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Which notebook/netbook is for me.

P

pat1006

n00b
Joined
Feb 17, 2006
Messages
38
Well I am really looking for a portible machine.
The primary uses will be email, web browsing and coding.

Weight is mort important to me. I want to be able to travel with this. In addition, battery life is important. (Yes I know battery adds weight, the battery should not count as weight) Finally cost is a concern. I would prefer something sub $500 but a thinkpad is not out of the question.

I really do like the idea of a netbook but I am not sure if I would be able to code on it. If I can code on a netbook, which provides the best battery life?
 
Have you looked at the MSI Wind Notebooks? I believe the 6 cell version can get 5 1/2 hours with the wifi off. Be careful and make sure you don't accidentally buy a 3 cell version though.
 
Acer Aspire ONE 6-cell 160gb XP version... for the win, for you :).

I'm using the 3-cell 120GB XP version and love it... got it for $220 after $30 GC included ($250 out the door) awhile back. The 6-cell would have a much longer battery life which should suit you fine. They go for $400ish, but you can often find them on Overstock.com with 20% Live.com search cashback which comes to 320 shipped (the six-cell, I mean).

Keyboard is GREAT for typing on unlike some other netbooks I tried (I didn't get to try the Wind but tried most of the others)... build quality is excellent, screen looks great and is 8.9" 1024x600 resolution... battery life is nice (my 3-cell gets 2.5-3 hours, the six-cell is rated for over 5.5 hours I believe), and it comes with 1GB RAM, XP, a real HDD with lots of space, etc. Without much adjustment you can type on it just like a desktop keyboard, which is important if you want to use it for coding etc. Has a very light weight @ 2.3lbs vs. the EEE pc's which are rated at over 3.


http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/Acer-Aspire-One-A150-1126-Notebook/3393714/product.html Overstock link

http://www.live.com Live search, search for "ipod" and click the Overstock ad on the right for cashback link-thru.
 
I'd say the ASUS EeePC 1000HA (~$325 via Buy It Now on Ebay after Live Cash Back). It has a 10" screen, a larger keyboard (for a netbook) and very good battery life.
 
Samsung NC10 is your best bet. 2.8 pounds with a 6 cell. Battery life is the longest among all current netbooks at 6.5 hours (Wifi on and continuous web surfing). With an SSD the battery life jumps to 8 hours under the same conditions. The 6 cell wind is about 5.25 hours and the EEE 1001 is 4.5 hours. The NC10 also comes with a keyboard that apparently can't harbor germs or kills germs. Something like that. I don't recall the exact details, but since you'll be using this to code, it may not be such a bad thing to have a clean keyboard.

If you really want to spend money, get the Sony TT. 11.1 inch LCD, core 2 duo cpu, 8 hours of battery life, blu ray drive. 2.87 pounds and just a hair larger than a 10 inch screened netbook.

Source: laptopmag.
 
I am torn over the larger screen of the 1000HA and the lighter asire one. The Wind doesn't seem to be worth the extra cost judging by the statistics I have seen. Is that extra screen size really worth the extra weight?

Edit: Just saw the post above mine, I will have to look into these options as well.

Edit2: Well the Sony TT. is really expensive. I am very interested in the SAMSUNG NC10, I feel the extra 2.5 hours of battery life justifies the extra ~$100. Though the trade off is .5lbs.
 
I'm sorry, but netbooks are already so light. Even a netbook half a pound heavier will likely not be noticeable in a backpack or messenger. Is the little weight really going to be THAT detrimental?

Muscles are there for a reason (says the kinesiologist).
 
No, not at all. It is just a trade off. I am just tired of my 7lb laptop; (it was cheap and served its purpose) so, I am over making it more extreme then it really is. I think I have decided to get the SAMSUNG NC10. It seems to fit my needs the best. Thanks everyone.
 
pat1006 said:
No, not at all. It is just a trade off. I am just tired of my 7lb laptop; (it was cheap and served its purpose) so, I am over making it more extreme then it really is. I think I have decided to get the SAMSUNG NC10. It seems to fit my needs the best. Thanks everyone.
Click to expand...

