While a new study by Gartner shows a notable decline in the northern European PC market, with the majority of companies reporting negative growth, it also reports that notebooks are pushing the sector overall.

This is something that does not surprise Jennifer Watts, the business manager for notebooks at Acer, who asserted that while notebooks are not replacing PCs, they are instrumental in consuming content as opposed to creating it.

She continued: "I do think they'll become omnipresent. You go into households now and it's more likely to be more than one computer and there's more likelihood of there being more than one notebook or netbook."

Ms Watts added that many people are adopting them as secondary devices in their home as the demand is very much for something thin, lightweight and very portable, particularly in a business environment.

Furthermore, she went on to say that there will come a point where notebooks are something everyone has, as a computer or notebook is no longer seen as a luxury device or the preserve of large and small businesses in IT.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.