My husband got me an Asus Eee netbook. It’s a piece of unadulterated garbage. In six months, the right-click has completely broken, the touch pad is so sensitive that every tap is a double-click no matter how soft (and I have the sensitivity turned all the way down in the control panel), and the hard drive is partitioned in a way that makes it very difficult to add new programs without filling it up, not to mention it’s tiny to begin with, so I can’t really have a big library of music or…well, anything. Plus, it’s a pain in the ass to type on. So I’m getting rid of it and getting a cheap laptop.
I pretty much just surf the web and occasionally download music. The only real programs I run are Firefox and iTunes. I don’t do any gaming except for maybe SNES emulation. I really don’t need much, just hard drive space and for it to not be a piece of crap that falls apart in six months. I know I won’t get something lightweight for cheap, although the lighter the better, of course. My husband can get a minor discount on Dell products, but if something else is cheaper and better, I’d like to compare. Anyone have a less-than-$500 laptop they love?
I got a new laptop last year, but I don’t use it very much; it’s strictly for use when I’m out of town (or, more recently, when I was hanging around the hospital). It’s a Compaq Presario with an AMD processor in it, and Vista. I’m happy with it - I run all of my engineering programs (even AutoCAD) on it, do word processing & spreadsheets, play music, surf the web, chat, etc. I got it for around $470 from Best Buy.
I bought my daughter one of the HP minis - 1035NR from ecost dot com. $283. While it is a netbook, it has a pretty large kb and she loves it. Check them out at WM or Frys, but buy one online. Seems like a pretty good netbook. They’re selling for less than I paid back in May.
I recently bought a new laptop and consulted a computer repairman friend about it before I did. His advice, in the current market, is that Acer laptops are the best value you’ll find for your money and that Dell laptops have gone downhill in the last two years. I was looking for a more gaming-oriented computer, but the Timeline series seemed pretty impressive. The big feature they advertise is the 8 hour battery life, which is probably slightly exaggerated, based on reviews, but anything even close to that is really good. I think it’s a fairly new line of laptops, though, which might make it difficult to assess their long-term reliability.
I got mine refurbished from the (then) local MicroCenter With so many businesses going under there are a great many excellent deals out there. If they don’t have a store near you I’m sure there’s another place which does this. . .
Just stay away from the acer minis, if a hard drive dies you end up tossing it because it is so much work to pull the drive out. We did one here because they needed the data recovered from it. 2 hours to get the drive out without destroying the laptop, then we could start on data recovery. I have only seen a few of them, none of them have externally accessible drive bays.
You won’t want to hear this, but I really like the Eee 1000 that I have. It’s a radically different beast from the original 7" (is that what you have?). I had one of those too and it was never practical, even after I forced myself to use it for a month or two.
This 10" beauty, however, is a completely different beast. The keyboard is MUCH more usable (though the overall unit is still small enough to be portable), comes with a 160GB hard drive by default, the battery life is better, it runs Windows (XP or Vista) just fine, it’s better-built and feels more like a laptop than a toy (going on a year or so now without any problems, but I should point out that I use an external mouse more than the touchpad). And costs less than $400.
It’s my favorite computer that I’ve ever owned (and there’s been lots). It hits the perfect sweet spot between portability, usability, and cost.
Crappy keyboard (too small, no function keys), dim screen, but otherwise pretty much the same as any other netbook of its size class.
Funny, I bought an Asus EEE-PC a couple months ago, mainly for travel and so far it seems fine. I can type on the keyboard and the hard drive (160 GB) is enormous and I have had no trouble putting programs on, although I did have to borrow an external DVD reader, but I knew that would be necessary. And, best of all, I could get it without Vista!
The touch pad is a bit, well, touchy. I have an external mouse and the next time I use it I plan to disable the touch pad and use that.
I am on my Asus eee 1000 right now as well, and I also love it. The power supply (cord) did die, but they sent me another one no questions asked.
My husband is going to get the Samsung net book: it looks a little more durable, and it’s got the same battery, so it has the long battery life (the sweetest thing about the 6-cell battery netbooks is that it’s practical to just take them places without even packing the cord–you can get 6 hours of actual use easily, long enough for a lecture or whatever).
Love my Acer Aspire 1 netbook. So does my Wife. I himed an hawed about getting some sort of laptop and am so glad I got a netbook instead. It truely is a laptop as far as I am concerned. The small footprint and light weight is great.