A Holiday Shopping Guide for Netbooks

Size: Netbooks can easily fit into a big pocket or purse and are a lot easier to lug around. They do not have internal optical drives (CD or DVD) because they take up too much space and weigh too much. Try a few models to see if you prefer one keyboard layout or screen size over another.

Power: Almost all netbooks use an Intel Atom processor. This is Intel's latest computer brain which delicately balances thrifty battery life and computing performance .

What that means is a netbook can handle easy stuff like Web browsing, music playback, video viewing, word processing and other basic tasks. However I wouldn't try to do all of them at the same time. Nor would I try to use a netbook for intensive audio/video editing, 3D rendering or gaming.

If that's what you want to do with your laptop, get something that can handle the tasks at hand. You can watch a YouTube (GOOG Quote)video on a netbook but it looks better on a bigger, more powerful computer.

Software: Netbooks come loaded with software programs. Many are smaller versions of well-known programs such as Microsoft Works (a "light" version of Microsoft Office), OpenOffice (a free, open source version of Sun's (JAVA Quote)Star Office suite), popular games such as Solitaire, Mahjong and Sudoku, audio, video and photo software, search engines like Google and others as well as modern-day Web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox.

If you need to run full, professional version of these titles, you might want to consider a "beefier" laptop. On the other hand, a small Linux netbook might be the perfect choice for young children and many computer phobes.