Which netbooks are your buying?

[graham.hughes]

Which netbooks are you buying?

The C8 is dead. Much as I like it, I'm not willing to suffer its limitations if I also have to replace it every year.

What I don't want, is to end up with a netbook and a laptop. Luckily my laptop is old enough to warrant replacement (it's a five year old ThinkPad R40). The ideal would be to replace it with something with longer battery life and about half the weight. I'm not looking to spend a fortune, so Sony's Vaio P series is not on the cards.

I don't have a WinMo 6.5 device yet, so I'm not in a hurry. But I thought it might be useful to have a place to exchange opinion.

Currently, I'm liking the Toshiba NB200-10Z. The 10Z model has the slightly faster processor, bluetooth, and the extended battery (9 hours). For ?370 (in the UK, including tax), you can buy the device with an upgrade to 2Gb memory, and an external USB CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.

It doesn't quite match the performance even of my aging laptop, though with the upgrade it has more memory (I have 1Gb currently) and it has a much larger hard disk (160Gb vs 25Gb). It's also half the weight, half the size, and has three or four times the battery life. Against the Redfly, it's a tad bigger and, at 1.3kg, a bit heavier.

Plus points:

• Bigger screen than the RF, at 1024x600.
• Ethernet socket (I've often stayed in hotels that have free wired internet in the room, with wifi only in the lobby, making the RedFly a pain to use).
• Webcam built-in.
• A nice USB trick called "sleep-and-charge", which allows you to charge a USB attached device even when the netbook is switched off.

Dislikes:

• It follows a popular trend for glossy screens, which I hate. Screens shouldn't be reflective!!

Any views or opinions from current or prospective netbook owners are welcome!

Cheers,
Graham.

 

[badersk]

I bought an MSI wind. Upgraded to 2gb of ram and put windows 7 on it. I love it. Got a really good deal, but I know there are better ones out there now. They have a new one that has a bigger screen, mine is a ten inch, and is thinner. I don't like the glossy screens either and wouldn't buy one that had it. It has the same feature to charge usb when it is off. I hope you find one you like.

 

[Tim Ferrill]

I have an Acer AspireOne. My ONLY complaint about it is that the keyboard isn't as nice as some that I've used (mainly the Dell and HP models). That being said, it IS one of the original 8.9" models, not the 10"; which does seem to have a better keyboard. If I were going to purchase a new Netbook it would probably be from Dell or HP. Most of the internal hardware is essentially the same between the different manufacturers, so to me the keyboard is one of the deciding factors.

 

[The Liaison]

I agree with you on this.

The C8 is dead. Much as I like it, I'm not willing to suffer its limitations if I also have to replace it every year.

What I don't want, is to end up with a netbook and a laptop. Luckily my laptop is old enough to warrant replacement (it's a five year old ThinkPad R40). The ideal would be to replace it with something with longer battery life and about half the weight. I'm not looking to spend a fortune, so Sony's Vaio P series is not on the cards.

I don't have a WinMo 6.5 device yet, so I'm not in a hurry. But I thought it might be useful to have a place to exchange opinion.

Currently, I'm liking the Toshiba NB200-10Z. The 10Z model has the slightly faster processor, bluetooth, and the extended battery (9 hours). For ?370 (in the UK, including tax), you can buy the device with an upgrade to 2Gb memory, and an external USB CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.

It doesn't quite match the performance even of my aging laptop, though with the upgrade it has more memory (I have 1Gb currently) and it has a much larger hard disk (160Gb vs 25Gb). It's also half the weight, half the size, and has three or four times the battery life. Against the Redfly, it's a tad bigger and, at 1.3kg, a bit heavier.

Plus points:

• Bigger screen than the RF, at 1024x600.
• Ethernet socket (I've often stayed in hotels that have free wired internet in the room, with wifi only in the lobby, making the RedFly a pain to use).
• Webcam built-in.
• A nice USB trick called "sleep-and-charge", which allows you to charge a USB attached device even when the netbook is switched off.

Dislikes:

• It follows a popular trend for glossy screens, which I hate. Screens shouldn't be reflective!!

Any views or opinions from current or prospective netbook owners are welcome!

Cheers,
Graham.

I'm taking these specs into consideration.

 

[graham.hughes]

Tim: True. It's very easy to compare on paper-specification, and forget the keyboard and screen, which are, after all, the bits you're actually going to interact with.

One problem I have is that I've had ThinkPads for years, and am a big TrackPoint fan. I guess I might have to get used to a touch pad. The Vaio P is the only netbook I know of with a TrackPoint, and it's just too over-priced in my opinion.

Badersk: A friend of mine also has the MSI Wind, with which he just spent ten months traipsing around the Pacific Rim, so clearly they're also fairly robust. I have to agree, and say that the glossy screen probably rules out the Tosh.

Do you find the performance good enough to ditch having a laptop/desktop?

Thanks both,
Graham.

