Don’t have a netbook yet? Learn what others think of it

According to a retail research firm, netbooks disappointed their owners more than people who buy larger and more expensive laptops.

As a survey of 600 American adults conducted by the NPD Group showed, only 58% of consumers who purchased a netbook rather than a notebook said they were very satisfied, compared to 70% who admitted they intended to buy a netbook all along.

NPD analyst Stephen Bake thinks the disappointment with netbooks stemmed from expectations that a netbook was a replacement for a notebook. Six out of every 10 netbook buyers thought that the two were equivalent, and figured that their new netbook would have the same functionality as a laptop.

In addition, one age group was especially disappointed with netbooks. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, an important demographic to netbook sellers, who tout low prices to the money-challenged college-aged crowd, 65% said they expected better performance than they got from their netbooks. Only about one in four, 27%, said their netbooks performed better than anticipated.

Of the features that netbook buyers cited as important prized, portability took the first place with 60%,and the operating system took the second-most important to their decision. Nearly all netbooks now sold run the ancient Windows XP Home.

However, Microsoft hopes to get computer makers to drop XP Home and instead install Windows 7 Starter, the lowest-price and least-capable edition of the new OS that will be available worldwide. To quiet a growing revolt by analysts and users angered over news that Starter would restrict them to running only three applications at the same time, Microsoft ditched that limitation last month.