Netbook, anybody got one?

[subbie]

Does anybody here have a netbook by chance? What do you think of them?

I'm on the fence of maybe getting a netbook for my trip to china in a month. Yes Yes, sure I will be busy checking out china but i'm going to be there for 4 weeks and alot of the time will be spent visiting my wife's family. So I exspect quite a few days where I will be bored out of my mind.

So I'm temped to buy an Acer Aspire One or Dell Inspiron 9 netbook so I can do a little coding while on vacation. It should be powerful enough to do a little psp coding (I just need simple opengl support :P).

So anybody got a netbook and can give some impressions on it's usefullness?

[alphagamer]

my sister got the Asus Eee PC 700.

i hate the keyboard, its rickety and does not feel comfortable when writing for a longer period.

[Mr. Casual]

I've got an Eee 900HA.

The keyboard IS small, but I love the machine itself. I use it pretty much because its got a 160 gig hard drive, but I also took it on a trip and watched movies on it, and it was awesome.

I'd definitely consider getting a 900HA, they're only $300, and in my opinion, worth every penny.

I'm not sure how powerful it is when it comes to PSP coding, though. I upgraded mine to 2 gigs of Ram for $30, that probably would be enough. I guess.

[Tomcat]

EEE901 running perfect everything works no hassle

[Taucias]

Does that model support Windows XP?

[babu]

I got the AAO linux version. Works pretty well. Even done some coding using OpenGL + Cg shaders on it and it seemed to work. Only complaint I got with would be that the pre-installed linux (linplus) is crap imo. So I installed xubuntu instead, unfortantly some things isn't supported under ubuntu ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne ).
Also did a ram upgrade on mine just for fun.

[Taemos]

I keep recommending this model of the Aspire One to people: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115519

Six cell battery, 120gb hard drive (though there are reports of people getting 160gb), and Windows XP

If you plan on coding, I would stay far away from the Dell Mini 9. A lot of the brackets and other essential "coding" keys have been relegated to functions of other keys (as in, you have to use the Fn key to call them). The keyboard essentially sucks if you need to do anything other than basic word processing.

I haven't had a very good look at the current Eee models, but if the keyboard is anything like the 701 I wouldn't bother. I didn't have too many problems after I got used to it, but I have thin fingers and a bottomless pit of patience.

For the most part, they all have the same hardware, so it really just depends on what design you think you'd be most comfortable with.

Oh, and to answer your question, they're VERY useful (I use mine every single day) and you will not regret getting one. As soon as I sell my Dell laptop, the only two computers I will own will be my Aspire One and my headless fileserver.

[RyanGamerGoneGrazy]

Go for the aspire one. keyboard is pretty good compared to the eeepc 701 but smaller than whats on a 10 inch netbook (MSI wind)

The nice thing about the aspire one and many newer netbooks is storage, with the eeepc 701 and some other models 900, certain 901s your limited to a small ssd, sure its fast, but 4 gigs wont give you much (you gotta think creatively in those cases)

The atom is a pretty powerful little cpu, will handle pretty much anything you throw at it within reason. I own a eeepc 701, Acer aspire 150 and a MSI wind, and on a daily basis i do between 4-6 hours of flash, photoshop, illustrator and dreamweaver a day, with no issues on my MSI and Acer (the MSI runs OSX)

The Aspire Ones come with 160gig hdd now, which, i dont think will give anyone issues....and they make great emulator machines. I currently have gta san andreas, morrowind, sam and max season one, nascar heat, p64, psxe, snes, and others installed, and it makes a nice gaming machine

9 inch screen is pretty nice, 7 inch is a bit too small for other than web browsing, as many apps go off screen. 10 inch is super easy on the eyes, but doesnt offer any resolution inscrease from 9 inch......


Cheers

Ryan

[subbie]

Taemos,

Odd, I though the Aspire only had 3-cell batteries. Nice to hear the 150 I was looking at yesterday has a 6-cell.

Can they be upgraded to 2GB of ram or is the limit 1gb?

Also any chance thies things will run win2k or win7 with out any problems? I'm kind of currious.

