Another "I want a netbook" thread -_-

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board2death986

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 13, 2005
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Selling my bulky 17 inch Dell Inspiron E1700 so I can buy a netbook. Primary use will be for school, but also casual use. Price range is +/-$600 if I pull a few extra bucks outside what I get for my current laptop.

Here's what I'm looking for (in order of importance):
Battery Life
Can run windows XP
Upgradeable to 2GB memory (doesnt have to have it standard)
Comfortable keyboard
SSD drive
 
Sounds like a Acer Aspire One with the 6 Cell battery.
 
if you can pay abit more then 600.... like 700

get the N10J from asus
with is the only only netbook
with 9300mGS 256mb video card

with overclocking the cpu and gpu...
playing cod 4 , farcry 2 , and fallout 3
at med setting is good.. ( i usually disable the shadow
 
Less than 10" screen: Acer Aspire One with the 6 cell battery = 6+ hours of battery life, 8.9" LCD

10" screen: Samsung NC10 with the 6 cell battery = 7+ hours of battery life

Of those on the market as of today, those are the best two in my opinion.
 
I like my 1000h ($340 after cashback):
+10cell/12000mah battery = 9hrs of life ($49 after cashback)
+remapped keyboard, shift key moved over (free)
+2gb PATRIOT ddr2-667 (~$30, I had some lying around)
+XP Pro SP3 installed
+full cover clear, protective Armour skin ($11 after cashback)

runs like a champ :)
 
You want an NC10 imo... Though it's not being offered with an SSD AFAIK, but you wouldn't wanna run WinXP on the SSD AA1 either, and the next best choice after those two isn't available with an SSD either (MSI Wind). Frankly it's just not worth it right now unless you demand the ruggedness of an SSD, they're slower than standard 5,400 RPM laptop drives and you pay the same price for 1/10th the capacity (on top of being slower)...

I was all gung-ho about getting an SSD as well when I started looking at netbooks, and the EEE series has the most choices when it comes to that... But it just made less and less sense the more I looked into it. To make up for the sluggish SSD drives or offset the cost many of the EEE PC's use a faster OS SSD drive and a slower data drive, but that split ups your total storage space too, and the faster one is still slower than a regular HDD.

I love the keyboard layout of the AA1 and the NC10 though (it's like identical, only slightly larger on the NC10), by far the best layouts of all the netbooks imo. The dedicated Page Up/Down keys by the arrow keys are an underrated perk, and the properly placed Shift key and the fact that none of the punctuation keys are slimmed down is real nice. The only keyboard that compares is that of the HPs.
 
8.9" if you want really portable. Love my Aspire One - great looking and with a good keyboard for a system this size. Running XP from the SSD isn't ideal, but entirely possible after applying some tweaks. The read speed and random access is good, but performance is let down by the slow write speed. This applies more or less to all SSD's today. I agree that unless you realy need SSD, you're better off sticking with a conventional harddrive.

The 1GB RAM/160GB harddrive version can be had for about $400. Enough for most tasks but don't expect to play any modern games on it. Also max RAM is 1.5GB.

MSI Wind and NC10 are a little bigger but with even better keyboards and support for 2GB of RAM.

If you want to play games at all, you'll want something that doesn't come with Intel graphics or the Atom CPU. Maybe you should be looking at a 10" - 13" mini notebook with a "real" Core CPU instead?
 
N10J was actually my first choice right now, it's the beefiest option without going too bulky, and bulky is what i'm trying to avoid as my 17inch laptop is friggin heavy. Don't need complete gaming performance, and going with a mini notebook as opposed to a beefy netbook is the price. The less I worry about gaming, the more work I'll actually get done :p.

But notice I actually never mentioned gaming, but I know its on the back of everyone's mind. It's just one of those choices we gamers all have to make when choosing between netbooks and a full fledged notebook. Netbooks just aren't designed with that sort of performance in mind, as it would drain power and create more bulk, conflicting with the netbooks purpose and design. I'm sure they will keep up with the trend of upgrading tech and come out with a dualcore higher clocked atom with high performance graphics options, but it will also be ungodly expensive once again going against the purpose of netbooks.

I've already made up my mind, since I'm getting rid of my notebook, I'm going with something more mobile with longer lasting power (Dell e1705 lasts 2.5hrs with vista).

Thanks for all the advice, NC10J looks like a winner, just waiting on the sale of my Dell, brother might pick it up and use it as a tax write off for work (he's a teacher), so I figure I can help him out while helping myself since he was looking for a laptop himself.
 
