Powerful Netbook?!

[oldskooladdict]

I have an Acer Aspire One - the Linux 512mb version, fine for my needs, but far from powerful. I've been set a challenge - essentially find a device with the same form factor as a netbook but the power of a decent desktop. The users current desktop is a quad core processor, 4GB of RAM and Vista Business. The user would be using Word, Excel, Outlook, IE and others, nearly always multiple windows of each being open.

So, is there really going to be a 'netbook' which is up to the job, or am I going to have to look at 'ultra portable' laptops instead - which should have a similar form factor but probably cost about 4-5 times as much!

Any help or advice appreciated, also, if it ran an OS which could sit on a domain (Vista Business would be ideal) then that would be superb!

Cheers!

[aidanjt]

A netbook will never have the performance of a decent desktop, a decent desktop stomps all over 'desktop replacement notebooks' which cost like £2,000+. The whole point of a netbook is low-power to get the job done. That said, keep an eye out on Ion-based netbooks which should be hitting the stores soonish. One of those with 1 or 2gb of ram, and a hdd (the ssds used in netbooks are horribly slow and uselessly small, as you probably noticed), and that will run Vista Business and MS Office, etc, np.

[staffsMike]

Yeah you need to be realistic about this,

A NETbook is not meant as any sort of desktop replacement, its to do basic tasks on the move which is what your requirements are..

The closest thing you will get to that form factor with higher power (no where near what you are lookng for) will be sony vaio TZ series laptops. They are incredibly expensive for what they are but give you all the functions you would need from a laptop in a 11.1" screen / chassis.

The next down is HP DV2 with AMD yukon CPU (single core).

The most powerful netbook I can think of is probably mine (MSI wind) as it can be overclocked to 2.0GHz.. but it's far from powerful.

[oldskooladdict]

Realistic - that's the point. My current opinion is that a netbook will not be suitable and will be a waste of time and money, however, I wanted clarification of this lol.

As you say, the name should be a clue - it's meant for people sitting around on ebay and facebook, not financial modelling in Excel or something lol.

Your comments (staffs Mike) confirm what I thought - it's gonna be very expensive, and even so, as aidanjt points out will probably never be as decent as a semi powerful desktop.

[staffsMike]

Yeah the only way to breach that desktop replacement power and stay small is to start looking for 12" - 13" laptops.

Dell, HP, Samsung, Toshiba and Asus all do good jobs between £400 - £Whatever you like. And as long as you don't need dedicated graphics you should be able to peg it at around the £500 mark. Toshiba's are generally the smallest/thinest chassis..

Like that
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160774

[scaryjim]

It's worth reading the Hexus review of the DV2 published today, too. Apparently the Athlon Neo is *not* streets ahead of the Atom (mainly thanks to the Atom's hyperthreading capability), so Yukon platform subnotebooks may not be the way to go either...