Does Anyone Use A Netbook?

[tomturd]

I'm possibly thinking of getting one. My current laptop is a 17" monster and it seems like a nice idea to get something small and light.

Has anyone got one of these, or did have one? What did/do you think of it?

[Muel]

My grandma has one, it's a great little thing. It's super light, not too pokey and it has a 1024x640ish resolution, which is actually not too bad, any mor eand it would be too hard to read stuff.

I'm planning on getting the same one for when I go to Uni.

[Guest]

My dad has a sony vaio net book (the smallest vaio money can buy) its the buisness, the battery life is good, nice clear screen very light, and if your using it on the go and have a mobile internet stick it usually comes with a sim card which you can put in the vaio so you odnt have to carry around the mobile internet stick.

[JD™]

How much will you be travelling around with it and using it on the go Tom?

My Dad has one, which I took away a little while ago on a little tour and it was great for that because it's so easy to transport etc. But don't get one if you need any performance, they literally are only really good for surfing the web and some simple office tasks.

Could be worth just looking at a smaller laptop, as a trade off between the 2?

[adamtrials]

My brothers both have asus eepc's, they use them alllll the time and have no complaints, i'd consider getting one if I found just using a phone for internet too prohibitive. Guess they're slightly smaller than a netbook? They're part of a new initiative for all primary school kids to have one, they use them for work in lessons a lot.

[Orgun_Donor]

Id consider getting a 10" netbook but nothing smaller if your planning on using it for anything more then pottering about on the net and playing with a few things. Also the Atom processor is not all that fantastic so multi tasking can be quite tedious at times.

MSI Wind netbook seems to be relatively ideal, my brother has one and doesn't have to many complaints, other then what's listed above.

[Tony Harrison]

I'd recommend the Wind, or those from Acer. I have one of the 9" screen Acer's and it's great. I only really use when I'm travelling about, but for that it's perfect. Cost £199, then I installed Windows and put in an extra 1Gb of RAM, plus bought a 7 hour batter, so probably spent £250-60 by now.

[Danny]

Hummmmmmmm shiney http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009...t-ion-netbook/1

[Muel]

I'm on my Grandma's now, it's a Samsung with NP-NC10 on the bottom.

http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/detail/..._cd=NC10RH/XEU#

Seems pretty good! Surprisingly good actually, I'm running Photoshop CS3 portable off my pen drive, it took a while to open it, (faster than at home or work though because it has USB 2.0), and now it's running fine, I've been editing some pics and it's barely lagging at all when adding pretty complicated filters and stuff.

Here's a review: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/234621/samsung-nc10.html

I think if I get a netbook I'll get one of these, maybe I'll be able to blag this one, she doesn't seem too keen a the moment.

[Spikenipple]

I use an Acer Aspire One, with a 1.66Ghz Atom, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive etc. I'm currently installing OSX on it

[Haz]

If there was one which had six hours battery life, (wireless off, low screen brightness, etc not a problem), I'd probably go for a netbook, but I've not seen any proof any of them do, so I think I'll wait.

[Muel]

Thats pretty much what this is, 1.6ghz Atom, 1gb DDR2, Intel 945GSE 128MB Integrated Graphics. Seems to do the job easily enough!

It's got fecking Kaspersky on it aswell which will be slowing it down more than my usual Zone Alarm + AVG combo.

If there was one which had six hours battery life, (wireless off, low screen brightness, etc not a problem), I'd probably go for a netbook, but I've not seen any proof any of them do, so I think I'll wait.

I've been reading up and several people say they can get about 5 hours with wifi on and backlight on full.

I can't get Dreamweaver to open for some reason, but I'm running Kompozer and Photoshop CS3 off the same pen drive and it's not lagging any more than my desktop and far less than the shite one at work.

[MikeWarner]

Acer Aspire one here - bought the cheapest one (16gb SSD and Unix) then rammed a much faster 40GB Pod hard drive into it and upgraded the ram to 1.5GB. It is running Windows 7 so quick it even shocked me. I also have a 15" HP for normal use.

If you are buying a netbook to be your only PC, deffo look at at least 10", Dell and Acer do great ones in that size, although with the Dell you get the option of a 720p screen, which would be better for general use as well as watching movies on.

[Danny]

It's got fecking Kaspersky on it aswell which will be slowing it down more than my usual Zone Alarm + AVG combo.

I wouldnt run any of those on a netbook to be honest. Saying that id probably run ubuntu netbook remix too.

[Muel]

What would you recommend? I'll definately be sticking with XP. I like Ubuntu but I've never managed to really get on with it. May well try it with a Live CD though...

I'm pretty sold, if I get one I'll probably get one of these.

[Jonny Jones]

IGNORE everything else, apart from this, I'm purchasing one very shortly - MSI Wind U100

[Tony Harrison]

You won't regret it, they're pretty damn good.

[Muel]

What makes them better than the Samsung NC10? They seem just the same according to the specs.

[Danny]

The NC10 has a MUCH better keyboard than the MSI

[Muel]

The keyboard is absolutely brilliant, I was typing as fast as I can on this!

EDIT: Well nearly. I'm sure I could type as fast on it if I got used to it. It wasn't like most laptops I go on though, I felt at home straight away.

Edited May 26, 2009 by Muel

[Adam L]

I'm on a 10" Advent 4211c Netbook, never let me down, £275 new too.

1GB Ram, 120GB HDD, 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor. Only complaint is the short 2 hour battery life but other than that i'd definitely recommend a netbook!