Who has a netbook?

[desertgrandma]

Decisions Decisions.............(whistles happily to herself ((which in itself is remarkable since she can't whistle)) as she ponders what she can get for her K1 loaded with 33 pages of books and a 4 GB card..............)

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

You can get a laptop of similar specs (but more storage) below for about $15 more:

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-U100-641US...dp/B001P5GKCG/

But if you like mini-note, go for it ^_^ I'm glad we were able to help you in this thread.

I haven't made a decision yet........but getting there..........

[Kris777]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Why, I don't know, but I want one so bad. They are so danged cute! I could sell one of my Kindles and buy one, but first I have to know.........


Do you like/love it?

Do you read your books on it? How is that experience?

What are the downsides? (Besides the obvious lack of storage/memory)

Which one do you have? Why did you get that particular one?

what is your power source, do you have to find a 'hot spot' for free internet access when you are out an about?

What am I not understanding about them?

I wouldn't be doing anything that required security on one, no banking or anything.

I"m just thinking this would be a great way to store Calibre and all my treasures..

Tell me about yours, and thanks in advance for all the responses.....!

I have Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 6 Cell Battery, XP Home) White and
I like it very much. I recommended it to many people and they like it too. This NetBook good for people who travel a lot, it works 6-7 hours with one battery charge, very compact and handy to use.
You can find many reviews and pictures on Amazon website
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NC10-1...dp/B001I45TA8/
It is on sale now for $397 (I purchased my unit for $450 several months ago)


I use it for e-mails and Internet but I don't read books on it. I use my jetBook for books reading but I can recommend it if you really need NetBook (I did a lot of research before buy it) .

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

hm, nice timing dg ! i've been thinking about getting one too, for client meetings. if things keep going this way it will soon become indispensable. i just have to find one that's small and light enough to carry around without annoying me too much, but still has a decent sized screen and keyboard. and is not too expensive. hm...

suggestions are welcome.

Get a flexible external keyboard to plug into it? They roll up to a reasonable size and are surprisingly nice to type on (not as good as a proper keyboard, but a lot better than I was expecting!) No idea how long they last. Saw some today for a UK fiver.

The small Sony Vaios have very nice screens, and are light. But if you're going to be travelling a lot I'd advise getting a relatively tough case for it as the machines themselves aren't that sturdy (one chap at work is on his third repair in about a year...) And Sony support has been shipped out to a third party and is suffering for it.

Originally Posted by notsure

If anyone is interested in the Lenovo Ideapad, I can dig up a friends and family code. At least for Canada, and possibly the US. Not too sure about Europe but I could check.

I've actually been looking at one of these for myself.

Feel free to PM if you are interested.

Cheers.

I've been debating one of those IF I do get one. If I do, it won't be until my mobile contract runs out, as I plan on changing suppliers and might see if I can get a 3G dongle as part of the deal. I only know Lenovo as the people who took over the Thinkpad range from IBM, which is a machine I like.

[Musicman]

I have an Acer One Netbook with a 120gig hard drive - I read ebooks on it and also on my Ipaq 4700. What I really like is that I can run any reader software - Ereader. Ms reader, Mobi, Adobe Digital - so I can read anything. Same with my Ipaq - Which is the reason I have not taken the plunge on buying any particular e-ink reader.

I have no problem reading books on either device - I like the netnook because you don't have to hold it.

I also use it for music, and watching movies.

If you buy one. just make sure you get the 6 cell battery....

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

I am the proud owner of an msi u100 Wind notebook (currently going for sale in Amazon for $373.97 http://www.amazon.com/MSI-U100-432US...dp/B001H0GEVG/).
<snip>

I have the previous U100 build, w/ 120GB HDD (probably 4x what I'll ever need) and 3 cell battery (2-2.5 hours), and my experience has been the same except for:

Also, for some reason the Wind has a habit of freezing once every couple of weeks or so. No big deal, just unplug, remove the battery, and re-start, but still annoying. It does make you a bit paranoid about saving your work, but that's a good habit, anyways.

