Netbook

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reckedracing

reckedracing

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Are these cheap netbooks any good?
The old lady wants a pink one for xmas and they all look to be about the same in the 300 dollar range.

Atom N270 processor, 1 GB ram, 160 gb HD

opinions?
 
That should be fine. I bought one when the prices were higher for less and it sucks. If it had more HD space and ram I'd love it.
 
got my girl a pink samsung netbook. $350 shipped, they are all the same just a different footprint and look/feel.
 
my dad has a dell one and it is great for him but all he does is get on the internet... but i personally hate it because it is too small for me...
 
I have one of the older ones from when they first started making them.

900mhz, 1GB RAM, 16GB hard drive.

Works for my needs. I really just bring it with me for internet stuff. You don't really want to use it for word processing unless you have small hands, the keyboards are kind of cramped.

But to answer your question, they're great, I personally will never buy a full sized laptop again.
 
If you can get an Ion chipset netbook, go for it- same power consumption, much better 3D capabilities. The N270 is 1.6GHz, the N280 is 1.66GHz on a faster bus speed. The current generation Asus netbooks mostly run the N280. My Asus 1000HE has the N280 and a "chiclet" Macbook Air style keyboard.

The main differences you're going to find are the keyboard/touchpad layout and battery setups. Try them all out in the store if you can. Asus was the first to bring multi-touch to the game (also the first to make a "netbook") so if that's important to you, keep it in mind. I like being able to use combinations of 2-3 fingers on the touchpad to do different things.

As a reference point, the 1000HE is normally $280. With deals and cashback stuff, you can go much lower. Anything over $300 these days needs to get into 1366x768 resolution territory or extra features to be worth the cash.
 
I bought the wife an ASUS 901, it was great at first, but now it's hella slow and sucks.
I think it's either the fact that the SSD is degrading, or that it's most of the way full, maybe it's just that firefox uses too many system resources.
As long as you go with a regular hard drive and run a lightweight browser, they're great.
 
klyph said:
I bought the wife an ASUS 901, it was great at first, but now it's hella slow and sucks.
I think it's either the fact that the SSD is degrading, or that it's most of the way full, maybe it's just that firefox uses too many system resources.
As long as you go with a regular hard drive and run a lightweight browser, they're great.
Click to expand...

Might be the cold weather :ph34r:

In all seriousness though, I'd love a new netbook. We bought some for our sales people and I'm still petitioning for one for my on-call laptop rather than the crappy toshiba i currently have. I just want something I can take to the bar and give me reasonable performance via SSH and google searches.
 
first of all DO NOT BUY any netbooks with the old Nxxx series unless $200 US and under. Intel is releasing an update very very soon that is approximately 10% faster and with integrated igp and memory controller onto the die. Graphics is XX times better, but still not great as Ion. Why? Because Ion is integrated nvidia 9400 that can hardware decode h264 (HD 1080p), accelerate flash and much much better than any intel GMA.

With that being said, only get a netbook as secondary system. You will want to hit yourself in the face if you try streaming hulu, watch hd movies or any gfx intensive stuff with netbook sans Ion. And if you do get one with ssd (solid state disk), about 25% full, performance will plummet. If running vista or win 7 (hopefully 7), you can use garabage collect command and it will "clean" and boost speed back up for ssd.

My personal recommendation is look for great deals on ultra-portable laptops. They usually come with intel CULV processors, around 1.3-1.6ghz celeron (based on penryn) that is 2-3x faster than atom at the same speed. And slightly bigger or same monitors (11-12") And it usually come with intels newer chipset that can decode h264. Recommendations go to ASUS and Acer Timelines. Hit up fatwallet/slickdeals for recent deals. Found soem going for as low as $350.

Good luck, hope info helps.
 
i have the acer aspire one, got it through at&t bout 8 months ago, no problems so far and works for the web and has plenty of storage for my needs.
 
klyph said:
I bought the wife an ASUS 901, it was great at first, but now it's hella slow and sucks.
I think it's either the fact that the SSD is degrading, or that it's most of the way full, maybe it's just that firefox uses too many system resources.
As long as you go with a regular hard drive and run a lightweight browser, they're great.
Click to expand...

Get off firefox and you'll be set. I definitely found out the hard way. Its a serious resource hog. Every tab you open and close actually stores in the swap and memory and takes a while to "disengage" so it really eats up what little you got because of the high def sites now adays.
 
klyph said:
I bought the wife an ASUS 901, it was great at first, but now it's hella slow and sucks.
I think it's either the fact that the SSD is degrading, or that it's most of the way full, maybe it's just that firefox uses too many system resources.
As long as you go with a regular hard drive and run a lightweight browser, they're great.
Click to expand...

It's most likely that it's getting full. SSDs will perform worse as they get more full especially in something like the 901 with low system memory, my 900 gets that way sometimes...
 
94civicturbo said:
my dad has a dell one and it is great for him but all he does is get on the internet... but i personally hate it because it is too small for me...
Click to expand...

It's called a netbook for a reason, it's main job is to do nothing more then surf the internet.

People seem to buy them as laptops I just dont get it.

I have an asus 1000h or 1000he? and it's been good, I just wish it had windows 7 VS the preloaded XP SP3.
I'm thinking about loading Google Chrome OS when it comes out. again it's meant to be nothing more then a internet tool, I could care less what video card it has or how much memory it has, as long as the OS loads fast, and videos play, that's all that matters.
 
actually it should matter what video card/igp you have because wretched flash is everywhere. with video that supports dvxa and hardware acceleration, browsing and watching videos will be that much better.

but yes, i agree with you jeffie. i cry every time someone buys one and or picks one up and say its a great "laptop." as mentioned, please do not buy one as a main system or you will be one of 60-70% owners disappointed with its "performance."
 
i dont have all of them off the top of my head, but as mentioned Ion or 9400m does full hardware acceleration of h264. amd 780g, 785g, 790gx, 3200, 3300, 4200, intel GMA 4500HD and some of the other 4xxx series chip, alot of the nvidia igp's. basically, its most of the igps from the pass 1-2 years and hopefully all future igps.

for those who dont have hardware accleration, i recommend a software called coreavc that does a relatively good job of it; h264 that is NOT Flash. brought my intel 855gme w/1.6ghz dothan pegged at 100% usage down to 60-70%. i mean its no 20% cpu usage but at least it doesnt stutter and maxed out.
 
h264 is NOT flash, but flash DOES support it. It's what most sites use for 'HQ' video streams.
 
Well, I cleaned up the SSD on the wifes netbook, swapped Firefox out for Chrome, and it's pleasantly functional again. I still want to upgrade the main SSD to something larger, 4gb is just ridiculous.
If I scrape some extra cash together, I'll be putting a 2 gig stick of ram and at least a 32 gig SSD.
 
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