Netbook : Which and when?

[WoLFe]

What are the best netbooks and when is a good time to buy one? Predicting price changes and new models, that is.

The one that's really caught my eye is the Samsung NC10.

Can anyone tell me more about it? It's £300 and looks great. I am extremely particular about screens and keyboards and it looks full of features and of a good quality.

I heard people upgrade the 1gb of ram to 2gb. I guess this is very cheap but how easy is it and is it worth it? Also would it void anything?

Finally can it play any games? Is half life 2 way too optimistic, surely it handles CS 1.6? I know it isn't a gaming machine but I would be interested to know.

I'd like it by April for a holiday to America if I get one; it looks big enough and good enough, so would it be fine for my primary uni computer?

Thanks all.

[staffsMike]

I don't think any netbook is fine for a primary computer. It just isn't their purpose. If you plug a monior and keyboard + all the gubbins like external dvd drives etc.. it might be passable as a primary PC.

On it's own though I wouldn't bother.

They are very nice though, and are in most PC Worlds if you want to try them out.

I'm considering the NC10 and the Acer One as we speak and having a hard time justifying the extra £100+ on the NC10. The keyboards are near enough the same to me, hunt and peck rather than type.

Both screens are good but the Sammy is an inch bigger and non glossy which is a plus.

Other than that though they are very comparable. The Acer is difficult to upgrade as you have to pull the thing to pieces to do anything to it.

Personally I'm looking for a slightly bigger alternative at the moment, with a bit more grunt.

You can do basic gaming on the btw. Wouldn't expect HL2 to work but older games should be fine.

[matty-hodgson]

Samsung NC10, it's lovely!
good battery life.
nice and bright screen.
relatively easy keyboard to type on considering it's small size.
boots up into Windows XP pretty sharpish and boots up programs pretty quick aswell

useful if you do a lot of travelling.
i take mine to school everyday and sometimes even forget it's in my bag cos it's that small.

[WoLFe]

If I used an external DVD and CD drive and proper mouse with it, why would it not be passable as my main PC for uni? The specs look more than good enough for XP (my old pc ran 1.4ghz athlon and 512ddr ram). Is it a reliability issue?

[Flibb]

Depends what you you want from a rig, if its for photos, videos or CAD then they are not suitable. But if its the usual word, excel, stuff then they are great. I only really use my main rig for games and photo editing now. My advent does all I ask of it including running ballistics software (sierra infinity), mapping software (memory map), and I also play diablo 2 on it. I wouldnt want to try and run it with a large external monitor, but its happy on my old 15" TFT

[staffsMike]

Don't forget the keyboard. You don't want to be typing up.. anything on one of these keyboards.

I did say might be passable, but it's far from ideal imo. I used this spec laptop at university and it was a struggle towards the end. Thankfully in my last year I upgraded my laptop.

While they are capable of running a lot of things, they can and will run a lot of those things frustratingly slowly.

Don't let me put you off doing it if that what you want to do but I'm struggling to pick one when I have my rig and a vastly superior laptop in front of me so if this is going to be primary I wouldn't pick quickly.

It might be worth waiting a bit for the nvidia based atom laptops to be released or get the Asus N10 (i think) which at least has dedicated video.

[WoLFe]

Thanks for the replies all - I guess the best thing to do is to go and try one for myself in store somewhere!

[staffsMike]

Yeah deffinatly, currys and PC world deffinatly have most of the popular ones.

Also a little edit above.

[WoLFe]

You are right, no rush; apart from the N10 which looks quite impressive (though expensive at the moment), when will these new Nvidia-atom ones hit? Are there any predictions?

[matty-hodgson]

the Samsung NC10 is perfect for word processing and just general internet browsing.
but i tried to run F@H on mine and it just crippled the poor little thing.
and anything else that needs any sort of processing power is totally useless

the keyboard, as Staffs pointed out, is horrible for typing out long essays or anything like that sort of thing.
but i'm on my netbook atm and it's okay for this sort of stuff, just a couple of hundred words at a time.

[staffsMike]

As Matty says.. and dare I point it out.. it's perfect for the net(top). Emails and junk like that are fine but anything that stresses the cpu will have you pulling your hair out.

I used to hate opening iTunes on my old notebook, threw my ipod in a draw to collect dust in the end

[magneticman]

i wasn't impressed by netbooks til my eyes wondered across a Samsung NC10, i want one sooo bad

I think i'll wait to see newer ones based on nvidia+atom though..

[staffsMike]

i wasn't impressed by netbooks til my eyes wondered across a Samsung NC10, i want one sooo bad

I think i'll wait to see newer ones based on nvidia+atom though..

It deffinatly does have that effect as does the lenovo and Toshiba imo as they don't look like toys.

Only disguises the performance until you power it up though

[crazyfool]

i'm thinking about the lenovo s10e right now just for uni as its alot lighter and smaller then a full laptop but i'll wait for the 6 cell battery for the couple of extra hours use... it also has splashtop which is a plus imo

[kasavien]

I love my NC10, it does everything I need it to apart from playing titan quest! Bit annoying but I can live with it until my main rig is fixed. Games wise i've had the original half life running on it and UT2004 and quake 3 arena, just downloading sacred on steam For everything else I've not really had a problem, it's a bit slower on the internet than my man rig was, especially with a few tabs open, but i usually run it with windows mail open and maybe word so it handles a few apps open at once quite well. I don't find typing on it a problem and I have big hands, but I guess it's down to personal preference.

Hope this helps

Andy

[Mousemat]

Another NC10 vote here. I'm typing this message on it without having to hunt and peck at all. I got it a month ago and haven't regreted it for a second.

I've just ordered a 2GB stick of ram for it. Not so much because it needs it, but more because it's cheap enough and really simple to install in the NC10