Try the live.com trick that was posted above. Searching for "gold coin" will always yield the discount ebay link. Click the link and then do a search for samsung NC10 (you have to perform the search through the link you click after you search for gold coin). NOTE: This only works with buy it now items; also you can't use buy.com BIN auctions (because they go through a middle man with paypal; live.com discounts only work with BINs that have direct paypal and not a middle man),

ATM it's 25% off.
 
pat1006 said:
I am torn over the larger screen of the 1000HA and the lighter asire one. The Wind doesn't seem to be worth the extra cost judging by the statistics I have seen. Is that extra screen size really worth the extra weight?
Click to expand...

As a recent purchaser of the 1000HA and an unhappy tester of an aspire one, I'll have to say that it's not the extra inch of the 1000HA that really sold me, it was the slightly bigger keyboard size. My hand size is smaller than average and yet I struggle with the keyboard on the Aspire One. With the 1000HA, my sentences flow almost as seamless as it does on a full laptop.

In addition, the Aspire one I tested had a SSD I believe. Not sure if it was an anomaly, but everything seemed to move much slower than it should have.
 
Tzzird said:
As a recent purchaser of the 1000HA and an unhappy tester of an aspire one, I'll have to say that it's not the extra inch of the 1000HA that really sold me, it was the slightly bigger keyboard size. My hand size is smaller than average and yet I struggle with the keyboard on the Aspire One. With the 1000HA, my sentences flow almost as seamless as it does on a full laptop.

In addition, the Aspire one I tested had a SSD I believe. Not sure if it was an anomaly, but everything seemed to move much slower than it should have.
Click to expand...

I tried both and actually liked the Aspire One's keyboard *shrug*, guess it boils down to personal preference... I have fairly large hands myself. As far as the speed, my HDD version runs snappily :).
 
Harkamus said:
Try the live.com trick that was posted above. Searching for "gold coin" will always yield the discount ebay link. Click the link and then do a search for samsung NC10 (you have to perform the search through the link you click after you search for gold coin). NOTE: This only works with buy it now items; also you can't use buy.com BIN auctions (because they go through a middle man with paypal; live.com discounts only work with BINs that have direct paypal and not a middle man),

ATM it's 25% off.
Click to expand...

Make /sure/ the little "buy it now cashback" banner shows up at the top of the ebay page after you follow the link. Sometimes it does not, even when you follow the correct link.
 
i love my 901 eee pc, the multi touch pad is great.... i know a lot of people like the 10" screen better


asus makes a good product and its easy to upgrade...
 
pat1006 said:
I am torn over the larger screen of the 1000HA and the lighter asire one. The Wind doesn't seem to be worth the extra cost judging by the statistics I have seen. Is that extra screen size really worth the extra weight?

Edit: Just saw the post above mine, I will have to look into these options as well.

Edit2: Well the Sony TT. is really expensive. I am very interested in the SAMSUNG NC10, I feel the extra 2.5 hours of battery life justifies the extra ~$100. Though the trade off is .5lbs.
Click to expand...

I think the 1000H is the oldest model amongst all these 9-10" netbooks, and it shows... Even if it's only a few months older than the rest, originally the 1000 series was SSD-only too. The Wind, AA1, and NC10 all have better keyboard layouts and a better feel to the kb imo. They're all slightly slimmer or weigh less, and they're priced very competitively to boot; also, for some reason they all get 1-2 hours more out of the 6-cell batteries than the 1000H (depends on screen brightness, WiFi, etc).

The Wind's punctuation keys are slightly slimmer and unless it drops in price the NC10's just a better choice imo... MSI's been switching from Synaptic touchpads to something else as well, dunno if whatever else they're using has the multi-touch pinch/zoom stuff like newer Synaptic pads do. So the choice comes down to $400 for an AA1 or $490 for an NC10 imo... Though not necessarily a larger one, but the difference is small, I think the NC10 and the HP 1000 have the largest ones. All of these have much larger keyboards than older 9" netbooks that weren't as wide though (EEE PC 901, etc.).

