Educate me on netbooks

[Lee]

ok

quality wise its on par or higher than most of the other netbooks I've seen in this price range.

I've never seen one of the Sony's, but they're much more expensive.

I upgraded the ram to 2gb, and it got a lot quicker.

[Seanz0rz]

ive found nothing wrong with dell hardware(the actual bits that have electrons passed through them), and their netbook is (quality of case, etc) far superior to most.

some of dell's recent offerings have been subpar in my view. the laptop i have (purchased about 3 years ago) is one of them that suffered from engineering on a dime. that said, its given me 3 years of trouble free service. sure some of the screws for the hinge stripped out, and the top looks like someone took a belt sander to it. but everything more or less still works the way it did 3 years ago.

[troyboy162]

not to get off post but dell goes up and down on what they give you for the money, but these netbooks are almost all the same so it really dosnt matter much. theres really only 3 cpu options and maybe 2 chipset options.

i did use mine for my only computer for about a year. it was plugged into my tv for a monitor and i had blue tooth keyboard and mouse. worked fine but didnt win any speed records. i did edit most of my videos with it. cant beat there bang for the buck right now considering there portability and battery life

[arjan]

I just used a buddies EEE PC and didn't like the keyboard. Asus generally makes good stuff though.

I have the toshiba netbook myself (NB200), and find I can type with 10 fingers on that keyboard. Battery life is exceptional (5 hrs or more).
My video was choppy also, it came with winxp. I installed the Windows 7 release candidate back in June, and have never looked back. Watching video works perfect now, and Windows 7 makes the whole thing fast.

I would like to upgrade to ssd, intel makes good ones, but very pricey. A good ssd drive will be way faster than a regular harddrive and use far less power.
I am waiting for prices to come down.
I dual boot Windows 7 & Ubuntu. Didn't get around to installing OSX yes, although I left about 25gig on my harddrive for another partition.

[Robinhood4x4]

So what about the different atom processor series that are available? Is it worth it to upgrade to the fastest one?

[slosurfer]

Okay, so is there anything new and cheap out there since the last update or maybe some good deals on refurbished?

I have to go back and reread the thread, but I'm thinking of getting one of these.

Anyways, I guess if I got one, it would mainly be used for email/internet, watching instant netflix movies, and possibly gps later on. Also, if possible, it would be cool if I could sync it with my quickbooks for the business that is on my desktop at home. Not sure if this is possible since that's a pretty big program and not sure if I could just use a flash drive or what. (this isn't as big a deal, but would be cool if it could do that)

So, I know nothing about mini netbooks (or whatever you call them), so what are some things to look for and what are some good ones? (preferably cheap and user friendly)

[slosurfer]

What about this one?

ASUS REFURB EPC1000HD-BKTG01 netbook celeron m 900mhz / 1gb ram / 160gb hdd / 10"/ wireless/ xp home premium / 1.3mp webcam
(*refurbished product w/3 month warranty)

or this one?

ASUS REFURB 1005HAB-RBLU001X dark blue Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz/1GB Ram/160GB HDD/10.1" WXGA/Webcam/XP Home

[corax]

I'd be really interested in these if you could get one with similar splash proof properties of the Toughbook - shock proof isn't as important, I would think, since these are solid-state with no spinning HD, right?

[Seanz0rz]

I'd be really interested in these if you could get one with similar splash proof properties of the Toughbook - shock proof isn't as important, I would think, since these are solid-state with no spinning HD, right?

some are, some are not. the SSD ones are more expensive and offer much less storage space, around 25%.

making it weather resistant would not be too difficult. pretty much alot of silicone, some electrical tape and some plastic would generally protect it pretty well from moisture short of submersion.

[slosurfer]

I'm not too concerned with shock/waterproofing on this one as it will mainly be used at home or on the road (not necessarily offroad).