We realise that there may be quite a few owners of new netbooks that are trying to get started with their little laptop and since I have blogged about the various models that are on offer we decided it a good idea to compile some of this information here.  In no particular order...

Set up a bigger monitor for home use: The screen size in netbook ranges from seven to ten inches, and that's pretty small. If you often use the netbook at home or at the office, setting up a bigger external monitor is a good idea. Your eyes will thank you for that.

Don't run a lot of applications in the background: Netbooks are made for ultimate portability and aimed to be a second computer, so it's very different than your average desktop PC. Of course it's good to have all the applications that you usually have in the desktop here. However, it will put a toll in the performance. Be more selective and choose which apps run in the background, or uninstall ones that you rarely use.

In a first, Google is opening up its testing process by calling on tens of millions of Gmail users to put new features of the service through their paces...