Which netbook

[M-ONGO]

Hello

Just looking at getting a netbook for taking downroute, but so many choices. Any hot tips or ones to avoid?

Needs:

Good battery life
Plenty of USB ports
Liteweight
WiFi
A reasonable size (all relative, I understand) hard drive or preferably the new solid state technology...

Also XP/Vista or Win7?

Thanks.

[Dark Star]

I Have had a Samsung NC10 with Win XP for just under a year now which has worked superbly. The battery life is particularly good (4-5 hours with screen on full brightness). No real downsides apart from the touchpad being a bit small. I often find myself using it at home instead of my main system.

[mcdhu]

I've just bought my big lad a Samsung N110 - the successor to the NC10 - for his 6th form stuff. Brilliant battery life (7 hrs) and no snags. I believe there is a replacement (N115?) with only very minor tweaks.

A big recommend. As to the OS, it came with Win Xp Home, I'll leave it to others to comment further.

Cheers
mcdhu

[call100]

Another vote for the Samsung N110...Used a borrowed one for a week and found it superb. it's on my Christmas list!!:ok:

The N115 is a Compaq product I believe, so doubt Samsung will use that number....:confused:

[srobarts]

My son's NC10 is now 10 months old and has performed superbly with great battery life. It has survived a teenager for nearly a year. Would thoroughly recommend.

[Just Bolleaux]

A colleague has the Eee PC He - looks like a nice machine, over 8 hours of battery. I have an earlier Linux model, might have to upgrade!

[twiggs]

Since the first 7" EeePC with a SSD was released running Linux, the SSD seems to have lost favour due to the fact that most people want to run Windows.
Consequently most 10" netbooks at the moment have at least 160GB 2.5" SATAII HDD's.

Battery life is great with most, although one to avoid would certainly be the Sony Vaio.
The Sony also has a limit of 1GB of RAM whereas most others can be upgraded to 2GB, so make sure the one you choose can also.

I would be inclined to get one with Windows 7 if you can wait till it becomes the standard.
I just saw a 10" HP netbook with W7 starter edition and a 250GB HD yesterday but I have no experience with that OS.

[seacue]

When I was shopping for a netbook, I discovered that the HP I was considering was limited to 1 Gb of RAM. No expansion was possible.

I bought an MSI U100, which seems OK except for the weirdness that the XP Recovery Partition is C: and the Local Disk partition is D:
I have trouble using the touch pad, but I suppose that is just me.

It seemed to me that 3 USB ports is about the norm with netbooks.

[Bushfiva]

Someone/something has unhidden the partition, methinks.

[mad_jock]

I quite like my aspire one but I am sure they are all of a muchness these days.

I have Fedora Linux on it so couldn't advise which microsoft os to go for.

It does everything I need down route and with the addition of a pair of mini usb speakers doubles as my DVD player as well. I just take images of the DVD's and play them off the drive.

[mcdhu]

Sorry, the replacement for the samsung N110 is the N140 - rave reviews.

mcdhu

[cessnapuppy]

The Acer is good, the Samsung is to die for!

AVOID HP/COMPAQ LIKE THE ******* PLAGUE! (you have been warned) lol

[Flying Serpent]

I think you should REALLY be looking at an ASUS eeePC. I have the 901 which is getting a bit long in the tooth now but has features that more recent machines STILL cannot match.....8 hours battery life, bluetooth and wireless 802.11b,g AND n (n-draft is the next generation wireless protocol running at 300Mbs).

I'd have a look at the eeepc 1005HA-H and the eeepc 1008HA. The 1005 is heavier(1.4Kg) and thicker but has more USB ports, 10 hour battery life and is more easily upgraded if you need that. The 1008 is sleeker but offers less connectivity and has less battery life. Both come with windows 7.

hope this helps

FS

[ZFT]

I've been using an Asus Eee PC 1000HE (with XP Home) for about 6 months now. Excellent battery life and no complaints at all.

All in all a very nice machine that (so far) has stood up well to being bounced around the world.

[goldfrog]

Avoid anything with W7 Starter or Home basic, too much stripped out and you will almost certainly end up investing ~£70 in an upgrade to Home Premium

[Brewster Buffalo]

PC World is currently advertising the Samsung NC10 at £239 (was £329) describing it as the UK's best selling netbook. Silent on the OS

Perhaps the price is a reflection of it being superseded by the N110 and N140.

[M-ONGO]

Many thanks guys/girls.

Lots of good information there, appreciated.:ok:

[twiggs]

Avoid anything with W7 Starter or Home basic, too much stripped out and you will almost certainly end up investing ~£70 in an upgrade to Home Premium

Is this a comment based on experience with W7 starter or speculation?
From my point of view, with the processing power and main uses of netbooks, W7 Starter seems to be a good way to have the latest version of Windows, being the necessary evil that it is.
XP has only a couple of useful years left, so just like happened with W98, we all will making the move pretty soon.
Since it is specifically for netbooks, it is unlikely that many netbooks will be shipped with anything more than W7 Starter in order to keep the price down, but there is always the option to upgrade to a different version if the need arises.

[QF A330]

We have just returned from S/E Asia where all and sundry were using Samsung NC 10's and have since bought one from a US site.

We are very happy with it and as my wife is a touch typist she loves the 93% full size Keyboard.

It cost $475 AUD landed.

[Jet II]

Dell mini 9 - easiest netbook to get OSX working :E

[twiggs]

Just taken ownership of an Acer Aspire D250-1838 and it seems to be a great little 10" unit.
Windows 7 starter doesn't seem to be missing anything I need and runs well with the standard 1GB of RAM.
Wifi is 802.11b/g/Draft-N, HD is 250GB.
Battery life is claimed to be 8 or 9 hours.
Webcam has very good resolution using Skype.
At US$365 on Amazon, I think it was a bargain.

[Desertia]

I bought the ASUS eee PC1000 and put in:

2Gb of RAM (Needed for W7).

A 64Gb fast Runcore SSD.

Windows 7 (and disable the pagefile to reduce read/writes).

All works swimmingly, I get 5 hours of watching video on it (this really sucks the battery, so you'll get much more if you're only typing emails and stuff, but very useful when you've seen all the IFE!) and replacement batteries are cheap anyway.