 

[badersk]

I have a laptop from work but don't carry it because it is heavy. The wind is just the right weight. One think about it I don't like is the mouse button, I can use it but it is too small. I carry and wireless mouse around with me.
Power and speed wise it is fine. I can play a dvd with an external drive, do email edit documents, It's good on the web, with the 1024 width it is just right for most web pages. I personally don't have a problem replacing a laptop with it but I couldn't do without my desktop, I do some video and photo editing and I don't think a netbook can do either at all.

I agree that the Dells or hps are probably a little nicer hardware, but what ever you get make sure you can upgrade the ram. Some are limited to 1gb and it is just not enough. Oh and MSI is supporting Win 7 drivers and Ubuntu for netbooks is also out in case you like linux.

 

[jwebb56]

If I decide to go the Netbook route it'll probably be a used ASUS Eee PC 901. I like its smaller size due to a 8.9 inch screen, the ability to upgrade to 2GB of RAM and the option of having flash memory for the system drive.

 

[anon159272]

I love my Acer Aspire One 10" (with bluetooth). The 6 cell battery goes for 6+ hours with WiFi on. My only dislike is the weird mouse buttons, though it's seldom an issue because I use the tap-click support. Right-clicking is kind of a pain, though. I wish they'd put some more thought into that.

I have to say I hardly compared the Aspire One to anything. My friend got one at Costco, showed it to me, and I simply had to have one. As it replaced an aging Dell Latitude X300 (1.2Ghz PIII) that featured 90 minute battery life with the screen brightness all the way down and ran so hot it burned my legs a few times, it was most definitely an upgrade.

The glossy screen hasn't been a problem yet because the LED backlight is so powerful that it has always been able to overcome any reflection problems. Though I have to say I do very little computing outside, where it might be more of a problem.

Definitely not a primary machine, but I'm a developer with a custom-built workstation at home that is powerful enough to heat my office in the winter. I could see it being a primary machine for some people with the addition of a mouse and full-size keyboard for home use. In that case I'd go for 2GB of RAM and recognize that I'm not going to do a lot of photo editing on the thing.

 

[kraski]

If I decide to go the Netbook route it'll probably be a used ASUS Eee PC 901. I like its smaller size due to a 8.9 inch screen, the ability to upgrade to 2GB of RAM and the option of having flash memory for the system drive.

I have a 1000HE with 2GB RAM, hard drive, & (for my older eyes ) a 10" screen. It does pretty much everything my Toshiba laptop will, except the tablet pc stuff. I really like it with my phone. I do still use my C8N when I want something really light & small.

 

[tony]

My main criteria were:
- light weight (device to beat was Redfly C8N)
- long battery life (device to match or beat was Redfly C8N)
- small size (device to beat was cell phone + Redfly)

I ended up with an Asus EEEE 1000HA-P with Win7 "starter"version, upgraded to 2 GB RAM + 4 GB SD card for ReadyBoost, 250 GB harddrive. Battery life is close to the rated 10hrs, 10" size is acceptable. Processor is the N280.

Total travel weight with charger and Ohmetric crush-proof sleeve is a bit on the heavy side, about 1.7 kg which exceeded my criteria. Weight was the one tradeoff. In instances where I don't need the crushproof sleeve, I can shed 1 lb and go with the Asus foam sleeve.

I've loaded almost everything that's on my work laptop. I've loaded the beta MS-Office 2010 and it works just fine. Start-up time is acceptable and fast enough to be perfectly usable. With MS-Live mesh, I've got my data files synchronized. For anything I don't have on the netbook (data or programs) I can use Remote Desktop to access my main laptop back in the office. The keyboard size and tactile feel is nice and also very usable.

 

[Aware]

I bought a Dell Mini 10 (not 10v).

Maxed out with

- 250 Gb HDD
- 2 Gb RAM
- Windows Vista (Bleh, immediately upgrades to Windows 7)
- Dual-boot to JoliCloud (netbook-optimised Linux)
- FANTASTIC 1366x768 screen. Blows away any other 10 inch screen.
- 6 cell battery - good for 6 - 8 hours.

Runs all my office software and also stuff like Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, Fireworks - though tools like that are a leetle slow ;-) Also runs Remote Desktop fantastically.

 

[graham.hughes]

I've finally bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X100e. Huge, by netbook standards (11.6"), but hopefully with enough spec that I don't need a laptop/desktop aswell. All the usual netbook spec (wifi, webcam, bluetooth), plus a dual-core AMD processor and 3Gb memory. Reviews say the batter life is poor and that is gets alarmingly hot. I haven't found it getting any hotter than my old laptop (yet). I'm getting around four hours of battery life (from a 6 cell battery) - not great for a netbook, but enough. To be fair, Lenovo don't describe it as a netbook, and it really sits in a space in between genuine netbooks and laptops. 1.3kg, with a full size (and very good) keyboard, and a 1366x768 non-reflective screen. Both touch pad (with multi-touch, apparently) and trackpoint (ThinkPad "nipple", which is my preference). Like other ThinkPads, it has the G-sensor that shuts down the harddrive in the event of a sudden shock.

Bigger, and more expensive, than a Redfly, but I'm using it and not feeling like I've make any compromises. This replaces both the Redfly and my laptop.

Thanks for all your input, I found it very useful!

Cheers,
Graham.