A bunch of you have netbooks. What do you recommend? I want to get one for my eventual travels: Light, durable, and as powerful as possible within those constraints.
I like my lil netbook. It is powerful enough, the only complaint I have is that sometimes watching movies and such I get lag, especially with high def. stuff.
depends on the budget if u are lookin for soemthing cheap, get the acers and then by the time they warranty runs out and they break, u can get a another one cuz they are cheap enuff
if u have the budget for something pricier, i have a dell mini10 that is wroking out pretty nicely. and i've heard good things about the eee
if u are just using it for internet..microsoft office..etc then u might as well get the ubuntu operating system instead of windows, the performance is better and the interface is not too different. if u are using more complex applications (like photoshop or something) then stay with Windows if u don't want to learn ubuntu.
I have a MSI Wind, model U123, and I'm quite happy with it. It's not totally top-of-the-line or anything, but thus far it's done everything I want it to quite nicely, the battery life is good, it's nice and compact, and seems just generally well-behaved.
Also, not sure if this is relevant to your needs, but installing Ubuntu Linux (specifically the Netbook Remix of it) on it was totally easy, once I figured out the trick of how to (a) make a bootable USB drive from the Windows side (it came with Windows XP), and (b) convince it to actually boot from said drive (which came down to timing). Ever since then, all has been good. I kept the original Windows install on a small partition, mainly for testing web sites in IE, but I use Ubuntu as my primary OS on the netbook.
I was about to recommend mine, which is a gateway lt3100, and has an AMD athlon instead of an Intel atom, but it looks like it's been discontinued. They only sold it at best buy. But maybe there are some reconditioned or used.
I think there might still be one or two netbooks with the athlon or the athlon neo, which offers a pretty substantial performance improvement over any of the atoms. I never get video lag, for instance; the performance is so close to a full-size laptop that I use this computer all the time now and don't even bother with any of the others. But they're more expensive - up to $400 - and the battery life is usually worse. I wouldn't buy one without the bigger six-cell lion battery pack they usually offer, either. But I couldn't stand the atoms.
F-C has one of the dell mini 10s, and likes it, but I think it's -too- small, and it has what for me would a be a crippling design flaw - the buttons are integrated under the trackpad, not separated, so certain click and drag operations are physically impossible. They may have redesigned that by now; I dunno.
You might want to think about avoiding spinners altogether. I didn't, but a lot of people swear that's the way to go. A lot of places sell netbooks with only flash memory and no HD at all. One of the bigger performance problems in some netbooks are those teeny weak-sauce HDs. The space is more limited that way, and they're more expensive. But they're faster and more durable.
I have a Samsung N130. I went for the slightly higher-end model, mostly for the bigger and a little bit for the keyboard (the huge-ass hard drive was a bonus, I guess). It came with Windows 7 Starter, which is fine, but kinda weaksauce. At first I was a little miffed because I couldn't get Linux working with the wireless card (it uses 801.11n, and the Linux kernel hadn't caught up). I've since been able to get Jolicloud up and running, and I'm all 'round happy! (I left it as a dual boot mostly because HP is ass about keeping up the OS X drivers, and my printer had been useless for over a year.)
I just went netbook shopping a few weeks ago. I settled on an ASUS Eee PC 1001P for the following reasons:
1) Most recent Atom CPU (N450? medium power, but doesn't eat up the battery like the AMD s_j mentioned) 2) Matte screen (I hate the gloss) 3) Decent keyboard (if it didn't have a glossy screen and a crappy keyboard, I would have gone for the ASUS 1005 instead)
I got a SKU with a 250G HDD, and I bought a 2G barrette of RAM to replace the 1G it came with, the maximum this machine can take. This particular model uses 800mhz RAM as opposed to 667mhz most other netbooks use.
I can't tell about how useful it is so far, as I haven't had time to install anything on it, but I intend to make it my photography computer. We'll see how it handles Photoshop CS4 with that kind of RAM and processor on 12 megapixels photos.
One thing I can't do with this model, which I kinda regret not looking up beforehand, is to turn it into a Hackintosh, as my graphic chipset isn't supported. In the same range, the Dell Mini 10v seems to be supported.
Advice: if you don't absolutely need Firefox, you'll probably want to run Chrome/Chromium on any netbook you may get. The difference between start-up times is like night and day. Also, I hear Chrome/Chromium uses less power since it doesn't pester the CPU as much.
I had one of the original EeePC's with the 7inch screens which I loved, but it wasn't very powerful. My flatmate has a EeePC901 which seems OK, but I don't like the keyboard much.
