Advertisements now say notebooks, sometimes. Is this the new term for laptop? Are the two actually different creatures? Are laptops going the way of, first Beta and now VHS, movies?

Believe a notebook is a smaller version of the same beast and a marketing thing and that everything is going Beta way.

My understanding is that a notebook computer is the same size (in plan) as a sheet of A4 paper. A4 is a paper size used internationally except west of the Atlantic, east of the Pacific, and probably north of Mexico and south of Canada. If they are smaller than that they are termed sub-notebooks.

dixbie, how subtle. Is it what USns would call 8 1/2 x 11?

It's a little bigger than 8-1/2 x 11. Just enough bigger that you have to drag out the A4 paper and load up the tray if you want to make a copy that has the fine print at the top and bottom.

A4 == 210 x 297 mm == 8.2677165 x 11.6929134 inches. So it's a little narrower and longer.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
http://https://www.cstsales.com/Main/converter.htm

It's 210 mm x 297 mm (that's a trimmed sheet). I forget why those particular dimensions, but someone probably knows. I know the basic size is the A0 size which has a plan area of 1 square metre, if you fold A0 in half you have A1, fold it again and you have A2 etc.

dxb, if you look at the first url I posted earlier in the thread, they explain what the ratio is and how it was chosen, etc.

Yup! That more than does it, thanks. Your post beat mine by 2.5 minutes and I didn't check back to the thread after my posting until just now .

Your post beat mine by 2.5 minutes and I didn't check back to the thread after my posting

Looks like you were beaten out by a nose and didn't know it, dxb.

Jimmy Durante used to say: "The nose, knows."

But sometimes the nose doesn't know.

Don't give it a minute's thought. Anyone in the know knows your nose knows nothing about it.

Youse sayin sumpin bout ma nose? Ma che sciagura!

Ma che sciagura!

What's Che Guevarra's cigar got to do with it?