Netbook choice and buying advice.

Ok been thinking of getting a laptop for awhile then I'm 70% decided to get a netbook instead.

Was thinking of getting an Acer aspire one but having a go on a friends the keyboard is not really user-friendly for my fingers, battery life 2.5hr max a let down, finger prints on netbook and screen so needs cleaning continuously but on the good side very lightweight, no problems with wifi etc.


So reading some reviews today I'm very tempted to get the Samsung NB30. So should I get it now or wait a couple months and get it with touchscreen version.

Or can anyone reccomend a decent netbook or even a lightweight laptop with a long bettery life. Budget max £400.

The problem you'll have with net books is it's all a comprimise as it's just not physically possible to do everything.
The Acer aspire one can do far more than 2.5hrs but you need to buy the high capasity battery version, and the high capasity batteries are far heavier and add to the total weight and the cost.
Also making sure the power saving features/settings are turned on helps keep them going longer, but that generally means things like running the cpu at a lower clock speed, which hits performance.
Simular thing goes with screen and keyboard size, big keyboard = larger netbook.

You have to decide what's the most important factors and what you have to comprimise on, then find one that best fits your needs.

While net books do have better battery life than laptops, they do suffor in performance for it, it's not that big a loss in all honesty, just don't try much multi tasking or expect them to perform the same as a laptop and they are fine.

If you want a touch screen you could consider the Zoostorm Fizzbook spin
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159328
If you can live with the looks of it, however the size might put you off as this is one of the smaller 9" screen (10" frame) netbooks

Netbook Hardware comprimises are ok, for the small form factor its the price they try to rip you off for that matters. Not worth paying more than £200.00 for NetBook. It is what it is a simple computer nothing more.

OK i've got a netbook (asus eee) 7" screen and 2Gb Ram and i think it's brilliant. But saying that it was really the 1st generation of netbooks and now i would buy something like: dell vostro 1220
http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/busi...bsd&cs=ukbsdt1

Acer products are nicely designed and well priced but they do not last long. Particularly keyboards. I have seen a few at friends - somehow they tend to fall apart. I have advised a few friends to get Samsung NC10 (with XP) last year and they are all happy so far. I am not familiar with NB10 but specswise it looks similar. Noy sure if stock 1GB RAM is good enough for Vista though.

Just to add.

Dont forget to test the keybaords before you buy. Most cheapo netbooks/laptops have awful keyboards.

In terms of netbooks, the best keyboard I found was in a samsung N130. Same as the NC10 however slighly lower relative to palm rest. Fantastic to use.

On the other hand, some of the acer keyboards were.... ermm... trying not to use a swear word here...

1 Model... :secret:

Compaq Mini 311

Its cheap, (I payed £285) And its ION.
Im on it now, I play Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Medieval II Total War, GTA San Andreas all on the go. The actual use of the laptop gets you about 5 hours battery life. The 11.6" 1366*768 screen is glorious and the thing itself looks awesome.
theres also This Forum Which contains users of this system. Theres also Hacks like Overclocking the Atom from 1.6Ghz to 2Ghz. Also the ION means you can run flash smoothly (if you update the nvidia drivers to latest and dl Flash 10.1 beta 2)
Its all round a great system and everyone I've shown it too has fallen for it. Cant recommend it more.

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Originally Posted by abaxas

Just to add.

Dont forget to test the keybaords before you buy. Most cheapo netbooks/laptops have awful keyboards.

In terms of netbooks, the best keyboard I found was in a samsung N130. Same as the NC10 however slighly lower relative to palm rest. Fantastic to use.

On the other hand, some of the acer keyboards were.... ermm... trying not to use a swear word here...

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Samsung n130 Now that is a good keyboard.

Im not sure I'd agree about the Aspire One's keyboard, I've adapted to it well enough now and find it pretty nice to type on and can almost touch type on it I find.

The trackpad on the other hand... urgh... that is the only real gripe I have with it I think.

As for batteries, the standard one comes with a 3cell battery which keeps weight down but limits it to 2-2.5 hours battery life.

There are 6, 9 and 12 cell batteries available on ebay. I got a 9 cell one for £35 including free shipping, made a huge difference to it, added a little bit of weight to it, but the increase to 6+ hours battery life is wort it, and it also has the advantage of raising the back of the machine up a bit, so it improves the angle of the keyboard when typing on a flat surface.

I think if I was going to replace this AAO though I'd probably look for a Dell Mini 10 or a Samsung NC10 (or one of their successors) as they do have good keyboards etc.

£400 quid will get you a Ferrari netbook, the Acer one with an AMD X2 cpu in it.
The bright red seems a little extreme, but makes a nice change from an Atom CPU.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Madness_3d

1 Model... :secret:

Compaq Mini 311

Its cheap, (I payed £285) And its ION.
Im on it now, I play Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Medieval II Total War, GTA San Andreas all on the go. The actual use of the laptop gets you about 5 hours battery life. The 11.6" 1366*768 screen is glorious and the thing itself looks awesome.
theres also This Forum Which contains users of this system. Theres also Hacks like Overclocking the Atom from 1.6Ghz to 2Ghz. Also the ION means you can run flash smoothly (if you update the nvidia drivers to latest and dl Flash 10.1 beta 2)
Its all round a great system and everyone I've shown it too has fallen for it. Cant recommend it more.