The keyboard layout is identical for the AA1/NC10, and the best amongst all the netbooks imo. No slimmed keys save for tilde, properly placed right-shift key, and the dedicated Page Up/Down keys (underated perk which none of the other netbooks have). The NC10 has a couple of upsides for that extra $90, larger screen (albeit w/the same res), better speakers, a better webcam (1.3mp vs 0.3mp), somewhat better battery life, and integrated Bluetooth which the AA1 lacks and would cost ya an extra $20 or so for a slim USB dongle that you can always leave connected.

If you need BT the price difference ends up being like $70 in reality, probably well worth it... I went with the AA1 myself because I already had a BT dongle and frankly I just couldn't wait. The NC10's just now becoming widely available, the AA1 is available in a few more additional colors if you care for that at all (black/brown/pink). I've only seen the NC10 in white/blue.

As far as the SSD option to some of them... You might've noticed there's actually more HDD models than SSD models now, and those that have an option of an SSD are still offering a 16GB drive tops for the most part (I think there's a 1000H w/larger SSD's though, but it's the exception). SSD's going into these netbooks are just slow across the board, slower than any 5,400 RPM laptop drive, the only advantage is durability at the cost of price/size... Basically they still need to mature before they make more sense.
 
I actually own an AA1 (160GB 6-cell) even though I made a very good case for the NC10 btw... :p I just wasn't sure when the NC10 would be widely available when I was ready to buy the AA1, and I don't really regret it much... The sapphire blue AA1 is sexy, and I don't really get much use out of the webcam/speakers (actually turned the webcam off to save battery). So in my case it was like $90 more for the extra screen size alone. Still haven't seen the blue NC10 at Newegg anyway.

I think the AA1's touchpad is ever-so-slightly larger if that concerns you at all, though it has those side-placed buttons... I actually prefer them but they're rather stiff so I've been using tap to click mostly anyway. The NC10 has one of those single rocker-style buttons I think, might actually be it's only fault.
 
You're not looking very well then... AA1 = Acer Aspire One

$399 Sapphire blue / 6-cell / 160GB @Newegg
$399 Onyx black / 6-cell / 160GB @Newegg

They've got it in white and white/pink as well, had it in brown at some point but not right now. They've also got the 6-cell versions with a smaller 120GB drive for $20 less, in blue, black, and white. They've also got the 3-cell 120GB version in white and brown, and a 3-cell black version with a 16GB SSD, all three for $350. Then there's the 3-cell 8GB SSD versions for $330...

CDW has the 6-cell versions in stock as well, last I checked, that's where I ordered mine from because Newegg had de-listed it like two weeks ago (and actually had the 6-cell 120GB versions going for $399 rather than $379). PC Connection has had 'em in stock as well... There's several other places, the one place you don't wanna look is Amazon though, they're not a direct re-seller apparently and they've been having a mess with their backorder queue and sponsored stores that do sell the AAO (and price gouge on it).

Newegg has the white NC10 in stock right now, black isn't listed, CDW has both listed but you usually have to call 'em to verify stock of brand new stuff like that. Watch out for the AAO's at NCIX too, they were selling versions with the english/french keyboard even on their US store at one point (6-cell versions, which at the time no one else seemed to have in stock for like a month straight). Think I've seen the AAO on eBay as well if you wanna use cashback.
 
My bad, I realize I omitted brand names more than a few times and was talking about the AAO and the NC10 as one in a couple of cases... In part because they share the same excellent keyboard layout, and in part because I think they're the two best choices out there right now (at $400 and $500-ish). :eek: Shame that the HP Mini 1000 is crippled by that slower 4,200 RPM drive, it looks pretty sweet save for that and one or two other quirks... Dunno why they (and Dell with the upcoming 12" model) made that odd choice, since it didn't seem to increase battery life significantly.


