It was never intended for netbooks to become as popular as they have done. They were originally designed for emerging markets as affordable no thrills PCs. But giving people around the world the chance to gain access to the Internet at a low cost, and the explosion in cloud computing, has lead to netbooks becoming the biggest selling PC products in the world.

What is the difference between a netbook and another PC?

What sets netbooks apart is their stripped down hardware. You are unlikely to find an optical drive and they tend to run on more basic operating systems compared to laptops and desktops.

Netbooks usually come with smaller digital storage facilities than other PCs, the idea being that all the things that normally fill up your hard drive such as pictures, documents, videos and music, will all be stored online or on an external flash memory device.

Not only does this reduce the need for additional hardware, and therefore the cost, it also reduces the weight, size and energy consumption. This makes netbooks much more portable, because they are smaller, lighter and crucially, use less power. A longer battery life is a very valuable feature of netbooks.

What type of software isn’t compatible with netbooks?

Almost all software available on other PCs is available on netbooks, however trying to load memory hungry products onto your netbook will only slow it down.

When selecting software for your netbook try looking for the lightest versions possible. For example, Norton Symantec offers a specially tailored antivirus software package for netbooks that is much lighter than standard editions.

Above all do not buy a netbook if you are seriously into heavy duty gaming. Games like Modern Warfare 2 and Assassins Creed II use a seriously large amount of memory and you need a sizeable amount of RAM and memory if you want to enjoy these games.

In which situations are they better or worse?

Installing software is quite different to other PCs because of the lack of an optical drive. You can get around this by downloading your chosen package straight off the Internet, although remember what we said about not overloading your netbook with memory hungry programs.

Another alternative is to buy an external CD drive which you can plug into your netbook via a USB port. This will let you load programs and watch DVDs.

Netbooks generally run on a more basic operating system; Windows XP or a more limited Windows 7. Linux is the second most popular system, and normally runs the Ubuntu version 8.04, while Google is pushing forward its Chrome OS. Apple’s Mac OS could theoretically be run on certain netbooks, but this is a violation of Apple’s user agreement.

However, netbooks make excellent tools for people on the move. They can be very small, in some cases the keyboards can be as much as 83 percent smaller than a standard keyboard size, making them excellent travelling companions. At just a few pounds you’ll hardly notice it in a shoulder bag.

The battery life of a good netbook can give you as much as 8 hours working time, which is pretty good, compared to an average laptop. If you need to get outside and do some work they’re the best choice to make.

What are the most popular netbooks?

Portability, power, versatility and price; these are the four main criteria which go to making up a good netbook.

Nowadays they’re becoming so popular that you can spend a pretty penny on a real high end netbook, if that’s what you’re looking for. Dell makes a very stylish notebook aimed at the executive business, called the Adamo. It looks great but certainly isn’t cheap.

On the subject of Dell,  it also does a very popular netbook called the Dell Mini 10 – which is one of the most popular ones out there. Weighing around 2.6lbs with a 1Gb memory, the 6-cell battery option will give eight hours working time. They are a little larger than some netbooks, with a whole extra inch on the screen size, but they seem to offer the perfect trade off between power, performance and portability.

For those who want the best stripped down netbook it’s often worth looking at the Asus Eee PC models; the new 1005 HA is fast with 50 second boot time, the keyboard is well set out for easier typing and works well for browsing, writing and some media playback.