need some netbook advice

winjmoore

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no coment it was spam
so trainz killed it
Wounder if they can do the same for my inbox
Tried running a train through it but that left me mail in a mess
 
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Mother has had ASUS one for four years, works not too badly but it uses a small SSD so very limited disk storage.

It does run skype and we both find the screen size a bit small. The plus side is its fairly rugged.

It's not something I'd care to do a lot of work on but for Internet browsing its fine. Google Chrome is a fast browser by the way and you want the smallest fastest software you can find. So Wordpad or notepad++ rather than MS word.

Battery life is more what are you using it for? I must confess ours is plugged in all the time.

Cheerio John
 
Which features are a must have?

Do any come with screens a bit larger than 10.1 inches?

Most advertise their battery life in hours. My guess is they last half to two thirds that long with real-life usage. Is that a valid assumption?

First thing I would look at, because I have got 3 netbooks (one is my sisters, 2 are mine) and I can safely say that you also need to cater for a few other issues.

Firstly, what is she most likely going to do? Carry it everywhere most of the time (like me) or will she be working on it most of the time? Mine goes with me everywhere so a smaller screen-size and greater portability is my main concern.

Secondly, is she is just using more than MS office? Contrary to popular belief, she actually won't need that much storage if she is going to use office, social networking (like most youngsters these days) and internet usage. My eeePC 901 which is about to celebrate its 3rd birthday in August had 12GB of storage and I did far more than office and internet/email usage, I used and still use 3D Studio Max on it, but everything had to be quite simply shoehorned (like - because there were 2 SSDs, the fast 4GB one and the slower 8GB one - putting an install of Outlook/Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Access on the 4GB SSD with office 2007 which came to about 1.6GB or so, Photoshop CS2, about 300mb, Windows which was 1GB, Max 5 which was 300mb again, etc.). Although this would be fine for a pupils, especially when they use multiple computers where cloud based file access or a USB stick would be the only way to use files. I'm tending towards cloud based sharing as I have nothing more to carry then.
Look up Google Docs and Windows Skydrive, that might be a useful starting point in terms of file based access (which in some cases, allow basic modifications to files, may not need office at all.)

Thirdly, look at the trackpad, why? Some come with buttons by the side of the trackpad and the problem? Well, I love my eeePC, because I can use the trackpad with one hand, my HP mininote? Don't go there, the trackpad has buttons by the side and that is a nightmare to navigate. Oh, a horrendous nightmare, especially while maxing, in fact, most of the time, I used an external mouse.

Battery life is important, agreed, but at the end of the day, how often is your daughter going to be near a power socket? Is your daughter going to have access to one 90% of the time or is going to be hunting for a power socket, as rare as finding something very interesting in a back of an empty van? If you think a power socket is rare, go for a battery life that is near enough all day they claim (8 hours), at the same time, make sure that the battery is removable, otherwise, you have to bin it when the laptop battery gets worn out (which won't take long, although, 3 years later and under heavy usage, my eeePC can still deliver 3 hours.)


Tablet versions I would avoid for the time being, unless most of the time, your daughter (highly unlikely as it might be easier to steal) will a) have no desk or b) walk around with the tablet in her hands. The reason why, is because tablet PCs are far slower to write on and even then, the handwriting (mine seriously sucks) recognition can be a major issues, estaticaly (no), expel (NO!), excel (NO!! Damm thing!), espec ally...., for gods sakes computer! Its ESPECIALLY. (You get the idea.) when your handwriting gets very very confused between words, I keep having to correct mistakes when I write on the screen on my Toshiba M200 (old machine but I still use it.). Keep to keys, its easier.

Other things I can think about, 3G Access, some come with 3G input, if your daughter is going to be chained to a wifi device, OK, not needed, but if she doesn't want to carry a modem (like me, I modded my eeePC for 3G access), then this is another feature to look for, although, its not as important these days as there are mifi devices out there.

Wireless cards, is it a reasonbly good one or crap one? Crap ones tend to be well, just that, I changed the one in my eeePC because the card I replaced it with was a lot better when it came to signal strength and detection, my sisters 2 year old Aspire one suffered WiFi drop outs soon after she got it, because the wifi car was absolutely crap. New card fixed it and was only £10, but I had to completely dismantle the PC to get to it.

Bluetooth, does she want to use it for mice and the like?

Web cam? Is that necessary? Or would you like to avoid the use of web cams?



Other stuff I would like to point out that other posters I disagree with. The "no slower than 2GHz", I don't agree with that, because most of the stuff you listed, unless she does more, doesn't consume much computing power, so having all that power that is wasted to me doesn't make sense, on the other hand, if she is likely to use much more power consuming stuff, thats different.
Ram is the same as above. Although the likes of MSN and Skype I am finding, are starting to be such unbelievable resource hogs.



Personally speaking, I think asus computers are a good bet. This is one example, although twice the price of the one you were looking at: http://www.laptopspark.com/products/Asus-EeePC-1001PX-101-Netbook-laptop-53.html
A little less on the battery life, you could have this: http://www.laptopspark.com/products/Acer-Aspire-One-D250-101-Netbook-laptop-26.html
And they are very skinny! So if size does matter, then these should be ok. There's also the eMachines equivalent if you fancy going for a greater stretch in your budget. (eMachines is owned by Acer, its the "budget" side of Acer if you like).

Those I don't think are the latest, but a useful starting point.
 
G'day! :wave:

I'm afraid that this guy is only advertising his website. :confused: Looks at some of his other threads.

Cheers! :)

Jake.
 
Lol, I can't believe people are actually replying to spam. :hehe:

I guess that's why they keep doing it.
Because there's always someone who'll fall for it.

Very funny.

Smiley.
 
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