BTW, if anyone's looking for some simple sleeves for these netbooks below are the two I've been looking at... (my AAO came with none) Case Logic has a few other ones besides this first one I've listed (w/zippers instead of fold-over) but they usually also have a zippered pocket that cuts across and I think that's a no-no for sending it down the x-ray machine at the airport no? There's a newer one in a nicer pale blue color though.

The second one with the memory foam intrigues me, seems like it'd be more secure than the vast majority of laptop sleeves... I might order that one and try and find the cheaper CL one at Walmart later, I heard they carry it in black (rather than the garish blue or pink at Amazon) with a slightly different model name. Both of 'em fit the 6-cell AAO, Senyx has models for several other netbooks though it's probably the same darn thing in many cases, and the neoprene CL one is stretchy so it probably fits most/all similarly sized netbooks.

Case Logic XDS-9 Neoprene sleeve in blue or pink - $10.99
Senyx Aspire One Premium Memory Foam Black case - $21.21
 
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I've got one of the Best Buy "special" (crippled) EeePC 900/901s (1.6Ghz Atom, 4GB SSD, 1GB RAM) on its way in the mail to me now, and while the pathetic storage and relative slowness of the SSD don't leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside, considering its intended use as a real 'netbook', that being random surfing, maybe some word processing, the occasional movie from a SD card (or the internal CF card I hope to mod it with, or failing that a good sized USB drive) that shouldn't be an issue.

The real problem, or at least potential problem, is the size and layout of the keyboard. I plan to do a great deal of typing on the machine, posting here and elsewhere, using AIM and similar, and the strange choice of position and relative size for the shift keys (really ASUS, what the hell were you thinking here?) has me very worried. I'll definitely be reporting back here how that turns out, and if it's an unhappy story some other [H]er will likely be getting a really good deal as I bail in favor of something like the AAO or Lenovo S10.
 
Unless MSI has shifted to a 3rd touchpad maker the ones they're using in the wind now (Sentilic) don't support multitouch, and instead of implementing scroll by swiping the edge of the pad (a synaptic patent monopoly) it's done by taping the corners to simulate clicking on the arrows.
 
DanNeely said:
Unless MSI has shifted to a 3rd touchpad maker the ones they're using in the wind now (Sentilic) don't support multitouch, and instead of implementing scroll by swiping the edge of the pad (a synaptic patent monopoly) it's done by taping the corners to simulate clicking on the arrows.
Click to expand...


does a samsung nc10's touchpad support multitouch?
 
silent-circuit said:
I've got one of the Best Buy "special" (crippled) EeePC 900/901s (1.6Ghz Atom, 4GB SSD, 1GB RAM) on its way in the mail to me now, and while the pathetic storage and relative slowness of the SSD don't leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling inside, considering its intended use as a real 'netbook', that being random surfing, maybe some word processing, the occasional movie from a SD card (or the internal CF card I hope to mod it with, or failing that a good sized USB drive) that shouldn't be an issue.

The real problem, or at least potential problem, is the size and layout of the keyboard. I plan to do a great deal of typing on the machine, posting here and elsewhere, using AIM and similar, and the strange choice of position and relative size for the shift keys (really ASUS, what the hell were you thinking here?) has me very worried. I'll definitely be reporting back here how that turns out, and if it's an unhappy story some other [H]er will likely be getting a really good deal as I bail in favor of something like the AAO or Lenovo S10.
Click to expand...

^^^ Revisiting the above.

No one should get a 900A from Best Buy if they value their sanity. I installed XP on it and it was painfully, painfully slow because the included 4GB SSD is so slow. Changing webpages in Firefox (just starting to load them, not even making progress yet) would take 1-3 seconds regularly as it wrote to cache. This is with a nLite'd version of XP as per instructions on eeepcforum to make it as fast as possible. I made it borderline usable by setting up a RAM-drive for temp files for the OS and browser cache files, but it was still really slow and would often take multiple seconds just to open a window in Explorer (not Internet Explorer, just the OS itself). Many said this machine was "tuned" for Linux, so I used the restore DVD and tried out the Xandros distro it comes with. It was nearly as painful, though the pauses waiting on the SSD were somewhat less frequent. It also came off as very "cutesy" to me. I think something like Fedora or Ubuntu would've been a better choice.

