 hours of battery life and a larger keyboard, wrist area and touch pad than most
netbooks.
Cons: Dull colors, tiny punctuation keys for no apparent reason and, sadly, not much of an
upgrade from its cheaper Windows XP model.
Laptops
1. Toshiba Satellite U505
Price: $799.99
Screen size: 13.3 inches
Operating system: Windows 7
Specifications: Core 2 Duo P7450 processor, 4-gigabyte memory, 500-gigabyte hard drive, DVD
drive, microphone, Web cam, memory card reader, DVI/HDMI video outs.
Pros: High performance and lots of memory, 4.5 hours of battery life, large display for a
small book, has eSATA port and facial-recognition security. At 13.3 inches and 4.9 pounds,
it's roughly the size of a big netbook.
Cons: A moderately priced laptop but a costly netbook alternative. Cheaper models get
clunkier and strip away memory and functionality, though the recently released Satellite
T115 weighs 3.5 pounds, has an 11.6-inch screen and 9 hours of battery life, and starts at
$450 for a hard drive with half the capacity. The A505 is larger at 16 inches, but costs
nearly $150 less
2. Asus U50A
Price: $629.99
Screen size: 15.6 inches
Operating system: Windows 7
Specifications: Core 2 Duo T6600 processor, 4-gigabyte memory, 500-gigabyte hard drive, DVD
drive, microphone, Web cam, memory card reader, DVI/HDMI video outputs.
Pros: Good battery life for a laptop at 5.25 hours, relatively lightweight at 5.5 pounds and
a value at less than $650.
Cons: At 15.6 inches, there's a portability issue. Also, at 5.5 pounds, it's a lighter
laptop, but still roughly twice the weight of the average netbook.
3. Sony VAIO VPC
Price: $800
Screen size: 14 inches
Operating system: Windows 7
Specifications: Core 2 Duo T6600 processor, 4-gigabyte memory, 500-gigabyte hard drive,
Blu-ray reader, microphone, Web cam, firewire ports, memory card reader, DVI/HDMI video
outputs.
Pros: Good battery life at 5 hours, highly portable at 14 inches and 5.1 pounds and has
265MB of video memory for the "World of Warcraft" set.
Cons: Less expensive than similarly stacked laptops, but on the high-end even for a 14-inch
model.
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