Definitely a regional thing. In Germany both terms appear as loanwords (I don&#x27;t think there is a &quot;real&quot; German word for it) and they&#x27;re used interchangeably.<p>One of the two was a trademark leading to the other one being pushed as an alternative. But I can&#x27;t even remember which one -- at this point I couldn&#x27;t even tell you which phrase is more widely used.<p>EDIT: IIRC at some point &quot;Notebook&quot; was used to refer to laptops that were smaller and&#x2F;or lighter than the regular (rather heavy and bulky) laptops at the time. There&#x27;s also a major online discounter called notebooksbilliger.de (literally &quot;cheaper notebooks&quot;). In day to day language I would err towards &quot;Laptop&quot; being the more widespread term but not by much.