Also, the keyboard layout was just as bad as I'd feared, and the keys unresponsive as well. The whole keyboard flexes a great deal, and apparently the solution to this is to place about 10 layers of carefully cut tin foil in the hole beneath it. I never had time to try this, but it's supposed to improve feedback and reliability of sensing keystrokes a great deal.

I kept the 900A about two weeks all told, then put it up for sale here and on Ebay. It sold almost immediately on Ebay.

Soon after I picked up a HP Compaq 2510p off of Ebay. It was $700 shipped, $525 after 25% Microsoft Cashback, and had 2 years remaining on a 3 year warranty. 1.2Ghz C2D ULV, 80GB 4200RPM 2.5" HDD, 2GB RAM (expandable to 4GB, which I plan on), 12.1" 1280x800 LED backlit LCD, Intel X3100 graphics, Intel 802.11a/b/g/draft-n wifi, 6 cell battery (6 hour run time on a charge, 3 and 9 cells available), 2 USB 2.0 ports, compact DVI and VGA out, fingerprint reader, and a SIM card slot / mobile broadband support. Came with XP Pro 32bit installed, I've since installed Vista 64bit and it runs it beautifully, no issues at all, HP had drivers available for everything.

I do realize this is a substantially more expensive machine (it retails for $1500 in its base configuration from HP) but ignoring that its come from Ebay, you're looking at $525 (granted, 2 months later) for a /far/ faster machine with a much nicer screen, better wireless support, mobile broadband support, a comparable or better single charge run time, and a keyboard that is so much better as to be incomparable. I'd argue that's $225 very, very well spent over a 900 series EeePC, and even $125 very well spent over a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 or Samsung NC10.


Short version:

ASUS EeePC 900A (~$300 at Best Buy, new, with 1 year warranty)
Absolute trash, avoid it, it will make you miserable. The terribly slow low quality 4GB SSD and unresponsive, poorly laid out keyboard ruin what could've been a very nice basic machine.

HP Compaq 2510p (~$700 - $525 after 25% MS cashback - on Ebay, used, with 2 year warranty remaining)
Beautiful machine, very quick and responsive, no issues so far, can't recommend it highly enough.
 
besides the battery life, is the samsung a lot better than a wind? The samsung is roughly $50 more than a comparable wind. is it worth it
 
Ok, but don't count on ANY multi tasking. More than one application totally fucks the Atom.
 
I guess I'm going to buy a new 9 cell battery for my Compal HGL30 (CoreDuo 2.0Ghz) and use that. It's 5.5lbs but I'dl rather be able to do everything on it. Maybe when the netbooks CPUs get a little better I'll get one.
 
deft touch said:
besides the battery life, is the samsung a lot better than a wind? The samsung is roughly $50 more than a comparable wind. is it worth it
Click to expand...


A major flaw in the wind is it's non-multifunction touchpad. I think that means you can't scroll with it. I'm not totally sure on what multifunction means but I know it's limited. Just the scrolling part itself would turn me away from buying one. I just picked up a white Samsung nc10... : ( no blacks available and blue wasn't my thing. Newegg has it for $469.99 with free shipping... can't wait for it to come.
 
I just picked up the msi wind on ebay for 177 after discount and cashback.

It's the crappy 3 cell version, but for the prices you can get now, theres no beating it.
 
luxolex said:
Yes the touchpad is multitouch.

I just finished watching a video of it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT7ZXxkDbRc

After reading this thread I went with the NC10 in Blue...thanks for all the helpful posts.
Click to expand...

Whoa I didn't know the NC10 had a 6 cell with it. Where is the cheapest place to get this shipped to Canada?

Also how does that 30% cashback work. Is it live cashback or ebay cashback...?
 
What does the NC10 do different to get so much better battery life than anyone elses netbook? The specs on it look identical to the competition which all only get 5.5-6hrs on the 6cell with wifi enabled.
 
