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Looking for a little advice from anyone with experience with these!  I'm probably going to pick one up in the next week; I mainly want it for travel and I don't think my current laptop would last long on the road, and it's heavy as fuck and starting to fall apart anyway.  So...

After reading way too many reviews and comparisons The ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-PU1X-BU 10.1-Inch Netbook (http://www.squidoo.com/best-netbook?utm_campaign=search-discovery&utm_medium=greet3b&utm_source=google) looks like one of the better ones available, in both specs and (sub $400) price.  There *are* a bunch of complaints on Amazon about the charger failing within 4-6 weeks, and apparently Asus makes you pay to ship it back end and they take another 2-3 weeks to send you a new one.  Hmmm.

The Toshiba Mini (http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-NB205-N210-10-1-Inch-Black-Netbook/dp/B002BDUAEK%3FSubscriptionId%3D19BAZMZQFZJ6G2QYGCG2%26tag%3DSquid773194-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB002BDUAEK) looks pretty good as well with almost identical specs.  But after browsing the reviews it looks like it has touchpad and internet connection issues instead of power issues.  Hmm again.  I'm guessing there's no perfect model.

So... who's got one of these things?  Is there a better model I'm missing?

I got a Dell 10v (http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/laptop-inspiron-10/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-inspiron-10&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~laptop-inspiron-10v_anav1~~) for my wife and I really like it. I think netbooks in general are a bit too new to have a good consensus on best brand/model.

I will say I was able to install OS X on the 10v without much hassle, and now I have a little Mac netbook for under $400!

Have used a lot of the Eee PC series and they are quite well build and no major complaints from users. I'd take a look at a Samsung N10 or whatever the latest model is N120?


Few issues with the 10v, the RAM is a PITA to access and touchpad is terrible where the buttons are integrated into the pad (phantom click registers on various section of the pad when you click the left mouse button).

I do agree the touchpad is a bit annoying. Haven't tried to get to the RAM though. (The touchpad doesn't work in OS X anyways, so we're using a little travel mouse and that works great).

The biggest worry for me is how well it types. The Dells have a good keyboard for full finger typing. There are others that are clearly meant for the hunt and peck crowd. Best way to tell is to test drive them.

I have heard good things about the MSI Wind series, and Samsung. Samsung should be coming out with an Nvidia chipset (the Ion) that should have a significantly higher graphics capability over the current Intel Atoms. It will be ~700 bucks, tho, if I recall some article I read somewhere.

I have an Eee 1101HA (the 11" model), with RAM bumped to 2 GB. The keyboard is *almost* full-sized (the mini-right-shift key drives me bonkers but I'm getting used to it). It runs Windows 7 (RC) reasonably well, though it's noticeably snappier under XP. Battery life is crazy-long; my first charge got ~10 hours even while powering an external DVD, installing software, etc, and that's without many power-saving features in Windows 7 as far as I could tell. The trackpad has a single button that you click on the left or right side instead of two separate buttons, but it works well enough. An external pointing device is probably a good idea for extended usage unless you're a trackpad master.

I own a Samsung NC10 and love it. The Samsung netbooks are where it's at.

Edit - I'm a fast touch typist in a writing job and the keyboard on the NC10 is great for me. People complain about the touchpad being too sensitive or too small, but I dialled back the sensitivity one notch and it's fine. The NC10 is now the old model, they've come out with some new ones - I haven't kept up because I'm so happy with mine already.

I'll often grab the netbook while in bed, if I need to do a minor edit to some work and/or check my email. It's light enough that this is just like grabbing a novel to read in bed, but notebook-ish enough that if the work requires it, I can sit up in bed and work as if I was at my desk. This thing has also gone travelling with me inside bicycle panniers, bouncing around and surviving the occasional bike crash. No problems ever. Even the sticky keys from when I spilled beer on it have cleared up :)

We have an MSI which is my partners and I have an Asus from work. The one thing I suggest more than anything is to type for a while on the thing. The MSI's reviews all say the same thing, it's better than the Asus because the keyboard is larger and it makes it easier to type. And the keyboard is larger as is the screen, but for me, I can't type a damned thing on it. After about ten minutes I'm ready to throw it out the window. But I have no trouble whatsoever pulling full speed on the Asus.

Because other than the "feel" they're all pretty much the same. They're slow and limited and when you're traveling blessedly light with wonderfully long battery life.

