Brad,

Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts here. Everything in your comment is completely correct, but the internet audience is being told "netbook," and the retail channel has jumped onboard.

When a big retailer like Walmart ignores the convention it seems odd. Walmart was actually one of the first to sell netbooks with their Everex notebook with the gOS which makes it even weirder.

Laptops were called portable computers, and now people use notebook and laptop pretty interchangeably but notebook is the prevailing reference in most displayed taxonomies.

Ultimately, I try to pay attention to even the subtle things going on in the space and call them out. It won't always be right but it'll be an honest perspective.

Netbook is a marketing term that Intel came up with. HP, VIA, and many other companies prefer to call these cheap, tiny laptops mini-notebooks or mini-laptops. It's also a more descriptive term, since netbook implies that the only thing you can do with these computers is hook them up to the web like a dumb terminal. But most are more than powerful enough to handle editing of office documents, playing music and movies, or even some video games.