I"ll put in another vote for the N10J, its keyboard is wayyy nicer than the Wind that I have, you can actualy type on it comfortably. I'm not trying to hate on the wind but it just is to small if you do any amount of typing. Battery wise on the N10J, i'm getting about 5.5 hours using the integrated graphics, wifi on with the screen at the lowest setting (stil very bright) I put xp on mine and put a 500gb hdd in it. Its a wonderful portable media machine too. You won't be dissappointed if you choose the Asus
 
i sleep with my eeepc...it runs xp fast, runs cool, awesome battery. only thing that bothers me about it is that some "bro" in my class asked if it was a motorola razor computer :confused: so now i think about it resembling that hunk of shit phone.
 
JimmiG said:
8.9" if you want really portable. Love my Aspire One - great looking and with a good keyboard for a system this size. Running XP from the SSD isn't ideal, but entirely possible after applying some tweaks. The read speed and random access is good, but performance is let down by the slow write speed. This applies more or less to all SSD's today. I agree that unless you realy need SSD, you're better off sticking with a conventional harddrive.

The 1GB RAM/160GB harddrive version can be had for about $400. Enough for most tasks but don't expect to play any modern games on it. Also max RAM is 1.5GB.

MSI Wind and NC10 are a little bigger but with even better keyboards and support for 2GB of RAM.

If you want to play games at all, you'll want something that doesn't come with Intel graphics or the Atom CPU. Maybe you should be looking at a 10" - 13" mini notebook with a "real" Core CPU instead?
Click to expand...

I was about to tell him the same info! You got me beat
a223c6b3710f85df22e9377d6c4f7553.jpg
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You might be able to find a 12.1" Dell D420/430 with a single core or ULV Dual Core for around $500. I cannot justify the price/performance on that N10J.
 
Impulse said:
I was all gung-ho about getting an SSD as well when I started looking at netbooks, and the EEE series has the most choices when it comes to that... But it just made less and less sense the more I looked into it. To make up for the sluggish SSD drives or offset the cost many of the EEE PC's use a faster OS SSD drive and a slower data drive, but that split ups your total storage space too, and the faster one is still slower than a regular HDD.
Click to expand...
<3 having the SSD. It may be slow but being able to throw the thing around without worrying about head crashes is a godsend. mini9, so not even a fan.
 
kirbyrj said:
You might be able to find a 12.1" Dell D420/430 with a single core or ULV Dual Core for around $500. I cannot justify the price/performance on that N10J.
Click to expand...



I"m not trying to start a flame war or be an ass, but have you actually used an Atom based notebook or the N10J, judging by the OP requirements for a notebook for school, I can't see how the price/performance of the N10J wouldn't be bad, if the OP didn't want any gaming ability at all he could get the cheaper N10E without the switchable graphics however you then lose the 6 cell battery option.

As a person who went to university for 4 years, over that course of time I had many different laptops and the biggest thing I came away learning, is don't get something too big, and make sure you love the keyboard. I only wish the N10 was available back when I was still in school.

So in short I don't see how a 700 (Can $) laptop is poor from a price/performance standpoint when your getting a basically full sized keyboard, wonderfull screen and very good battery life.
 
SILVR 6 said:
I"m not trying to start a flame war or be an ass, but have you actually used an Atom based notebook or the N10J, judging by the OP requirements for a notebook for school, I can't see how the price/performance of the N10J wouldn't be bad, if the OP didn't want any gaming ability at all he could get the cheaper N10E without the switchable graphics however you then lose the 6 cell battery option.

As a person who went to university for 4 years, over that course of time I had many different laptops and the biggest thing I came away learning, is don't get something too big, and make sure you love the keyboard. I only wish the N10 was available back when I was still in school.

So in short I don't see how a 700 (Can $) laptop is poor from a price/performance standpoint when your getting a basically full sized keyboard, wonderfull screen and very good battery life.
Click to expand...

My points as well. People fail to realize that for some people, battery life is more important than any gaming capability.

I'm in college as well (for up to 9.5 hours on some of my days). I'll be damned if I ever turn back to a laptop that has shitty battery life. My Wind let's me take notes the whole day and still have juice left over. Mind you, 9.5 hours isn't with the Wind at full load at all times. It does go on idle when I don't type and throttles down the cpu. I don't even carry my battery charger with me; I have no need to charge my Wind on campus.

