Notebook computer

A notebook computer or notebook is, historically, a laptop whose length and width approximate that of letter paper (8.5 by 11 inches or 220 by 280 millimetres).

The term notebook was coined to describe slab-like portable computers that had a letter-paper footprint, such as Epson's HX-20 and Tandy's TRS-80 Model 100 of the early 1980s. The popularity of this form factor waned in the middle of the decade, as larger, clamshell-style laptops offered far more capability. In 1988, NEC's UltraLite defined a new category of notebook: it achieved IBM PC compatibility, making it technically as versatile as the largest laptops, while occupying a letter-paper footprint in a clamshell case. A handful of computer manufacturers followed suit with their own notebooks, including Compaq, whose successful LTE achieved full feature parity with laptops and spurred many others to produce their own notebooks. By 1991, the notebook industry was in full swing.

Notebooks and laptops occupied distinct market segments into the mid-1990s, but customer preference for larger screens led to notebooks converging with laptops in the late 1990s. Since the early 2000s, the terms laptop and notebook are used interchangeably, irrespective of physical dimensions, with laptop being the more common term in English-speaking territories.

Etymology

The terms laptop and notebook both trace their origins to the early 1980s, coined to describe portable computers in a size class smaller than the contemporary mainstream units (so-called "luggables") but larger than pocket computers. The etymologist William Safire traced the origin of laptop to some time before 1984; the earliest attestation of laptop found by the Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1983.