You need to be able to see the screen.
Most netbooks come in 3 different sizes – 7″, 8.9″, and 10″, which is what most netbooks feature today. While the 7″ screen certainly looks cute and helps make the whole netbook much more portable, actually being able to see anything on these small screens is extremely difficult and can become very frustrating. It probably won’t be long before the cuteness of the 7″ wears off and you’re willing to trade it in for a bigger model. 

The keypad is only as big as the screen.
If manufacturers could, they’d pack as big a keyboard as possible into their netbooks and the truth is that they do. But for obvious reasons, they can only make the keypad as big as the screen. A netbook with a 7″ screen also has a 7″ keypad, which is extremely difficult to type on, without doing the two-fingered peck. Larger models of netbooks, even those with a 8.9″ screen, generally feature keypads that are 90% the size of desktop keyboards and so, will be much more comfortable to work with.

Intel has now joined hands with Dell and other companies in the clash against Psion over the same “netbook” trademark issue. They are throwing light on the fact that the public is already using the term in a wide manner to represent “extensions of the notebook category, smaller computers purpose-built for mobile Internet access”.

Intel is insisting that since the term “netbook” which was originally owned by Psion from the year 2000,  is now popularly being used for the category of new small, low cost laptops, the court should cancel a trademark for the term.

PC manufacturers have had a mixed response to the term, “netbook”. The term is used by several of them in advertisements and portrayals, but many have decided not to use the term deliberately foreseeing future issues. Earlier Psion had persuaded Google to forbid the use of the term in adsense ads, and also filed cases against many other companies warning them of strict action if they did not cease to use the term. A small organization intended to fight against this but it was with the entry of Dell who filed a suit against Psion, that the movement became prominent.

Now Intel has filed a hard-hitting 13 page suite against Psion with some interesting arguments. Intel points out that the term is widely used by vendors, press and consumers to describe the devices from different brands. Some of the points in the filing are similar to those raised by Dell.

Now there is a chance that Intel will crush Psion in the case but it could also be the other way round. Even though there are many strong points against using the term as a trademark in their filing, there are a couple of things which could bother Intel and lead them to losing the case. This will happen if the court finds out that Intel was using the term for commercial purposes even before it became a generic term, in which case, the case could turn against their favour.

With the filing of this suit, Intel is now a part of two netbook confrontations, the other being their effort to safeguard their netbook narrative version. Intel’s revenue is not as good now as it used to be and so it is all the more important for them to be on the winning side in these netbook filings.

Laptops, or notebooks, are like a mini desktop computer that you can use for browsing the Internet, preparing, saving, editing and reviewing documents, sending email, and hooking anything up to it to turn that slim notebook into a fully functioning PC. Because of their extra abilities and because users generally use these machines a lot and ask a lot out of them, they are generally a bit larger in size to provide the needed room for the hardware, along with giving the user something they can look at for longer periods of time, a larger screen.

Not only are netbooks smaller in size, usually being about 8.9″, they can’t do nearly as much as laptops can. This is also because of their size and because they simply don’t have the space that’s needed to install things such as graphic cards, hard drive space, and other necessities for a high-performance machine. The great thing about netbooks is that they are significantly cheaper than even the most inexpensive laptop models and so, they make terrific machines for those who only need to do one or two things on the netbook but still need to be able to take it with them wherever they are.