Question

Greetings,

I have been looking to purchase a netbook to lighten my daily carry load. The problem I am having is selecting proper hardware for my usage. I am not familiar with the Atom processor or what the difference truly will be between them. Is one GB of ram really be enough? Is a solid state hdd worth the extra cash? Will I be screwed in a year as I am running out of space?

I really don't care if the netbook runs Windows or Linux, my main need for the device is surfing the web and working on documents through online-line apps like Google Docs.

I would appreciate any guidance you may be able to give me. Perhaps a netbook is just a bad purchase, I am open to that criticism too.

Thank you,

Brett

Answer 1

In general, trackpads on netbooks are meh at best and horrible at worst, so plan on getting/using an external mouse of some sort. That being said, i have an HP Mini 1000 (model 1120 NR) and it's great. Nice and small, light and portable.

Is one GB of ram enough?

I'd say that for a netbook, 1GB is great. Plenty to handle basic games, web surfing, online document editing and the like.

Is an SSD worth the extra cash?

Id say that it is, my computer is nice and zippy. Even if it doesn't offer more power it lets you not worry as much about drops/bumps/etc.

Will i run out of hard disk space?

It depends on the OS and size of the disk. With a 16GB SSD (what i have) windows 7 took up all but ~2.5GB of space, while other OSes (like *nix/mac OS) may take up less.

What about the Atom processor?

It won't be to fast at unpacking/transcoding etc. and you won't be running Photoshop or anything on it but it's more than fast enough for what it was designed for.

Will the battery be too small?

If you get the regular battery on a netbook (usually 2-3 cells) you'll have a few hours of basic surfing and maybe playing some flash games before it dies. I'd presume that you get much more out of a larger battery though.

What screen size should i get?

I'd definitely recommend that you get a 10 inch screen so that you have plenty of room (relatively) for doing netbook tasks.

Answer 2

Lifehacker.com did a netbook roundup that was pretty informative. You can find the article here.

Answer 3

I have the Acer Aspire One. It's a great netbook except the trackpad is the WORST I have ever used. Not only is it kind of a shiny plastic that catches the ridges on my finger (not very smooth) but the mouse buttons are on the LEFT AND RIGHT of the stupid thing, making it just about impossible to use. Get it with a mouse, or get a different one.

Answer 4

A netbook is a nice purchase but make sure you know why you're getting it and what you need it for. My perception of what a netbook is supposed to be:

• small (10" max, 9" is better but check the keyboard)
• lightweight (i.e. SSD and not a hard drive)
• low-power/heat (i.e. Atom)
• very portable (i.e. decent battery - 6hrs+)
• good at web browsing/apps and not much else
• cheap (sub £300)

If you want something which isn't these, then you may not want a netbook. Otherwise decide which of the above is most important to you, find three of them, then pick based on price. Remember: when choosing a product, 5 minutes later you will always be wrong. Don't worry about it.

Answer 5

I have a Dell Mimi 9, and my wife has a Acer Aspire One - between the two, the Dell is certainly better. Here are a few of the things that make the Dell so nice:

• Light weight - the Mini is extremely light, quite a bit lighter than most books I carry with me,
• Silent - Because there are no moving parts, the Mini makes no sound at all; the only thing you can hear are the keys.
• Fast - Even with only 1GB of RAM, it handles Windows 7 Ultimate like a champ. Though I would strongly recommend against running Vista on it, as Vista just doesn't deal well with low memory installs. Don't run XP either, at least for me Windows 7 performs better.
• Battery life - Even with the small 4-cell battery, I was able to get 5+ hours from a change.

Many people complain about the small SSDs that the Mini came with, though for me at least I've found that this really isn't an issue. Most of my data is stored in the cloud (Gmail, Amazon S3, FTP Servers) that I use a fairly small amount of disk space. My Mini has the original 16GB SSD, and still has about 8GB available.

As for the Aspire One - it has a traditional hard drive giving it much more storage space and the keyboard is larger allowing a more traditional design. Though overall the design doesn't seem as solid as the Dell Mini - it's a decent netbook, though I won't be buying another.

Biggest complaint: Keyboard - I've yet to find a notebook keyboard that I like. It's just something you get used to eventually I guess.

Answer 6

I really really really really love my Asus Eee Pc 1000HE. Probably slightly pricey for what it is (mostly paying for a 9 cell battery) but the build quality is fantastic and the keyboard and trackpad are brilliant. I found I had to disable the "zoom" multi touch guesture in order to scroll effectively, but its the perfect size for the screen and feels good to the touch (an important consideration.)

