Need a new netbook

[craztsom]

Going to university soon and I don't plan to use my old desktop while I'm there.
I want a netbook that's pretty light, steady and has a good quality battery that won't die on me after a year.

[ofey]

I will suggest one but mine be abit off the beaten track.

Go on eBay and look for a Dell Mini 10V.
You should be able to get a N280 (1.66GHz) Atom version for just under US$375. There is a N270 version but no point going down that path.

Now here's where you need to spend abit more.
Get a new Seagate 7200RPM Hybrid Drive of 500GB size
Get a 2GB SODIMM RAM upgrade
and you need an external DVD drive for about US$40.
and a 8GB memory stick for about US$12?

Total will top out at about US$500

Here's where it gets fun.
You can DUAL boot the machine and run both Mac OS X 10.6.7 and Windows 7 on it.

I've used this machine for work and home and I enjoy it immensely. Never ever caught out.

I can run word processors, spreadsheets, iTunes and the GIMP for image processing.

You'll be the envy of so many.

[montsnmags]

Moderator Notice
Moved to "Which one should I buy?" sub-forum on the assumption that netbook usage will involve ebook-reading. If just generic advice on netbooks requested, please advise via PM and I will move it the "Lounge" sub-forum.

Cheers,
Marc
Moderator

[taosaur]

I'm not up to date on the latest netbooks, but they tend to be near-identical to the point that the critical differences are not specs, but ergonomics. How comfortably is the keyboard laid out? Is it a glossy or matte screen (I would highly recommend matte, especially for ebooks)? How does the trackpad behave?

[Filark]

Some people use the enTourage eDGe as if it were a netbook. It has 2 screens that fold together like a book. One screen is e-ink, the other is LCD running Android.

It all depends on what your uses are: "University" is pretty vague, as is "netbook".

Best wishes to you! I hope you find just the thing!!

[benham]

We have a Gateway Netbook. It has an 11.1" screen and we really like it.

Filark, I found this thread looking for the eDGe forum. Still looking.

[wallcraft]

Particularly for a college student, I suggest you upgrade to a laptop with AMD Fusion. This is a tick above the Intel netbooks. There are now several more laptops to choose from, but the first good example was the HP dmz1, see HP dm1z: Taking Fusion on the Road. This is using the E-350 microprocessor, which is best if you can afford it. The cheaper option is the C-50, which is closer to the Intel Atom. See Brazos comes to Acer's Aspire One 522 netbook.

The two sites I link to above have reviews of other laptops, look under their "mobile" reviews.

[GreenMonkey]

Yeah. The AMD fusion notbooks (nickname for them) are very cool. Decent integrated graphics via the APU, great battery life. Smokes a standard Atom netbook, and great pricing.

The DM1Z is a pretty popular unit. There's an IBM model also but it's a little pricier for pretty much the same specs.

[Filark]

Benham, the eDGe forums (MobileRead and enTourage) are here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=218
http://www.entourageedge.com/forums/forum.php

[tubemonkey]

It really depends on your major and how much power you need. Engineering majors will find netbooks totally inadequate for their needs. Meanwhile, a $250 netbook will be more than adequate for history majors.

My son switched from a laptop to a netbook (standard specs) for his last two years and loved it.

[DDHarriman]

Hello

One option can be the Asus ASUS Eee PC T101MT (review in http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/27/a...t101mt-review/).

10.1 inch, touch, inking (pen included), screen rotates and can be used as a slate (great for reading eBooks or magazines)… I’m writing this post in one!

Note: It looks that they are selling it in the US (at least in some places) with windows 7 starter and 1 gig of ram. If so, my advice is to get one more gig and upgrade to (at least) windows home premium (that’s the configuration we have in Europe).

Best regards,

[benham]

Originally Posted by Filark

Benham, the eDGe forums (MobileRead and enTourage) are here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=218
http://www.entourageedge.com/forums/forum.php

Thanks! I bookmarked the forum to check out.

Sorry for hijacking the thread for a couple posts.

Jeff

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by craztsom

Going to university soon and I don't plan to use my old desktop while I'm there.
I want a netbook that's pretty light, steady and has a good quality battery that won't die on me after a year.

I'm guessing here ... you will use the netbook for some kind of reading activity?

I like Asus eeepc. Good quality, not too expensive and really light. But I remove the ugly Windows and usually install Lubuntu :-) ... uses about 200MB for running the operating system and couple of extra tasks; you will re-gain ~800MB (if you have 1GB of RAM) for other activities. Calibre runs on Linux too.

Asus eeepc ... at least for me ...

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by DDHarriman

Note: It looks that they are selling it in the US (at least in some places) with windows 7 starter and 1 gig of ram. If so, my advice is to get one more gig and upgrade to (at least) windows home premium (that’s the configuration we have in Europe).

Best regards,

Wacala ... lol ....

Get rid of that ugly Window$ operating system and install Lubuntu. It's free, more secure and better. My wife is not a computer expert and she loves it; does not want to go back to Windows. Viruses are now part of the past for her.

[faithbw]

Originally Posted by jocampo

Wacala ... lol ....

Get rid of that ugly Window$ operating system and install Lubuntu. It's free, more secure and better. My wife is not a computer expert and she loves it; does not want to go back to Windows. Viruses are now part of the past for her.

Does it run faster? I have Vista and my computer runs very slow most of the time. Right now, it's running fast but there are times where even using the internet is a drag. The pages load slow or become unresponsive and we have high speed internet.