0_0 That's not good, man. Regarding start-up time, you don't have to shut it off. Mine is set to sleep when I close the lid, and the power drain is minimal, even w/ my smaller battery. Especially for ebooks, I can whip it out of my bag and have FBReader up in 4 keystrokes and maybe 20 seconds, which I do frequently on the train. I only shut it down completely maybe once every week or two. While I enjoy reading on the Wind, it strikes me as the maximum comfortable weight for holding hard-cover style, so a smaller person might have issues there (I'm 6', medium build). It's great for curling up in bed, maybe better than a pbook or ereader, as it stays open in a good position on its own.

From following reviews of other netbooks, I get the impression this is the most ergonomic: 92% keyboard, no screen glare + hotkeys for brightness (great for ebooks). If I were shopping right now, however, I would probably go with the ASUS 1000HE, which has adopted a more Wind-like keyboard compared to the older EeePCs and gets killer battery life (though the short battery life on my wind hasn't been an issue for me). The only unknown w/ the 1000HE that gives me pause is the screen, because I'm so happy w/ the Wind screen for ebooks.

I've heard they're great Skype machines, too, if you want to do video calls w/ the grandkids.

[Greg Anos]

Sorry to be late to the party, DG, but I've been busy today.

I have two of the little beasties. I have an original Asus 4G (with the 7" screen) and I have the ASUS 900HA, which has a 160 GB hard drive and a 8.9" screen in the almost the same size case as the original ASUS 4G.

I have swapped out the 160GB drive for an 80 GB drive to testbed LINUX MINT's Gloria RC1 release of Ubuntu Linux. The original came with XP Home.

I don't like them as an e-book reader. You can use them for such, But I still prefer e-ink.

I went with ASUS because they were rated as very easy to upgrade. I can vouch for the hard drive change. Undo 4 screws, pull out the hard drive, put in another, and put the cover and 4 screws back in. Real easy.

Hardware comments. Size is what these little beasties are all about. This cuts two ways. Really small is easy to carry and keep around, but you pay for that convenience but little screens and small (sub-normal size) keyboards. You can go with bigger, more comfortable, portables, but they are just that. Bigger! That's a personal call, only you can decide what is the right size. You at least have choices. I went with the smallest possible with a 2.5" hard drive. If I want a SSD drive, I can buy it later. you can plug in an external mouse and/or keyboard and/or screen, but you'll have to pack then along. I always pack a mouse with my ASUS, as I hate trackpads. Total carry weight (w/mouse and power supply) is over 3 pounds (or 1.5 Kilos). Dimensions are 9" x 6.8" x 2". Netbooks all have basically the same CPU, the same graphics chip, and have about the same throughput. It's about what a desktop had 10 years ago. For my uses, acceptable. If you want to run the latest and greatest Photoshop or games, it isn't up to it. It'll run Skype.

Software comments. Ubuntu Linux will run fine on the bigger ASUS, but I still have a big learning curve on installing applications. Furthermore, I find the most hyped video player, VLC, unacceptable on the machine. It drops frames, and didn't handle menus correctly. This is not a hardware limitation, as PowerDVD 5 under XP worked just fine with the same video. Music players work just fine though. On the other hand Linux is safer for internet. Probably a dual-boot set-up would be fine. (With the limited processor power available, I hesitate to try Microsoft emulators. Besides, I downloaded Virtual Box, but it didn't show up on the menus. As a complete N00B, fixing it was beyond my knowledge base.)

Therefore I'm going back to XP when I can afford a 500GB hard drive, probably a dual boot configuration.

Hope this helps...

[Jaime_Astorga]

Originally Posted by taosaur

I have the previous U100 build, w/ 120GB HDD
0_0 That's not good, man. Regarding start-up time, you don't have to shut it off. Mine is set to sleep when I close the lid, and the power drain is minimal, even w/ my smaller battery. Especially for ebooks, I can whip it out of my bag and have FBReader up in 4 keystrokes and maybe 20 seconds, which I do frequently on the train. I only shut it down completely maybe once every week or two.

