linux netbook ?

[michelle]

hi, im a student and at the moment have a dell inspiron (3 years old).http://www.dell.co.uk/ its been giving me a bit of trouble lately and the other day a thing popped up saying battery was reaching the end of its chargable life. so iv decided to just get a new laptop rather than wasting money getting the dell fixed if in a years time the same thing happens again. so what im asking is what is the difference between a laptop and a netbook coz iv looked at getting a linux netbook and they seem a lot cheaper http://www.twenga.co.uk/dir-Computers,Laptop-computers,Netbook-0156372 can you have all the microsoft programmes on a linux netbook ? and the internet ? as thats all i need really ! thanks for any feedback

[wicknix]

The difference is generally size, weight, and battery life. Netbooks typically are smaller, lighter and generally get better battery life. Netbooks also dont have cd/dvdrom drives built in. Linux is a complete different OS from windows and you wont be able to use windows software on it (easily). There are however many free "clones" of many windows applications, and yes you can get on the internet with it. Sounds like you've never used Linux before, so i'd recommend playing around with a friends computer that runs linux to see if its what you want before buying something just because its cheaper.

Cheers.