The most visible manifestation of this trend is the rise of the netbook, or small, low-cost laptop. Netbooks are great for browsing the web on the sofa, or tapping out a report on the plane. They will not run the latest games, and by modern standards have limited storage capacity and processing power. They are, in short, comparable to laptops from two or three years ago. But they are cheap, costing as little as £150 in Britain and $250 in America, and they are flying off the shelves: sales of netbooks increased from 182,000 in 2007 to 11m in 2008, and will reach 21m this year, according to IDC, a market-research firm. For common tasks, such as checking e-mail and shopping online, they are good enough. - Kyle Outlaw