Definatly try one out before you buy (as in try to do some of your normal tasks.) I've found myself doing some light development work on it, and can really no longer use my 15" Laptop as a laptop, it just seems like an aircraft carrier!

You MAY want to wait for a bigger screen, I certainly wouldn't go lower than 10", but this feels perfectly comfortable.

Answer 7

I have a dell Mini 10v running Mac OSX Leopard and I'm very happy with it.

The good:

The keyboard is surprisingly decent, with a standard layout and decent feel for a Dell. I'm an iPhone developer and I can use my 10v for coding pretty comfortably, it's much more convenient to carry around with me than my 15 inch Macbook Pro.

Performance of the 1.6 ghz atom processor is actually pretty good. They say it's about as fast as a 800mhz Pentium 3 mobile, but it seems to be faster than that to me. I went for a 160 gb hard drive rather than a solid state drive for the extra storage.

The bad:

The one negative of the 10v is that upgrading the ram is much more difficult than it needs to be. You have to open the case and take out the motherboard to get access to the ram slot on the underside of the motherboard. I have no idea why dell didn't just put a door on the bottom...

The meh:

I have the standard 2 cell (or is it 3?) battery and I only get about 2 hours of life. From reading the forums on mydellmini.com it looks like the 6 cell battery gives 5-6 hours of life, so I'll probably upgrade to one of those sooner or later.

Answer 8

I also have an Acer Aspire One, I added the extra gig of ram....I added Windows 7 RC1, this little machine packs a nice punch. I also have install and use Photoshop CS 3 with it daily. Visual studio 2008 and use it daily. My biggest selling point was hard drive - I went for the space (160 GB HDD) and with the other stuff like built in web cam and SD card reader. I love it. Also, make sure you look out for the larger battery - most of the "netbooks" offer them.

Answer 9

The Dell Mini 9 has always looked appealing to me, plus I hear it real hackable in the sense that it is using some pretty mainstream components for RAM and the like. The price is right and I've heard of a few bloggers out there that are running Visual Studio for light development work on it too. The Mini 10 sounds appealing with the potential to put in GPS, but I'd prefer to keep it simple and sweet.

Answer 10

For any serious superuser, the specs you'd want are probably something like this:

• Anything that can handle 2GB of RAM.
• at LEAST the 10" screen, if not 12"
• try for a matte finish LCD screen
• the Atom 1.6Ghz processors are fine
• pop in a new 7200 RPM drive.
• get at least a 6-cell battery!
• Windows 7 rocks on netbooks

My recommendation would be the Lenovo S10e, but Lenovo is coming out with a 12" netbook soon.

Perhaps this Samsung NC-20 12 netbook might fit your netbooking needs.

Answer 11

I would say something that has a decent keyboard (i.e. one that has keys about the same size as a regular keyboard), screen resolution of at least 1024x600, 6 cell or more battery and the bigger the hard drive the better.

Answer 12

I've got an Asus N10j-a2 and, if you've got the money ($700-$800, pricey for a netbook), its definitely worth it. This thing has excellent battery life, a full keyboard, good trackpad and it has a secondary graphics card you can turn on for graphically intensive stuff.
Reviews at http://review.zdnet.com/product/laptops/asus-n10j-a2-atom-n270-16-ghz-102/33311996

Answer 13

This question will give subjective answers and the other posts here are useful in helping you decide what's right for you.

But indulge me in my opinion. I have a Toshiba NB100, it has a 9" display (true netbook criteria IMHO) but still a 1024x600 resolution that many larger screen netbooks use.

The keys are a little small but you would have to expect that with the convenience of the netbook small size. The labelling of characters on the keyboard could be brighter too, it's a grey/purple against the black plastic.

It's one of the smallest and cheapest netbooks from a good brand but yet still well featured.

I run Windows XP home, Ubuntu 8.10 and Debian5 triple booted. XP is encrypted with Truecrypt. Debian and swap is encrypted. I mostly use XP.

1.6GHz Intel Atom 270 processor and 1Gb RAM, 120Gb hard drive.

Dual-purpose USB/eSATA ports!

WiFi. 100BaseT wired ethernet port.

Built in webcam, works fine with Skype.

Approx 4 hour battery.

VGA/D-SUB display port for split/dual screening across onto an external monitor.

SDHC card slot.