Hmm, Guess i'm going to need to get my but out to the local PC store and try the aspire out. vbmenu_register("postmenu_326464", true);

[RyanGamerGoneGrazy]

win 7 runs pretty good on the aspire one, ram is maxed out at 1.5 gbs....

[Taemos]

Yeah, the one bad thing about the Aspire Ones is that they're a pain in the ass to upgrade. I think I've got it down to a science now, though. If you decide to get one and upgrade the RAM to 1.5gb, use a credit card to pull up on the keyboard while you're pushing the tabs in.

If I were to get a netbook now, though, I'd probably go with the Wind. They're easier to upgrade, have a 10 inch screen, and can run OSX. The ones with the six-cell are a bit more expensive at $430, though.

If you really don't mind spending $$$ on one, go with the Samsung. That thing is the Bentley of netbooks.

Edit: A quick check tells me that the Samsung NC10 went down to $450. It supposedly has one of the nicest keyboards you can get, has a matte screen (which I like), and gets something like eight hours of battery life.

As far as Windows 7 goes, I installed it on a separate partition yesterday. It runs pretty well once it's loaded up, but I still prefer XP simply because I like the way it looks. If you wanted to run Windows 7, though, it's quite usable and everyone I've talked to that's used it on a netbook has been very pleased. I ditched it for Linux.

I wouldn't run Vista, though. It's probably fine, but I have a problem with running a resource-heavy OS on a computer that won't benefit from it.

[Calpis]

I'm getting a MSI Wind soon: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834152074 the lack of 6 cell availability is the only thing lacking really.

[Tomcat]

Does that model support Windows XP?

Yup but im a linux guy. Ive upgraded the 2nd ssd to a runcore 32gig unit. Its faster then the 4gig ssd.

Currently looking for a 2nd cheap 901 to be fitted in my van for recording/downloading videos from my buggy cams and for controling the music.

[Taemos]

I'm getting a MSI Wind soon: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834152074 the lack of 6 cell availability is the only thing lacking really.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834152075 ;)

[Calpis]

Oh yeah I know about the $430 model, but I wanna buy just a 6 or 9 cell battery a la carte later on.. especially a cheaper generic one. I haven't really looked into that though, know if any generics are compatible? :D

[Taemos]

I've seen a third-party nine cell battery, but it was huge. The size kind of ruins the point of a netbook to me.

Buying the batteries separately tend to cost more than if they came with the laptop, which is why I never really consider it as an option. I'm sure you could find third party batteries if you look, though. I know I've seen them about.

[virtual alan]

Was looking at these notebooks at the week-end

Apparantly you can only download software for them...........no way of installing anything from a disk

As there are plenty here more PC literate then me , is this correct?

If so would probably then go for a lap top that plays cd`s/dvd`s etc

[Dark Seraph91]

Was looking at these notebooks at the week-end

Apparantly you can only download software for them...........no way of installing anything from a disk

As there are plenty here more PC literate then me , is this correct?

If so would probably then go for a lap top that plays cd`s/dvd`s etc

You can use an external dvd drive.

[Taemos]

Was looking at these notebooks at the week-end

Apparantly you can only download software for them...........no way of installing anything from a disk

As there are plenty here more PC literate then me , is this correct?

If so would probably then go for a lap top that plays cd`s/dvd`s etc

As Dark Seraph said, you can buy an external DVD writer (edit: apparently the one I bought has been "deactivated", but you can find some on Newegg).

If you don't want to spend any money on one, you could always make a CD/DVD image on a computer that does have an optical drive and then transfer it to the netbook with a USB thumb drive, mount the image, and install from there.

[subbie]

If you really don't mind spending $$$ on one, go with the Samsung. That thing is the Bentley of netbooks.

Actualy i'm trying to keep my budget to around $400 Canadian (the Aspires clock in at $400 canadian). =)

Thanks for the other info, Sad it can only do 1.5GB but really I am not doing anything intensive so 1GB should do the trick.

As for Vista, Dear god there is no way in hell i'm installing that crap. I was only currious for Win 7 since I heard the beta is suposetly even better & bit faster then XP. Me personaly I like win2k the most (clean & simple, just sucks on driver support sometimes).