My netbooks have done great. I love 'em. Nice small laptop with a real keyboard. They travel great. They seem to be a dying breed. - No more than a 11 inch screen.
Knowing that I will need to upgrade to Win 10 sometime, I’m looking for a netbook that is 64bit. Can’t find one.
I need a SSD too, but that’s not a problem for me to switch out the drive. Though I would rather not.
Tiger Direct has nothing, nor does Amazon or Toshiba or Accer. I’d be happy to give the specs and have it built.
If you can point me in a direction for this, thank you.
CDW is my go-to site for this kind of thing. Couldn’t find anything under 11 inches other than the ridonkulously expensive Panasonic Toughbooks, but these are 11.6". Does that help?
They do exist but some of them are a bit pricey. Your mistake may be using the term “netbook” in your searches because that tends to refer to lower end compact laptops that don’t run usually Windows 10 currently and aren’t often 64 bit. You will have better results if you just search by screen size, 64 bit and Windows 10.
Here is an article with some suggestions but there are also niche makers for the industrial market that also make them and just about any other configuration you can think of (but often at a steep price).
What are your requirements? Web cruising, movies, light word processing? You wouldn’t seem to be doing graphics, spreadsheets, photo layouts on a tiny screen?
I’m asking why 64 bit and windows? More help please.
Pretty much this. The point of netbooks was to have be on the go with long battery life which is not a selling feature of any 64 bit OS or CPU which are power hogs vs competing designs. I don’t see the point of a netbook that will chew though a battery in 2 hours. 64 bit netbooks are scarce because they are not a very useful or desirable design balance.
You would be better of focusing on 14 inch slimline notebooks if you just gotta have a 64 bit notebooks or getting Microsoft Surface 4. It hits almost all your hot buttons.
The smaller, cheaper Surface 3 (on Black Friday, $480 with the detachable keyboard) fits the OP’s description a bit better than the bigger, more powerful, and more expensive Surface Pro 4.
I love my Surface Pro 3. The biggest caveat is that the kickstand + folding keyboard is a little awkward to balance on your lap. But it’s perfectly stable on a solid surface, and for a lot of content viewing and casual browsing you don’t need the keyboard anyway.
The reason for 64 bit is to be able to upgrade to windows 10. My desktop will soon have it and I want to keep all my operating systems the same.
I use it mostly for the web and emails. That’s why I prefer a real keyboard. The size of the netbook is great for traveling too. Battery life really isn’t too much of a concern. Netbooks truely are laptop useable.
IMO, the Surface keyboard is better than a fair number of cheap laptop “real keyboards” I’ve used. Key travel is short but crisp enough to have good tactile feedback. The way it attaches is very stable if it’s sitting on any kind of solid surface.
But yeah, I can’t recommend it if you want to balance it on one knee while sitting on the couch, or on your lap in cattle-class airplane seating.
They still make netbooks? I thought they were driven out by tablets years ago. They make “ultrabooks” now which are small, high powered laptops modeled after the Macbook Air, and similarly pricey. But at the netbook price point, you’re basically talking about cheap Android tablets now, and maybe a Chromebook.
I have a Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, and it’s pretty small and thin. I have a 15" screen, but they make them as small as 10" or 11", I think. So you might want to google for “ultrabook”.
By the way, I have an ASUS Transformer, which has managed the Windows 10 upgrade quite well, and which I use as a netbook replacement. I always throught it was 32 bit, but now that I look it seems the processor supports 64 bit, but came with 32 bit OS preinstalled. That’s probably because it only has 2GB of RAM.
I’ve had a Surface 2 (not 2 Pro) for years. The keyboard is about as good as my Toshiba laptop’s. I have no trouble balancing it on my lap while typing. In fact I’m doing that right now. Although I don’t try to sit cross-legged or one-leg-under-butt as so many people do. I’m a two-feet-on-floor or two-feet-on-ottoman kinda guy :).
In the back of an airliner it fits on one’s lap, but it works better on the tray table. At least assuming one is not gigantic.
Once you pop the keyboard off it’s a great tablet.
The Surface 2 is not upgradable to Win10. At least not yet. But a Surface 3 is. And a Surface 4 comes with Win10.
There is a religious debate about the “Pro” line which are full-up PCs vice the non-Pros which are a different processor, only run app store apps, etc. For me portability is more important than being able to run ordinary PC software. So I have the non-pro version (which comes with a full-up variant of Office) and will probably continue up that line. Other folks may prefer the bigger size, more horsepower, and greater app versatility of the Pro versions.
I’m in the market for a new one. My wife recently dropped her Surface 2 on a cement floor and the screen did not survive. It’s old enough to not be refurbable AFIAK.
I will probably go for a 3 on Black Friday sale per lazybratche. The Pro 4 is a full-up state of the art PC in an ultra-portable package. As such it’s excessively spendy if you just want a portable internet terminal. Which is 95% of what I use mine for.
Just one small correction: the Surface 3 has an Intel x86 Atom CPU, rather than the ARM CPU in the Surface 2. That means the Surface 3 runs the standard PC version of Windows and any Windows software. It’s not limited to the rather sparse Windows Store for apps. It’s underpowered compared to laptops with Intel Core CPUs, but it’s definitely a lot faster than old Atom-powered netbooks and can handle ordinary browsing, email, and content viewing just fine.
I may have a particularly hard time balancing the Surface on my lap because I have the proportions of a gibbon. To reach the keyboard on my lap I have to have the kickstand nearly falling off my knees and my elbows jammed to the back of my seat. A lot of other people have an easier time using it on their lap, so YMMV.
