Cut your telephone and cable TV cords!

People have already been "cutting their telephone cords" by cancelling their landline phone services. You can of course use cell phones or, for no cost, Skype, which is free phone over the Internet (try it, you'll like it - it's easy - just put in someone's name and call them!). And you can pay a small monthly cost for calling other people's landlines. You can just use the built-in microphone and speakers in a laptop PC, or might want to get a wired headset or wireless Bluetooth headset to go with your PC (and a Bluetooth USB stick if you don't have Bluetooth in your PC).

But the next "cutting of cords" is your cable and satellite TV service. Most TV shows and movies are available on the Internet now! Complain to your TV stations or channels if their broadcasts or shows are not available! All TV stations and channels should be available on the Internet! They would have a much larger audience for their advertising! Also, try Hulu.com, which carries a lot of TV shows, and where you can flag a show you want to follow so it will alert you by e-mail when there is a new one and keep a list of the ones you haven't watched yet.

The final "cutting of cords" will be the TV cables or phone lines/DSL for Internet access. You can of course already purchase a wireless service for your PC from cell phone company, but it is somewhat pricey and slow. But a new high-speed wireless standard called Wi-Max is coming (like Wi-Fi for in your home, but Wi-Max can go 3 miles), so that you could get wireless high-speed Internet to all of your PC's or other Internet devices in your unit, and then perhaps cancel your wired Internet service via the TV cable or DSL/phone line.
Caution: There are two standards for Wi-Max, one for the cell phone networks and one for PC's. Either will work of course, but cell phone companies may charge more, while cable TV or landline DSL phone companies can put up a transmitter in your neighborhood what you could access with your PC.

The difference between netbooks and notebooks

Netbooks are laptop PC's with smaller than full-size keyboard keys, which determines the width of the PC. That is what allows them to be smaller than 11 inches wide (see calculations below).

Low-cost laptop PC's with full size keyboards are "low-cost notebook PC's".

The first notebook PC's had U.S. notebook paper dimensions of 8-1/2 x 11 inches. Then "A4" notebook PC's came along which had the longer length of the international standard "A4" notebook paper. And then wider screens came along more recently that made laptop PC's that are huge. But, for "netbooks", it's all about size, which is determined by the width, which is determined by the keyboard key spacing.

The smallest width that a notebook keyboard can be is 13-1/2 keys wide, which is 10.125 inches (full-size keys are on 3/4-inch centers), plus another half inch for the case on each side, equals 10.625 inches. But usually the Backspace and other keys on the right side of the QWERTY layout are at least another half key larger, which makes the keyboard widith 10.5 inches, so, with the case, 11.0 inches (ah - the length of a U.S. standard piece of "notebook" paper!). Anything less than that is a "netbook"!