Netbook

[d000hg]

I personally avoid Dell products but I know lots of people who don't.

What's that got to do with it? Michael Dell said essentially that netbooks are a pointless product, while his company sells them

[Julius Caesar]

What is the objection for having a hard disk?

Power consumption/battery life, and weight.

[Julius Caesar]

What about the new Mac tablets i'd heard about running OSX and big enough for proper work - sounds sweet to me!

Well, that sounds like a nice device, but what I am looking for here is NOT something that is bigh enough for proper work, I have a plentiful supply of those. I'm looking for something that is small and light enough to carry in a small bag, but bigger than a phone or PDA. And I'm looking for something that is so because it doesn't have what I don't need in it, so is cheap. Not something that is like a full-size PC but is speciall miniaturised and so more expensive (like what Toshiba did with the Libretto).

[Julius Caesar]

What's that got to do with it? Michael Dell said essentially that netbooks are a pointless product, while his company sells them

A lot of people say that they are useless because they are not big enough for some things and not small enough for others. I respect that as a personal view but it does depend on what you want from it.

[DiscoStu]

Power consumption/battery life, and weight.

I have an Acer Aspire One that originally shipped with an 8gb SSD and it was a total sack of tulip. Read speeds were ok, but write speeds were absolute crap.

I put in a 30gb 1.8" disk from an iPod and the difference was incredible. Much faster, it's hardly had any effect on battery life; the only downside is a little bit of noise.

[Babybadger]

However I would recommend that you buy a 10" netbook say the Asus 1000. Here is another refurb:
Asus 1000



Lazy

Got one superb with 2gb Ram in it, but the fans get noisy after a while, pay the extra and get a fanless netbook.

Worth it's weight in Platinum.

[Durbs]

what I am looking for here is NOT something that is bigh enough for proper work, I have a plentiful supply of those. I'm looking for something that is small and light enough to carry in a small bag, but bigger than a phone or PDA.

I used to have a 7" screen Asus Eee and it turned out pretty much useless as the screen was simply too small. My iPhone though, which indeed has an even smaller screen turned out to be a million times more useable for intraweb and email (and everything else really) so the netbook was eBayed in disgrace.

So from experience i'd say avoid 7", i reckon the thing would have been useable with just a little more screen space.

[Dark Black]

I have an Acer Aspire One 150, 1GB, 160GB hdd running various flavours of Linux (including the shipped Linspire, which despite seemingly getting lots of bad press is fine - in fact I prefer it to Ubuntu).

I love it to bits, gr8 bit of kit, only gripe is battery life but not a biggy for me.

In fact I'm using it to type this

[LazyFan]

Hmmm true my other options were without SSD as you wanted.
Okay try the Acer Aspire One A110 at £180 brand new.

I think you will still need a memory upgrade and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Otherwise the desktop Linux these companies often put on there is rubbish.

[Clippy]

What's that got to do with it? Michael Dell said essentially that netbooks are a pointless product, while his company sells them

Interesting article on the future of netbooks on the BBC News website recently.

IMO, the large manufacturers have not been fans of them because of the small profits to be made and because they are canabalising sales of their cheaper full size laptops.