What is the basic difference between a laptop and and a netbook?

Netbooks tend to be smaller, with no CD Drive, may have flash memory instead of a mechanical hard drive. Both of these measures save weight.

Netbooks tend to be lighter and more convenient to carry - but with a trade off - they are called NET books, as in interNET. This means, they do not have the full functionality as a laptop does, and can often only be used for very basic functions: such as surfing the internet.

Laptops are simply portable PCs with much more capabilities.

Laptops are move expensive and loaded with features.

Netbooks are cheaper and lighter with respect to features.

This may be of some use to you:

http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/differ...

Laptops are generally more powerful, better graphics card, more ram, and a disc drive than netbooks.