I've been using a Dell Mini 9 I got for dirt cheap (under $200 with coupon through their outlet) for a few months now and I've been pretty happy with it.  Not exactly a screamer, but it's 'good enough' for light-duty stuff, it takes being tossed about pretty well and it runs forever on a charge.  I admit I'm not fond of the keyboard, but I've yet to use a netbook where the keyboard didn't suck.

Well I have a MSI Wind U120 Netbook. It's rather good and the only problems I've had is on the right click bar. It was very firm and hard to push down but now it's lighten up a lot since the usage. I wouldn't say it's a deal breaker but it was somewhat annoying until I broke it in some. The keyboard on the other hand is very large. I think the only key that is small is the period but the function key is the only thing that bothers me as I like to have my pinky on the ctrl key more than I should. :)

It has an Intel Atom processor, 1gb of ram, 160GB hard drive, and a six-cell battery. The battery life is very good from what I've noticed and for the price, design, 10' goodness it's a rather nice netbook.

I have my netbook all customed out with some nice graphics.

(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/3295/aocnetbook.jpg)

(http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3113/aocnetbook2.jpg)

You must get stares when you whip that thing out at your local coffee shop.

 :awesome_for_real:

Oh wow my monitor just went tacky.

Rise!

Laptop stolen, need a replacement. Mainly thinking about work, probably no need to game on it. Readability is a huge plus. Is the advice in this thread still good?

I pretty much have no use for a netbook, but apparently there is a new motherboard/IGA that's coming out sooner or later that will be a big deal if it hasn't launched already.  Check the iPad thread, it's probably been brought up there several times.

That's one hell of a long thread to go through (again).

Why is it so hard to find linux laptops?

Just buy a Dell and put Linux on it?

ahem: Dell + Linux (http://www.dell.com/business/laptops?~ck=mn#subcats=&navla=80770~0~1791343&navidc=LT:%20Operating%20System&navValc=FreeDOS%20and%20Linux&a=80770~0~1791343)

Hah, thanks guys. It's probably because I'm in the UK it's a wee bit more difficult to find, or amazon.co.uk sucks. Also not buying a dell.  :awesome_for_real:

Edit: All the n450 laptops come with windows 7. Maybe I should suck it up and get windows...

The thing about Linux users is that there's an expectation of DIY. You should just check out a laptop that looks good to you and then do the googling necessary to make sure the hardware is supported by whatever flavor of Linux you need. Ubuntu seems to have put a lot of effort of late to make sure its OS works on many netbooks, so you may be in luck.

Also, if you get one with a large enough hard drive, you can use Parted Magic to shrink your Windows partition, and slap Linux on the remainder partition. Worse comes to worse you delete the Linux partitions and then you have a spare partition or use Parted Magic again to re-expand your Windows partition.

Sounds like a plan to me! I like Win7. I would either do that or get a MBP.

I find that searching for:  make model ubuntu

will usually result in a couple "how I installed ubuntu on make model" pages, and then you just scan carefully for red flags like "wifi doesn't work yet" or "wifi works great once you build a custom kernel, apply brandx-wlan-031699.tgz patchset from this webset, and remember to setup a cron job to cycle the interface ever 16.3 minutes!" to know if you're going to regret going the linux route or not.

wifi and audio tend to top the list of "things that might not work with linux that you'll be seriously annoyed by".

:grin:

I did that, but it's a bit flakey. If you accidentally put it to sleep it won't start back up and you have to turn it off. The mouse pad doesn't work all that well either, though a USB mouse works fine. There's other odds issues here and there, such as updating your OS X version can hose you pretty good. I ended up going back to WinXP after hosing it with a tiny OS X update. :P (Which was totally my fault, I should have updated the "hack" before doing that but I had forgotten after 6 months).

Isn't the whole point of OSX that its marvelously user friendly? Seems to me that if you have to micro manage stuff like updates, its sorta defeats the purpose. Or is it an artistic thing beyond my mundane grasp?

It is easy, but when you hack it onto a Dell netbook it has it's quirks.

ASUS netbooks are also cheap and come with Xandros.  But you can't go wrong with a NB + Ubuntu.

Ah, ok. I could put up with that but my fiance is the one looking for a laptop...so we'll just forget about that option.

Anyone have views on matte vs. glossy screens?

I like glossy personally, particularly for home computers since I don't have any glaring ambient light, but using them outside washes them out too much to be usable. That said, I fully intend on getting a glossy screen on my laptop. Matte looks too 90s for me.

