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I've decided I'm fed up of being joined at the hip to my HP lappy & it's time I got myself a netbook to satisfy my inability to be away from the internet for any great period of time.
What I really want is experiences & deals, what's hot & what to avoid. And what's going to work with my O2 PAYG mobile broadband stick. :)
I bought a cnm lifebook (often on Scan today only at just over £100 inc vat. Considering the price its great, using a slim linux version, a reasonable e mail client and a version of firefox. For basic e mail and browsing its good, built in ethernet, built in wi-fi and my vodaphone USB 3G modem works with it (something I can't (yet) achieve with Fedora on a i386 laptop) and supports USB devices and SD cards.
But it is a tad slow, and limitations on memory and 'hard disk' (SSD) meansd that you can only have 3 apps open at a time - but for e mail and basic browsing - its fine.
I'll speak from personal experience, i'm very happy with my Acer Aspire 1 (although i hear poorer things about the SSD version as it's sold). Click on my sig for more details.
I reckon that most people are fairly happy with whichever netbook they have, i've not really heard of any 'bad' ones as such, i just think that if you compare some side by side, some have better features / build quality etc than others.
Buy one that you can afford, then dont compare it to anything else! You'll then be a happy owner :)
The MSI wind is on scan today only. I got my 80GB one there and it's been fantastic, the only let down is the 2 hours battery life. The 160GB version they have should come with the 6 cell battery allowing for over 5 hours.
If battery life is the upmost concern though, the Samsung NC10 still does a great job of offering 6-7 hours and the 10" screen + bigger keyboard make it far better to use than the smaller alternatives imo.
i have a Sammy NC10.. so this is from personal experience:
keyboard - great
screen - good
battery life - amazing!
performance - add another gig of RAM and it's awesome
appearance - as far as netbooks go, quite nice :)
overall - 9/10 :D
Matty summed it up quite nicely, the only advantage the MSI has over the sammy really is the overclocking it allows (up to 2.0GHz) but if it's battery life you need then the sammy should get your money.
Been reading this http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39...97248-1,00.htm :)
Well I've decided to try peterb's suggestion of a CnM miniBOOK, a poultry £120 on Scan Today Only. If I can't get on with it one of the kids can have it & i'll try something else.
Thanks to all for advice & I'll let you know how it goes.
Samsung NC10 or 20. Sorted!