A friend has a MSI Wind which he installed OSX on. I think you can do that with the Winds and the Dell netbooks.
Other than that, the Samsung ones I've seen look the best, but I've never used one.
i have a wind, and love it. i've also played around with the samsungs, lenovos, hps, and dells and they are all nice.
the only thing with the HPs to watch out for is that they don't allow you to swap out the wifi card due to a software whitelist of only certain cards in the BIOS. this makes me a sad hacker, so don't buy them :(
I have an EeePC 901, I don'y know how much I'd recommend it compared to some of the newer things on the market, but I do love it and it is brilliant for travel.
Arnon and I regret buying netbooksnibtea of proper laptops. We both have work laptops and of we could do it again would opt for refurb laptop for the price.
80% of the functionality of a netbook will be available in the tablet market - ipad etc; give it a year and get your choice of the full screen tablets at that time.
IMHO.
If you do get a netbook look for 2-touch pinch zoom style touhpad and the highest screen resolution you can get!
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Here's a random unboxing video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoKJjMa8EsI
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if u are lookin for soemthing cheap, get the acers and then by the time they warranty runs out and they break, u can get a another one cuz they are cheap enuff
if u have the budget for something pricier, i have a dell mini10 that is wroking out pretty nicely. and i've heard good things about the eee
if u are just using it for internet..microsoft office..etc then u might as well get the ubuntu operating system instead of windows, the performance is better and the interface is not too different. if u are using more complex applications (like photoshop or something) then stay with Windows if u don't want to learn ubuntu.
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Also, not sure if this is relevant to your needs, but installing Ubuntu Linux (specifically the Netbook Remix of it) on it was totally easy, once I figured out the trick of how to (a) make a bootable USB drive from the Windows side (it came with Windows XP), and (b) convince it to actually boot from said drive (which came down to timing). Ever since then, all has been good. I kept the original Windows install on a small partition, mainly for testing web sites in IE, but I use Ubuntu as my primary OS on the netbook.
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I think there might still be one or two netbooks with the athlon or the athlon neo, which offers a pretty substantial performance improvement over any of the atoms. I never get video lag, for instance; the performance is so close to a full-size laptop that I use this computer all the time now and don't even bother with any of the others. But they're more expensive - up to $400 - and the battery life is usually worse. I wouldn't buy one without the bigger six-cell lion battery pack they usually offer, either. But I couldn't stand the atoms.
F-C has one of the dell mini 10s, and likes it, but I think it's -too- small, and it has what for me would a be a crippling design flaw - the buttons are integrated under the trackpad, not separated, so certain click and drag operations are physically impossible. They may have redesigned that by now; I dunno.
You might want to think about avoiding spinners altogether. I didn't, but a lot of people swear that's the way to go. A lot of places sell netbooks with only flash memory and no HD at all. One of the bigger performance problems in some netbooks are those teeny weak-sauce HDs. The space is more limited that way, and they're more expensive. But they're faster and more durable.
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And Happy Birthday!
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...sometimes, when people aren't looking, I hug it.
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If your budget permits, though, I'd actually consider an iPad. Seriously.
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1) Most recent Atom CPU (N450? medium power, but doesn't eat up the battery like the AMD s_j mentioned)
2) Matte screen (I hate the gloss)
3) Decent keyboard (if it didn't have a glossy screen and a crappy keyboard, I would have gone for the ASUS 1005 instead)
I got a SKU with a 250G HDD, and I bought a 2G barrette of RAM to replace the 1G it came with, the maximum this machine can take. This particular model uses 800mhz RAM as opposed to 667mhz most other netbooks use.
I can't tell about how useful it is so far, as I haven't had time to install anything on it, but I intend to make it my photography computer. We'll see how it handles Photoshop CS4 with that kind of RAM and processor on 12 megapixels photos.
One thing I can't do with this model, which I kinda regret not looking up beforehand, is to turn it into a Hackintosh, as my graphic chipset isn't supported. In the same range, the Dell Mini 10v seems to be supported.
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A friend has a MSI Wind which he installed OSX on. I think you can do that with the Winds and the Dell netbooks.
Other than that, the Samsung ones I've seen look the best, but I've never used one.
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the only thing with the HPs to watch out for is that they don't allow you to swap out the wifi card due to a software whitelist of only certain cards in the BIOS. this makes me a sad hacker, so don't buy them :(
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80% of the functionality of a netbook will be available in the tablet market - ipad etc; give it a year and get your choice of the full screen tablets at that time.
IMHO.
If you do get a netbook look for 2-touch pinch zoom style touhpad and the highest screen resolution you can get!