The majority of people in the market for a laptop can’t tell the difference between notebooks and netbooks, and are disappointed to end up with one when they thought they bought the other, an NPD survey finds.

The Christian Science Monitor reports on notebook/netbook envy:

It looks easy enough on paper, but in practice, telling netbooks and notebooks apart can be quite difficult. So says NPD, a market research firm, which today released the results of a poll of approximately 600 consumers. According to NPD, “60 percent of consumers who purchased a netbook instead of a notebook thought their netbooks would have the same functionality as notebooks.”

That’s a mouthful, eh? Here’s the translation: A whole lot of folks bought a bright and shiny netbook, only to discover the pretty little gizmo was a littleÖ underpowered. Needless to say, these consumers were a little disgruntled. Only 58 percent of consumers who bought a netbook instead of a notebook said they were very satisfied with their purchase, NPD reports, compared to 70 percent of consumers who planned on buying a netbook right from the get-go.

For a refresher, netbooks are barebones devices built for portability and ease of use, most often lacking sizable hard drives or disc drives. Notebooks are plain-old laptops. Wikipedia, which knows everything, breaks down the differences between the two.

Netbook or notebook? A majority of consumers can’t tell the two apart [Christian Science Monitor]
(Photo: DCvision2006)

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