DanNeely said:
What does the NC10 do different to get so much better battery life than anyone elses netbook? The specs on it look identical to the competition which all only get 5.5-6hrs on the 6cell with wifi enabled.
Click to expand...

Thats a hard question to answer but I'm guessing better quality parts/build and hence more efficient.
 
SuperChicken said:
Whoa I didn't know the NC10 had a 6 cell with it. Where is the cheapest place to get this shipped to Canada?

Also how does that 30% cashback work. Is it live cashback or ebay cashback...?
Click to expand...

You're out of luck because the cashback is now 20%. The way it works is you go to live.com and search for "gold coin" without the quotes. That will generate a hit with an ebay link at the top of the page that says you can save 20% on ebay. Click that link and it pops open an ebay link with a 20% cashback banner at the top. From that same window just change the ebay search that says "gold coin" to whatever you want (in this case Samsung NC10). Sort the results by "buy it now" and then find a price that's good. Purchase it with buy it now and before you do the final confirmation that you want to buy it, it will tell you how much cashback you will get in terms of dollars and cents. If all is good and you're satisfied, do the final confirm. Log in to your live.com account and you'll see that you now have cashback which can take from 0 days to 60 days for you to get. SOme people (myself included) have had a few cases where we've gotten instant cash back (READ: cashback instantly into our paypal accounts). Other times I've had to wait 60 days. BTW, that brings me to a point. You have to pay using paypal in order to be eligible for cashback.

BTW, ebayers are realizing that they can capitalize on this, so some will cunningly charge 30% more on their items so in the end you pay more because you get cashback, but you don't actually save much money or any at all. The sellers however, make X% more money. Sux...but that's why you have to hunt around. Also keep in mind that cash back comes from the buy it now price not including shipping. So, you'll have to do math to figure out which will save you the most money.

Example: Item one is 100 bucks BIN with free shipping. That gives you 30 dollars back if cashback is 30%. Item 2 is 80 bucks BIN with 20 dollars shipping. That gives you 24 bucks back if cashback is 30%, but in the end you pay 76 dollars, whereas in the first case you only paid 70 dollars.

80 x 30% = 24 bucks. 80 - 24 bucks = 56 bucks. 56 bucks + 20 dollars shipping = 76 bucks.

You end up paying 6 bucks more than if you went with teh 100 buck BIN with free shipping.
 
reasoN said:
Thats a hard question to answer but I'm guessing better quality parts/build and hence more efficient.
Click to expand...

I seriously doubt it's mostly due to part choices as the biggest power-hog on all netbooks is the Intel mobo chipsetand there's nothing they can do to reduce it's power draw. Maybe to a small extent on the battery side they're doing things more efficiently...

But it seems the Samsung comes pre-loaded with some very aggressive battery-saving software, the max battery life numbers being tossed around out there are with some of this enabled (it does things like dim the screen within seconds of inactivity, etc). Even without any of that it still has about an hour's worth of battery life advantage(6+ hrs total) on some of the other most efficient 6-cell netbooks tho (Wind/AAO/etc,which usually go for 5-5.5 hours at best), so I guess it's a lil' of everything, dunno.

I can tell you the AAO, and probably most of the other netbooks, don't come with any power-optimization software of any kind whatsoever beyond Windows' own timers for the screen and standby/hibernate, and the Intel Atom's own downclocking routines.
 
reasoN said:
Thats a hard question to answer but I'm guessing better quality parts/build and hence more efficient.
Click to expand...

It just has a better 6-cell battery. I think the NC-10 has a 57 w/hr battery while the 6-cell Wind battery is 48 w/hr.
 
Hmm, I don't know much about batteries but that could very well be it, coupled with some of Samsung's software, interesting. Anyone have any experience with aftermarket/3rd party batteries? There's a ton of different batteries available for the AA1, including 9-cell batteries... Wonder if they're as good as the OEM battery though.
 
I like the NC10 myself :) bought one 3 weeks ago and although it can have a couple of seconds delay on loading applications its still a nice litttle buy :)
 
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