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While the Mini 311 is good, I think the HP DM1 is better :D

Same size and look as the 311 but it uses CULV and so much more power for day-to-day work and videos.

The 6cell battery is also flush and lasts around 4hours.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

£400 quid will get you a Ferrari netbook, the Acer one with an AMD X2 cpu in it.
The bright red seems a little extreme, but makes a nice change from an Atom CPU.

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Better performance for sure than an Atom CPU, but what about battery life?? thats the bigger concern often I find with a netbook, ability to do basic tasks with little weight and long battery life.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellyharding

Better performance for sure than an Atom CPU, but what about battery life?? thats the bigger concern often I find with a netbook, ability to do basic tasks with little weight and long battery life.

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I'm sure for a lot of people it would be a stupid waste of money.

I would be split between the Ferrari and an ION platform netbook as I basically want highly portable World of Warcraft so need a 1366x768 screen and better than Intel graphics. Battery life is secondary, which is just as well as I am sure even basic gaming can kiss goodbye to the claimed 5 hour battery life ;)

The Acer Ferrari One also has an XGP port too.

You can add an external graphics card to the netbook:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...i-netbook.aspx

Hi Chaps - I've been looking into getting a netbook and will be using it for surfing, emails, a bit of MS office work (word and excel), and also watching films and listening to music (via headphones).

I've seen this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...=hotukdeals-21

which looks like a decent value for money buy - there is a whole thread on HotUkDeals - http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/62912...-046-11-6-inc? - which on the face of it makes it look like a good deal.

Do any of you have nay thoughts?

Paul

Another vote the for the HP compaq 311c with ION (about £310 on Ebuyer)

The HP DM1 doesn't have anywhere near the same graphics capability (GMA4500) so it's not directly comparable. Yes the processor is better, but the graphics are worse...Atom+ION is better in my opinion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk

Another vote the for the HP compaq 311c with ION (about £310 on Ebuyer)

The HP DM1 doesn't have anywhere near the same graphics capability (GMA4500) so it's not directly comparable. Yes the processor is better, but the graphics are worse...Atom+ION is better in my opinion.

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True, if you weren't gaming, the GMA4500HD is more than adequate for HD viewing and the CULV processor will make day-to-day task so much more quicker and its noticeable.

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Originally Posted by usxhe190

True, if you weren't gaming, the GMA4500HD is more than adequate for HD viewing and the CULV processor will make day-to-day task so much more quicker and its noticeable.

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I currently have a libretto u100 which is 8in in size and a 1280x768 display, but its days are number and the keyboard is very hard to use and a bit slow, not really liked many of the replacements options, most netbooks in the smallest side don;t even have my current resolution. I like the 11in 1366*768 display ones, personally I would like the SU7300 processor as it is dual core, 64bit and has virtualisation in it. (Atom lacks the virtualisation.) The Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T has available in germany seems a good starting point, shame the UK is such a tech back water. Personally I would also like the option to add WPAN (Blue tooth) and WWAN (GSM/G3), which this one cannot do as they didn't bother to put the headers on the board! Acer seems to have very few options on its web site here compared to Germany. The Dell Alien ware does all of those things but 800 quid+ for a SU processor seems ridiculous to me, Likewise with the price for a thinkpad.

Ah the libretto - a netbook 10 years ahead of its time - but 1hr battery life?

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Originally Posted by mikerr

Ah the libretto - a netbook 10 years ahead of its time - but 1hr battery life?

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Yes, but no, this was the anniversary one so is only 4 years old with a Pentium-M processor and 1 Gig of memory so still quite useful, before that I had a Sony Vaio C1 Picture book, which has 196 Meg of memory and a Crusoe (remember those?) processors. So It kind of feel finally the main stream is catching up with the full fat mini devices (Not CE or a phone OS) which have been available in Asia for many years with little interest over here. However yes the battery life is only 1-2 hours.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kellyharding

Better performance for sure than an Atom CPU, but what about battery life?? thats the bigger concern often I find with a netbook, ability to do basic tasks with little weight and long battery life.

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Had my Acer Ferrari One for about a month now - I get between 4 and 6 hours battery life, depending what I'm doing. 6 hours if I'm just using as netbook for light web, word docs...etc, and more like 4 hours if I'm heavily processing photos on Lightroom (which runs perfectly snappy when you have 4gig ram - not even sure it'd be even worth trying on a single core Atom).

Having used it extensively the last month, I couldn't go back to a 10" 1024x600 screen and cramped keyboard now - the slight (and not very much) weight/size saving comes at too big a usability cost.