A netbook is a small, light computer you can carry, made mainly for going online — mail, browsing, simple writing — rather than for heavy games or film work. The machines were popular for a few years around 2007 to 2012: cheaper and smaller than a full laptop, with a smaller screen and a weaker heart inside. Though actually the word has aged. Shops today are more likely to say “small laptop,” “Chromebook,” or just 筆電. If someone says netbook now, they often mean that older style of cheap little computer, or they are using a word they learned then. The name is a blend: net, as in the internet, plus notebook, as in notebook computer (what Taiwan calls a 筆電). It began as a trademark registered by a company called Psion, then other companies used the idea, and the word spread. Trademarks sometimes leak into ordinary language like this. It is not a paper notebook, and it is not “any computer on a network.” Today’s thin laptops are stronger cousins from later years.