My wife and I have been using my old work laptop to surf around while I am in and out of hospital for a while.
We want to replace the laptop because I don’t know when I will be asked to return it and it is also quite a load to lug about every day.
I have read a little bit about netbooks online and this is just the type of machine we need. All we use the laptop for right now is surfing and checking e-mail.
Does anyone have any recommendations? Do you have one you like or don’t like?
Money will also be one of the deciding factors because we can’t afford to spend a lot right now. Are there any sites or stores that have good prices?
I bought a Dell M1330 a couple of months ago (note: this is not a netbook) and they had a deal where you could get a Dell Mini for only $99 more, so I did. It’s kind of cool: very small and light, though the screen is very small. Typing on it takes some getting used to, especially if you have huge hands. I don’t regret buying it, but it’s mostly just a toy – I can’t see many situations where I’ll end up using it instead of my regular laptop. It’ll be good to have for travel type situations, since I don’t care as much if it gets stolen.
Note: it runs linux, although if you’re just surfing and emailing it doesn’t really matter (Firefox is Firefox). The Ubuntu installation mine shipped with was a bit slow and not everything worked. Reinstalling Ubuntu 8.10 from a USB stick worked perfectly, though, so I’d recommend doing that.
When I get the one I just ordered (Asus Eee 904HA) I’ll let you know what I think of it. I ordered mine from Amazon, but Tiger Direct has some good prices, particularly for refurbished models (around $300).
The main things you need to decide is whether you want a 8.9" screen or a 10" screen, and how long a battery life you need. 3-cell batteries will give you 2.5-3 hours, and 6-cell batteries will give you 5.5-7 hours (depending on the model and usage. Also, you can get them with solid-state drives in the 8-16 Gb range, or 120 Gb or 160 Gb hard drives.
Thanks for the responses so far. I like the idea of a refurbished one to keep the price down.
I think we would want a larger monitor and a longer-lasting battery, if possible. I am not sure about the solid-state or hard drive–any opinions, anyone?
I’ve got a Samsung NC10 which has become my de facto work computer for light spreadsheet work, quick internet research, and email. For my purposes, it’s great. Now, among netbooks, it has one of the best keyboards, and even then it’s awkward to type more than a few paragraphs at a time. It also has great battery life (five or six hours of ordinary use, more if I turn off the wifi and dim the screen), but it’s more expensive than most at $450.
As solid state drives go, everything I’ve seen indicates that they really don’t perform as well as traditional hard drives for everyday use. The only advantages they have are a slight increase in battery life and better shock resistance. I’d just get an ordinary hard drive.
We have three Dell Mini-9’s around here and chose the Ubuntu version to save a few bucks. The only complaint I have with the small internal storage, but I have over a terabyte of external drives so it’s not that big of a deal (note, the Mini9 doesn’t seem to like the Seagate Freeagent but works fine with WD)
And sometimes the touchpad doesn’t work when plugged in (seems to work fine running on battery).
Keyboard is small and hard to get used to, but I suspect most of them are like that.
I don’t know that I can recommend it wholeheartedly since I’ve never used any of the others. It does what I want it to do and comes with OpenOffice if I ever want to use it more intensively.
I did some research and the Lenovo S-10 seemsto be very well regarded. I purchased two and I must say the build quality is superb. You can tell Lenovo built the IBM Thinkpads. Noting toy-like about it. I’ve kicked the memory up to 2 gigs and added an internal bluetooth module and a high capacity battery for 6 hour+ runtime.
It has the horsepower to play movies, run Office 2007 very nicely, surf, etc. etc. My daughter modded hers to run OSX. They are currently adding to the feature set and thenewest model of S10 out in few days will have facial recognition and some other fancy stuff.
I’ve got the SSD equipped AspireOne…Were I to do it again, I’d get one with a hard disk. It runs Windows 7 GREAT unless it’s hung…at which point you can look down and see that it’s writing to the SSD.
Thank you so much for all your advice and suggestions.
I need to look at some electronics stores to see what we can affored.
I was thinking of Tiger Direct and New Egg as well as the other usual electronics store. Anywhere else I missed? Are there any other important tips to look for when making my puchase?
My wife got this one for under $300 at Staples a week ago. She loves it. I don’t care much for the small screen, but she likes being able to take it to the bedroom and check email/websurf from bed. (Windows XP, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HD)
If you don’t mind adding 12 oz to the weight of the Aspire One, ebay’s full of 9 cell batteries for about $75. Mind will go, literally, ALL DAY on a charge. (Between 8 and 10 hours, depending on useage)
It’s great to have the light battery as a backup or in bed, and the monster for being away from a plug all day.
Seconded I have the NC10 and it’s a great Netbook. I tried out a few others at a nearby store but the NC10’s keyboard and battery life were what sold me on it. It also has a fantastic screen for a Netbook…hell it’s got a fantastic screen for a higher end laptop.
Dell calls the Mini 12 a netbook, even though it isn’t ultra light and small, and has a real hard disk. It weighs about 2.5 pounds, has a good-size screen and keyboard, and looks great. It comes with 1GB RAM, but that’s all: it can’t be increased.
I just bought one a few weeks ago, and so far I like it. I got the top of the line model, with an 80GB HD, refurbished, for under $500. Check out the inventory in the Dell Outlet store.
One proviso: it comes with Vista, but is a bit pokey with it. I replaced it with XP, and find it quick enough, if not exactly blazingly fast.
I have the NC10 and it’s a great Netbook. I tried out a few others at a nearby store but the NC10’s keyboard and battery life were what sold me on it. It also has a fantastic screen for a Netbook…hell it’s got a fantastic screen for a higher end laptop.