Netbooks are a great alternative to heavy laptops.  They are not recommended for heavy computing and gaming but are great for using to search the Internet.  They are also great for using Web based computing applications such as Google documents, etc.

Netbooks are offered by a number of companies including:

The vast majority of PC based Netbooks operate on Windows XP but there are netbooks that operate on other operating systems including Windows 7 Starter, Windows CE, Linux, Google's Android, and Google's Chrome OS.

Websites with information about Nettops:

Wikipedia.com

"All-in-one Nettops resurrecting desktop market" - CNN.com