By a wide margin, netbooks have primarily been sold to home users thus far. But they can do anything a traditional work computer does - at least, from the perspective of Stan Jamrog, a network security instructor at Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Mass.

Jamrog brings a that he bought himself to HCC, connects it to the school's network and does his work on the netbook. "No one has scoffed yet," said Jamrog, who added that he and a full-time security professor at the college are thinking about pushing to require students to have netbooks.

Most PC vendors have avoided marketing netbooks to businesses, partly to avoid , and partly out of fear that they might be laughed out of the offices of IT managers.

But after netbook for consumers and schools last year, "we did get quite a bit of interest from the business sector," said , category manager for business notebook PCs at HP.

In response, HP last month , a renamed second-generation system that includes a variety of features developed with business users in mind. For instance, the high-end version of the 2140 comes with a six-cell battery that HP claims can last up to eight hours, or the equivalent of a full business day, on a single charge.