Mine is set to sleep when the lid closes as well, but it hibernates after a while if it isn't open. I don't really like the idea of the machine being sleep while on the go, anyways... it is still on, and I keep it on its case, so it gets hot and I wonder if it might not get damaged from it. But it recovers faster from hibernating than from being shut down, so I don't really shut it down much anyways. I usually keep it hibernating.

As for the freezing, yeah, not good, but I don't mind. It sometimes happened to me in my other laptop, but it was much more rare, and I imagine something like that happens in all computers at some point or another; it just strikes me how regular an occurrence it seems to be with my Wind. Maybe I got a defective one?

[taosaur]

A couple things I left out: I don't know why you would need an external CD/DVD. Maybe if you have a favorite piece of legacy software and really don't want to learn how to rip an .iso and run a virtual drive, but then you are shelling out for a rather cumbersome piece of hardware that you will use...once.

Regarding the memory, most of these machines upgrade very easily, but I'm finding mine runs quite fast (especially Firefox) with the stock 1GB running XP.

Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga

Mine is set to sleep when the lid closes as well, but it hibernates after a while if it isn't open. I don't really like the idea of the machine being sleep while on the go, anyways... it is still on, and I keep it on its case, so it gets hot and I wonder if it might not get damaged from it. But it recovers faster from hibernating than from being shut down, so I don't really shut it down much anyways. I usually keep it hibernating.

I don't have hibernation enabled. Doesn't hurt to be safe, but mine is always cool to the touch when I pull it out. The convenience of a machine that 'boots' in three seconds is pretty incredible, and better yet if I'm reading, put it away, and pull it out later to resume reading; it's faster than fishing out and opening a pbook.

[Polyglot27]

I bought my Samsung NC10 before the Asus Eee PC 1000 HE came out. They both have similar features but the Asus has a slightly longer battery life and is a hundred g. heavier. I am very happy with my Samsung and IMHO thinks it looks better than the Asus. There are several sites that compare these machines.
See here: http://www.trustedreviews.com/laptops/
and here: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/03...eee_pc_1000he/

[wodin]

Originally Posted by taosaur

A couple things I left out: I don't know why you would need an external CD/DVD.

For installing Windows 7, which indecently runs just fine on an Acer Aspire One.

You also need one to burn the recovery DVDs and Applications/Drivers DVD so you can restore it to factory if you don't like Linux or Windows 7 or whatevery you decided to try this week.

[yvanleterrible]

I use HDSD 8GB cards. They run native on an EEEpc . I simply copy from a CD on the base computer to thse SDs to exange info.

For various reasons a small computer like that is used as a second machine.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by wodin

For installing Windows 7, which indecently runs just fine on an Acer Aspire One.

You also need one to burn the recovery DVDs and Applications/Drivers DVD so you can restore it to factory if you don't like Linux or Windows 7 or whatevery you decided to try this week.

Heh, yeah a lot of people use these as hobby machines. If you look at the Wind forums, you'd think 3/4 of the people who buy them wipe XP and put on OSX, and the other 1/4 go for a trifecta [(XP/Vista/7)+OSX+Ubuntu]. When there's no point in loading it up with media, 160GB is a lot of room to play.

If your plan is to actually use the machine, though, just grab PowerISO or the like on both the netbook and your main rig. I haven't even needed to do that; downloadable apps + flash media have me covered.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by taosaur

A couple things I left out: I don't know why you would need an external CD/DVD. Maybe if you have a favorite piece of legacy software and really don't want to learn how to rip an .iso and run a virtual drive, but then you are shelling out for a rather cumbersome piece of hardware that you will use...once.

When I want to install something from CD or DVD (as I did when I installed Microsoft Office, for example), I simply "share" the DVD drive on my main machine and access it across the network from the netbook. Works beautifully.

[Over]

Don't those SD drives (instead of hard drives) have a very limited life cycle? That's what a friend of mine told me. His most used apps are stored in a USB pen, because he doesn't want to wear the SD drive too much...