There has been a quite dramatic advance in laptop design over the last few years; resulting in the arrival of netbooks. Lighter, cheaper and more portable than the traditional laptop, they are a long way removed from their humble beginnings as a solution to providing developing countries with affordable and accessible computers.

Whilst the aid to developing countries instigated the arrival of netbooks, it has been back in the western world that they have made their mark in equal measure. Through the recession, sales have soared; bucking the industry trend for other types of computer.

In part of course, this has been as a direct result of the reduced cost of the technology; often at a quarter of the price. That performance for most casual users is no different, in essence, to their incumbents too has been significant. But the real drive has been because of their extreme portability; being not much bigger than the filofax of the eighties,

They will not appeal to business users of course; not to any great degree anyway, but for the consumer, they are more than adequate for emailing and surfing the web. Other such basic functions such as simple spreadsheets, and word processing can also be managed perfectly well.

This is because of their reduced capacity processors. However, this does not affect the basic functions, as the small battery requires less power, so the life of a charge is more than sufficient in most instances.

Despite the small size however, nothing has been lost in the quality of screen; with most having touch screen functionality. The keyboards too are near full size; and there are a large number of ports for connectivity of all popular peripherals.

But there have been some downsides of course. These have tended to be based around the Operating System that was offered as standard. Though very good, the Linux OS was just not familiar to most users.

However, problems that existed with Windows OSs were soon overcome. The recently launched Windows Seven is set to be further developed; with a newly configured version of the platform being designed specifically. For the growing number of manufacturers of netbooks, it looks likely that they could well become the standard in the not too distant future.

Matthew Kerridge is an expert in computer products. If you want further information about netbooks or are looking for a trusted laptop retailer please visit http://www.ebuyer.com