Not everyone in college has time to game.
 
SILVR 6 said:
I"m not trying to start a flame war or be an ass, but have you actually used an Atom based notebook or the N10J, judging by the OP requirements for a notebook for school, I can't see how the price/performance of the N10J wouldn't be bad, if the OP didn't want any gaming ability at all he could get the cheaper N10E without the switchable graphics however you then lose the 6 cell battery option.

As a person who went to university for 4 years, over that course of time I had many different laptops and the biggest thing I came away learning, is don't get something too big, and make sure you love the keyboard. I only wish the N10 was available back when I was still in school.

So in short I don't see how a 700 (Can $) laptop is poor from a price/performance standpoint when your getting a basically full sized keyboard, wonderfull screen and very good battery life.
Click to expand...

Dell D420 can be had for half that, offers good battery life, faster processor performance and all the while being lighter. Not to mention it can dock, which is very handy.

I was going to suggest a Dell X1. Which is lighter than alot of netbooks. Also has a Pentium M 1.1GHz processor which is faster than a 1.6GHz Atom. Battery life is decent, 4 hours+ if you get the extended battery. Very cheap as well and doesnt look old design-wise. Probably the best Dell notebook ever because it was borrowed from Samsung lol. Can be had for under $300. Add a Samsung SSD for $100 or so.
 
Trust me, I've used the old 701 (3 cell), the 1000H (6 cell), and am looking at the Samsung NC10. I've used netbooks. I also had a Dell D420 with a Core 2 in it, and I had a Dell X300 with a P-M 1.4Ghz.

Performance wise, it's a no brainer. The D420 absolutely kicked the netbook's ass all over the place. I'm not talking about gaming. I'm talking about general performance. The Atom is slow even with 2GB of memory. Plus the N10 series comes with Vista IIRC...I don't see any Atom based computer running Vista well.

Size wise, the D420 without the docking station isn't as small, but it's not all that much bigger and is quite a bit thinner than a netbook. The weight isn't all that much different. With a 9 cell battery, you'd get about the same battery life as you'd get with the 6 cell Atom netbook.

The Keyboard is important. I did go to college (and then went to Graduate school). So I understand about wanting a nice keyboard to type on and not wanting to carry around a big computer. The right shift key on the N10J would drive me insane.

All that to say...If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have just kept the Dell X300 and gotten the biggest battery I could find for it because I didn't need anything more powerful than that, and it had a nice size.
 
Wow guys take it easy, appreciate all the comments, advice and discussion but come on it's all opinions and preferences so there is no point in letting it bite you in the ass. I've settled on the Asus N10J for a variety of reasons including the full size keyboard, battery life, discrete graphics and the excellent warranty that N10J comes with standard.
I don't know about all the other netbooks on the market, but this model comes completely covered with accident coverage for a year, 2 year warranty, as well as complete dead-pixel coverage with free overnight going both ways for replacement. These days with production standards as they are I like seeing them standing behind their product with such a great warranty system.
Overall this netbook/notebook/whatever is going to class with me, but it will also be going on the road, so the inclusion of discrete graphics means I can enjoy some highdef content or steam games when out and about. The price can be a turnoff, but I also posted that this was in my price range, if I was worried that much about the price "cheap" would have been in my "what im looking for" list.
I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on this, although I'm dissapointed none of the major retailers have any of the N series on display, so the closest I was able to get my hands on was a EEE PC 1000 to get a good idea of the sizing, although I know there are considerable differences in the two models.
Everyone has their priorities when investing money into a product, but try to be considerate in the forums and keep your opinions your own and don't push opinion as fact. Once again I appreciate all the input and options people have produced for me, I was very new to the mobile computing market since my Inspiron e1705 was the only experience in laptops I've really had, but I think I have a winner in my hands. I'm looking forward to the Atom processors coming into their own, I know that it is definitely the crippling point of the netbook in turns of processing power, so hopefully in the next year or so they will develop higher clock speeds/dual core models, and keep the low-power consumption and low heat the standard.
 
Actually, I was taking it easy :). I hope you enjoy your netbook :cool:.

FOLLOWUP:

Mostly on the basis of this thread, I went out and just bought a "replacement" for my X300. I ended up getting an IBM X41 P-M 1.5Ghz with 1.5G memory and DVD/RW dock with an 8 cell battery for $295 shipped after cashback and with a Paypal coupon I had lying around. LOL...thanks guys for making me spend more money :p.
 
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