Best Web book/Laptop for inflight use
 

Hi all,

I was thinking about buying a small laptop for mobile usage. I have a Dell XPS M1710 running Vista at home. The ASUS eee pc caught my eye because it is so small, quick start up and cheapish however there are a few grumbles on here and talk of better options. What are they?

Also, is it easy to keep a Vista and XP machine synchronised?

Thanks,

Screwballs

Use the eeepc 901 myself and I am very pleased with it. Good battery life and clear screen, I would not like to write a very long document with it but for mobile use it is very good; I even have a few films downloaded onto an SD card for viewing when I am away.

As for synchronising between computers, I use SyncToy which is a free Microsoft power toy and it syncs files between my Vista desktop and the eeepc.

Can't comment on the synching but I got a Medion Akoya and it is reasonably quick with a good screen. The keyboard is slightly larger than that of the eeepcs and I got used to it quickly. All in all I like it except for its battery life. You get 90-120 minutes at best, even less if you have to run it full power for some reason.

If the battery is not an issue for you, you might also want to look at Acer's Aspire 1. Shiny piece of kit IMHO.

Thanks very much for the replies, will look into all the options!

Screwballs

The Mrs has an Eee, and she loves it. Easily copes with the train to London and back without needing mains power. The keys are obviously smaller than a standard keyboard, so it pays to try one before you buy it (PC World will usually have 1 on display, but they're not the cheapest place to buy). She obviously has little fingers, so depends on whether you've got big podgers or not.

The solid state disc is excellent, very fast. Despite being way smaller than the traditional disc option it's my preference to be honest. Noone needs an 80Gb HD in a netbook; well, unless you're stupid enough to put Visturd on it, of course.

My son has just bought himself a Samsung NC10 based on all the reviews he could find. I am very impressed. Battery life is around 7 hours.
He is using briefcase to synch files and has adopted MS OneNote as his preferred notetaking. He is studying sciences at college so also uses a small tablet to capture drawings.

I have the Dell mini 9 which is under 200 quid from Tesco's. I am really happy with it but you do need to know what you are getting. It is Linux based which is good for system resources but not good if you are reliant on windows software. You will generally want to be a little more than point and shoot savvy. But in saying that it does all the required jobs (I have connected a Mobile broadband dongle to it reasonably simply). It only has an 8 GB hard drive but I have plenty of large capacity SD cards.

The Samsung NC10 is from all accounts a nice piece of kit. Good battery life and Hard Disk size. I chose the Dell due to being 100 quid cheaper and I wanted an as compact as possible model.

I have an Acer Aspire one . Good if you are happy with the bundled S/W .
Battery life poor IF WIFI used

Be sure to try one of the smaller (7"-9" screen) netbooks before buying one, since you might find the keyboard a bit small. The 10" screen size seems to be "just right" - at least I think so, having a eee PC 1000 for about 6 months now. This is not the H model, so it has the solid state drives, which are more suited for Linux, if that's up your street. Other models, such as the MSI/Medion Akoya, have standard hard drives and a more "conventional" behaviour.

For travel, I love my Dell Mini9. Mine is XP version, not Linux. 16gig solid state drive, and that is more than enough. I have a usb keyboard and mouse for when I want to do some serious writing, but the little keyboard is fine for me, a 4-finger hunter/pecker.
It looks and feels like a real computer, not a toy.

Do consider the samsung - review Samsung NC10 - 10.2in Netbook Review - Notebook Reviews - TrustedReviews

I got one from Asda £150, great little bit of kit, put XP on it though :cool: