best netbook and acer aspire one

[looney]

Hi

I'm thinking of buying a netbook with a budget of £200, the acer aspire one 120gb model seems like the best buy at moment, but im unsure on the reliability of these, are they any good?

also any other good alternatives?

thanks

[Funkstar]

Good question.

I wouldn't depend on it for critical apps, but then considering the number they sell and the fact there hasn't been mass reports of problems, they must be pretty reliable.

The whole idea behind a netbook is to be low powered, so by virtue of that they are going to run cool and a cool running laptop is a lot less likely to develop faults than a desktop replacement monster.

I have no actual experience with them, thats just my thoughts on the matter

[this_is_gav]

We've got 20 of the Aspire Ones and the only problem has been with the SSDs so far (2 of them are clearly faulty, and the rest are just horribly, horribly slow), but obviously the HDD does away with those issues. It looks like a good buy at the moment.

[Pob255]

Well for £200 it's your best bet, apart from saveing up a bit more for a better one.

[looney]

Cheers for the help.

But still unsure as its relatively new so perhaps problems havent developed yer, butinteresting point by funkstar, if they dont produce much heat then i would expect them to be far better then acer laptops, which seem to have a common over heating problem.

Thing is the stuff from Asus for example are more expensive and dont have the same good specs as the acer.

[staffsMike]

Well since I have been doing my research on this (and taking help lol) this is what I have come up with,

7" Asus - Ignore

8.9" Asus
PRO: Great Battery Life, reasonable specs, middle of the road price

CON: Awful keyboard.

Acer One
PRO: Medicore battery life, great spec for money, reasonable keyboard

CON: Supposed to be noisier than most. It's an acer

Dell:
Nothing new.. decent enough but expensive.

Samsung MC10 10".
Good keyboard, great battery and decent spec + XP

Expensive, Heavier due to extra size.

Lenovo, much the same as the Samsung.

HP, revised Atom Spec makes it the absolute best in my opinion. The keyboard is the best, the screen is the best of them all and the specs are really versitile for a netbook.
But the price is a joke.

I'm still deabting over the Acer and Samsung as they make the best compromises imo.

[looney]

^ how is medicore batter life a pro?

i like the samsung but its quite expensive, and the asus seem to expensive for the specs.

bt whats the model name of the hp?

[Pob255]

You missed a couple

Dell mini9, intresting (my flat mate is looking at this) 9" frame & screen, the keyboard while not wider than other 9" are taller, F keys with FN not seperate.
SSD, low cost (SSD while less space does has the advantage of being fully shock proof, shake a HD when it's reading/writeing and you'll kill it)
Dell mini12, (I think or it might be 11) largest of all screens but stupidly expensive.

Toshiba NB100, 9" screen and frame, same keyboard as the asus 9" frames, but HD not SSD.
Not bad if you want small.

Asus 900, advoid, same celeron and battery as the 701 so far too short a battery life.
Asus 901, I love mine I don't mind the 9" frame keyboard. SSD great battery life.
Asus 904, 9" screen, 10" frame (gone is the small keyboard that so many complain about), HD but too expensive
Asus 1000H, 10" Screen & frame, HD, but costs even more than the 904

MSI Wind / advent 4211, basically the same machine, the Advent is generally cheaper although amazon has a wind for £276 atm
10" screen and frame, HD

Alot come down as to exactly what you want, got one of the Toshiba recently because the teacher who wanted it wanted small, light and windows xp not linux.

Personally the current standings are as follows: (all prices from amazon for easy comparrison)
Low cost = acer one £215 (1gb memory + HD) Linux
small + light = Toshiba NB100 / asus 901 (depends if you want the space of a HD) £270ish, nb100=XP / 901=linux or XP
larger 10" screen & keyboard = Samsung NC10 £400??? Bleep! that, you can get this for £300 most other places (misco have it in black for £293) XP
Maximum portability (ie battery life + size + weight + Shock resistant) = Asus 901


EDIT: Couple of things about the Acer One,
Battery is only 2,200mAh so the life is very bad, You can get a 6cell battery (6,600mAh) but it cost around £50 (amazon again so could be less if you hunt for it) still at £265 that's a good price, or better still for xp, get the 512mb ram version @ £200 and replace it with corsair 2GB 667MHz SODIMM £21 (amazon again) that gives you 1gb more memory for just £6

The SSD in the SSD models is not very good and has problems with anything other than the very slim version on Linux it comes with.

Which leads me on to the Linux version it ships with, it's very slim and so fast but is the least functional of all linux versions shipped with netbooks.

[staffsMike]

Just the one's I've considered really. Don't like the advent/wind.. something not quite right about it.

Toshiba.. can't remember why I discarded it..

Hp Mini.. something lol. The old one with the via cpu is around £190 now. Which gives a great screen and keyboard but a terrible CPU.

[Pob255]

The reason you decided against the toshiba is it's a 9" frame so has the smaller keyboard.
the keyboard exactly the same size and keylayout as the asus 901/900/701 although slightly rougher in texture and I'm pritty sure you could swap them over without problems.

I really don't see what people have against the 9" keyboard, I'm typeing this on my 901 now and I have no problems. the only thing that took a bit of getting used to was the enter/up arrow/right shift, kept hitting the wrong one at first, but I'm used to it now.
Still I'm not the fastest of typers.

[staffsMike]

Ahhh that makes sense. I think I will go for the samsung in the end. I'm going to wait a few weeks anyway as I might decide to get a laptop that will become my blu ray player.. lol

[looney]

Found this on hotukdeals, seems like a nice deal: http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/prod...t+4489/735584/

its basically a rebranded msi wind u90

but i think i might wait abit, the prices on netbooks might come down when the new atom processors come out, well i hope anyway.

[Pob255]

the new dual core atom (330) but M$ have said it's for pc based units only not netbooks
so if we will ever see it on one in a netbook is unknown as yet