Notebooks: What exactly are they?
The term “notebook” seems to have a certain amount of confusion surrounding it regarding its usage and meaning, with questions about what exactly it refers to. Some believe that “notebook” is just another term for “laptop,” while others have several ideas regarding differences between the two kinds of portable PCs. Both terms are often used as synonyms today, but historically they did refer to two different things. Sort of.
The term “notebook” was first used in 1989 to describe an emerging line of portable computers that were smaller than the average laptop. These systems were about the size of an A4 paper notebook, and they emerged from the labs of NEC and Compaq, who produced the UltraLite and the LTE lines of notebooks respectively. Not long after they did so, IBM unveiled the ThinkPad to the masses, which popularized the notebooks and expanded the market several times over. Laptops before then (and many since) were usually wider, taller, and thicker than these notebooks. The larger laptops of that age owed their size to the limits of technology, but the larger ones of today exist so we can have larger screens or more powerful hardware inside. Or both, in a lot of cases.
For years after this initial introduction, the term “notebook” was common vernacular for these smaller laptops, which became really popular among businessmen and students for their light weight and more discreet size. The reduced size, however, came with a price.
Notebooks had all the elements of a younger sibling, including somewhat weaker hardware specs. This distinction helped to create a distinct market for notebooks, as they made for great computers to own in addition to a desktop, but they were not so great for a complete desktop replacement depending on what you used your desktop for. More powerful laptops, on the other hand, could easily match any but the most powerful desktop systems available, and this is the case even today. This distinction remains in force today, though not quite as much as it did ten years ago.
This does me that notebooks are, for all intents and purposes, “between” laptops and the new netbooks that have emerged in the last few years. Netbooks are now the lowest denominator in all respects, from prices to hardware capabilities, but then that is what they were designed for. The inherent limits of netbooks keep them from completely overshadowing notebooks (and laptops in general), but they are the attractive option for people low on funds in need of a computer, and this will likely prove more true as technology improves and prices fall, allowing for even more powerful netbooks in the future.
The overlap between the notebook and the laptop, though, means it is possible that very soon there may be no real distinction between the two, and that the terms may really become synonymous in the near future.
In closing, we would like to mention that there is one distinction between laptops and notebooks that is actually increasing at the present time: touchscreen functionality. At present, the percentage of notebooks with a built in touchscreen is rising quite rapidly. While there are laptops with touchscreen support, the function is, at least for the moment, a notebook thing.
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