I was going to get the Compaq Mini CQ10 series and I saw something next to it that said netbook and I thought there was just laptops. Whats the dif???
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To put it simply:
Netbooks are: smaller, cheaper and less powerful
Laptops are: larger, more expensive and more powerful.
Netbooks were designed for surfing the web, checking emails, social networking, and doing other light computing stuff. They are not designed for serious work.
If you need a laptop for serious work, it is best to get a full featured laptop.
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A netbook is a lot smaller than a laptop, has a less powerful processor, and doesn’t have an optical (DVD/CD) drive.
It also either has a much smaller hard drive than a laptop, or it has a Flash drive instead of a hard drive. The main advantages of a netbook over a laptop are size, weight, and price.
If you want a cheap ultra portable computer, and don’t need a massively powerful processor and tons of storage, then a netbook is the way to go.
Beware, as some very cheap "netbooks" don’t have Intel or Intel-compatible processors, and therefore aren’t compatible with normal PC software – they’re really just glorified PDAs. Make sure any netbook you get has an Intel Atom processor or equivalent, and that it comes pre-installed with the operating system you want to use.
NOTE: If you are going to use the computer for work and some games, do yourself a favor, don’t get a netbook.
Bill M’s answer is largely correct.
I would add that most netbooks were not powerful enough to run Vista but will happily run Windows 7.
Some netbooks use a version of Linux as the operating system and because of that cost less.
Today the words "laptop" and "notebook" have becomed general terms which can be used to refer to a number of classes of portable computers and a "Netbook" is a less powerful (and very small) version good almost only for the Web (Email, Chat, ETC) and as a portable music library (similar to MP3 players but with more features to ease searching and viewing collections).
In the beginning, the machines called laptops (because you had to put it on your lap) were desktop replacements that emphasized performance and were less portable with 15" or larger screens.
Then came the standard Laptops (AKA Notebooks because they were built to look like real leather notebooks) which balanced portability and features with 13 to 15" screens.
Now, we have Netbooks!
More information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laptop