Most netbooks aren’t blessed with the same excess horsepower as current desktops and conventional laptops. In order to keep your system running to its full potential, it’s important to select applications that are easy on resources. You don’t want to needlessly overwork that Atom processor, do you?

One place you can save CPU and RAM usage is your antivirus program. I’ve found three options that are perfectly suited to netbooks, providing an excellent level of protection while keeping the impact on your system to a minimum.

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Toshiba NB205 with Windows 7 Starter

Update: As of October 22nd, many of the notebooks and netbooks listed below are now shipping.

Windows 7 won’t be available to the public until Thursday, October 22nd. But dozens of netbooks and notebooks running the operating system are now available for pre-order.

Some of the restrictions imposed on Windows XP netbooks have been lifted, so in addition to shipping with the latest version of Windows, many of the netbooks have received a spec bump.

There are also a number of more powerful 11 and 12 inch laptops with Intel CULV processors available for pre-order.

Amazon is choc full of information about upcoming laptop specifications and prices. Here are some of the thing and light laptops that popped up on Amazon over the weekend:

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I’m a fan of mobile devices with keyboards and I don’t see a big hole in the market between netbooks and smartphones that needs to be filled. But we’re seeing a growing number of companies putting out 10 inch or smaller touchscreen devices that Intel likes to call Mobile Internet Devices or MIDs, although a few years ago the term was UMPC or Ultra Mobile PC.

MIDs certainly haven’t taken off the way that netbooks have in the past few years, but they’re getting more and more versatile. Two of the biggest proponents for netbooks and MIDs got together recently to have a little cage match dialog. Sascha from Netbook News and Chippy from UMPC Portal and MID Moves shot a little video, which you can check out after the break.

They both make some good points. But as much as I don’t see a lot of feed for a device with a small screen and no keyboard, there is one thing I noticed while watching the video. Chippy’s MID was open and ready to check a web page or send an email throughout the conversation, while Sascha’s netbook was tucked away under his arm waiting for him to get to a place where he could sit down at a table.

via Netbook News.de

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When I started writing about netbooks nearly 2 years ago, the category was fairly easy to define. Netbooks were small, cheap computers. It doesn’t really matter whether you call them netbooks, mini-laptops or something else. What distinguishes these little guys from the vast majority of computers is size and price. It’s not like you couldn’t find a $400 laptop a few years ago, it’s just that it would have had a 15 inch screen and weighed 6 pounds, meaning it wouldn’t be the most portable computer around. And you’d be lucky to squeeze 2 or 3 hours of battery life out of those laptops.

Likewise, there were machines with 9 and 10 inch screens a few years ago. They often weighed 2 pounds or less. And they tended to cost thousands of dollars.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen a lot of people claiming that the distinction between netbooks and laptops are disappearing. It’s true that low cost mini-laptops are breaking out of the mold they’ve worn for the last two years. We’re seeing a growing number with 11.6 inch inch, high resolution screens. And some have AMD or Intel CULV processors. But many of these little machines still weigh around 3 pounds or less and cost $500 or less.

But does the fact that you can pick up a 15.6 inch laptop for $280 at Best Buy mean that netbooks are dead? Does the fact that Sony has killed its Vaio TT of super-expensive mini-laptops mean that netbooks have won and PC makers can’t sell expensive laptops anymore?

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Kristin Shoemaker blogs at OStatic and Linux Librarian. She likes to take things apart and see if she can put them back together again in new and better ways.

Della had a Lifestyle Change

Earlier this month, Brad kindly asked me what I thought about Dell’s “Della” site, a marketing campaign that was presumably designed to help women decide if a Dell Mini Netbook was right for them. For those disinclined to click back in time to read the ramblings of a woman who loves small keyboards but looks sickly in pink, here’s the abridged version:

Netbooks shouldn’t be a hard sell to this demographic. And just because your customer base might not be interested in what makes a netbook work, it doesn’t mean they are unable to figure out the ways they could personally use one — and please, don’t ever assume your customers are morons.

I wasn’t the only one who felt that way (by a long shot).  It wasn’t too long before Dell pulled down and revamped the “Della” site.  That’s a good thing, of course — listening to your customers (and potential customers) is always positive. There’s not a whole lot any company can do in two weeks to revise a major marketing effort, no matter how many copywriters and web designers it has chained within the razorwire covered walls of  its cubicle farms.

So here’s what happened.  “Della” disappeared in a puff of smoke (or with a deftly executed rm -rf /della command) and was replaced with an eerily similar Dell Lifestyle portal.  Yes, the copy is not so egregiously condescending (nor is it terribly enlightening).  The blatant overtones of  “Look, netbooks are good for womenfolk!” have been removed or at least been made more subtle.  And that just leaves me wondering why this campaign was launched at all.  Dell sells computers, and that’s what the Lifestyle-no-longer-Della site does — but so does the rest of the site. There’s just very little offered here. It’s not patronizing, but it’s not necessary in its current state, either.

[Via Andi Wang's post at Gizmodo, which mysteriously only shows in Google Reader,  and ultimately via RegHardware]

Over the last 18 months we’ve seen the rise of two things (well, at least two): Low cost, low powered notebooks and a common name for this type of device: netbooks. Unfortunately, the term netbook is a registered trademark of Psion, a company that put out a device back in the early part of the millenium bearing that name. Psion hasn’t released a computing device under the netbook name since 2003, but the company does still offer peripherals.

Psion sort of came out of the wordwork and started making moves to protect its trademark a few months ago. In fact, this month Google agreed that Psion has a valid claim to the trademark and started banning advertisers from using the term. But it’s arguable that the damage was done. “Mini-laptop,” “mini-notebook,” and “cheap-ass ultraportable” just don’t have the same ring as “netbook.”

I’ve never been a huge fan of the word, because it implies that these laptops are only good for surfing the web, and not for serious computing like editing Office docs or even playing games. And they’re certainly capable of doing both of those things. But some people feel a bit more strongly about this case of semantics than I do. Case in point: The Save The Netbooks campaign. Psion has said that it will give companies, bloggers, and journalists profiting off of the netbook name until the end of March to start using a different term. The campaign is web page has a countdown clock and basically serves as a call to action to take back the word.

What do you think? Does it matter what we call these computers, or if companies keep pumping out sub-$400 mini-laptops that suit your needs, would you be satisfied calling them Slartibartfast?