Speaking of, skipping the netbook and getting an Alienware M11x to replace my aging (read: 6 years) Dell Inspiron 8600.

Glossy looks amazing if you're only indoors without a lot of outside light as Schild says.  If you have good natural lighting or plan on taking it other places, you might be better off with matte.

Matte. I hate glossy. I use black backgrounds for many of my windows and even with very little ambient light you still see reflections in them.

I went into the Acer pavilion at the Olympics and checked out the netbooks that dual boot win7 and android, looked spiffy.
The guy there claimed that android boots up in 7 seconds. Upon testing it seemed more like 15 seconds, but still kinda cool.

Ooh. I think I'll try out a glossy lappy - there's no sun in the UK. Currently looking at The Toshiba NB300 (think it's sold as the N305 in the US). It comes with Windows XP Home Edition, I'm thinking of using that cd-key for my upgrade version of Windows 7 (on my desktop) as I've apparently lost my old win xp cd, and then solely using ubuntu on the netbook. Should work?

Specs for netbooks are shockingly similar. The main difference appears to be construction, feel, monitor and battery life.

Finally got the netbook. Wiped XP and installed Ubuntu, which was harder than I thought it would be. Switched out the ram for 2 gigs and everything seems to be working fine. I'm liking the glossy screen so far, it works really well indoors. Might have to buy a glossy 24" monitor now  :grin:.

My wife got a cheap Acer during a wootoff ($200, I think it's normally $250).  I might have to get one for myself because I keep wanting to play with it.  It fills that "websurfing on the couch" niche that the iPad is supposed to tackle, except I can actually play web games on it since it has proper Flash/JS support.

I recently got a Dell netbook for my wife and we ended up returning it (and eating a restock fee).  It just felt really slow and my wife didn't like using it.

Now we're in the market for a smallish (13-14" screen or smaller) notebook that doesn't feel completely gimped, but at the same time isn't very expensive. 

While not a netbook, Wal-Mart still has some emachines for $298 - 15.6' screen, core2duo T4400 2.2ghz processor, win 7, and 3gb of ddr3 ram.

Edit:  In-store only, and the ones I went to didn't actually have them on display, you have to look for them in the cage under the laptops or ask for them.

I just set up a su7300 based laptop for someone, a 15.6", but it looks like the same processor or similar are used down to 11.6" Zippy little machine with a damn fine battery life.

Alienware M11x.

Edit: That's my response for everything notebook related until new processors come out.

there are also some slick looking, cheap toshibas that are pretty nice netbook alternatives atm. no dvd drive/13" or less/long battery life. there's a few models at best buy. almost got one myself, but i still think a disc drive is pretty necessary.

I'm debating getting one of these for my kid and locking down the browser so she can only go to the two or three sites she ever looks at. Problem is that for watching movies, she'd be stuck with whatever is available on our Netflix instant queue. That's not a big deal, and maybe someday I"ll put together a media center PC with some of her other movies backed up on it.

I'm just wondering how "kid tough" your average netbook happens to be.

If you get an SSD for it, pretty tough, in terms of jolts and bangs. Now, no netbook/laptop in the world is going to stand up to a full sippy cup of OJ dumped on the keyboard.

Some Panasonic Toughbooks are sealed to IP65 compliant levels. They will indeed survive the full sippy assault, and you can hose them down at residential water pressures. Better than that does exist, but only as custom (re-cased) builds.

Uhm, ya, I guess I should have mentioned those. But I CmdrSlack was probably not looking to spend over a grand.

Yeah, I was shooting for the 250-300 range. Based on her current propensity to destroy her things, we may be pushing it back towards the holidays and hoping that the intervening nine months changes that a bit.

Anything with Hello Kitty on it.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/11/21/onkyosotec-releases-hello-kitty-netbook/ (http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/11/21/onkyosotec-releases-hello-kitty-netbook/)

I got a white netbook Asus EeePC 101X as a gift: a very nice piece  :awesome_for_real: (you can also expand the memory from 1GB to 2)

Very useful while you travel, study ecc. : I can play 720p videos smoothly , use social networks at their fullest (including G+ hangouts with the integrated cam, for example) and also dump in there all the GOG.com games I feel a hitch to play (Ultimas, various adventure games...you name it) . There is also a "Cloud" interface that you can use without loading up Windows at all . A perfect purchase for my needs without having to spend the crazy Apple prices.

http://notebookspecificationreview.com/netbook-2/specification-review/