Netbook: Buy or Wait

Methal said:

Don't get one of the following: Acer, dell, hp, compaq, toshiba, sony, gateway, or lenovo. Thy are all huge piles of crap. Soldered on ram/cpu crap for crap life spans, ZERO customer service. They will leave you with the repair bill for EVERYTHING hardware related saying its physical dmg, and you caused it.

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There is so much flawed logic in that statement I don't know where to begin. For starters you do realize that most of these companies don't actually build there own systems and share a large percentage of there parts? Thinkpad's are about the most solid notebook you can get. Sure all companies are going to have their issues but to say every notebook except Asus is a pile of crap is going a bit far. There is a reason Dell, HP, and Lenovo supply the vast majority of corporate customers, and it is not because all of their computers are crap.

The biggest difference among them is customer service. Again some are better than others. I have had good experiences from both Dell and Lenovo. Dell has made a nice turnaround in that last couple of years in the CS.

Methal said:

Don't get one of the following: Acer, dell, hp, compaq, toshiba, sony, gateway, or lenovo. Thy are all huge piles of crap. Soldered on ram/cpu crap for crap life spans, ZERO customer service. They will leave you with the repair bill for EVERYTHING hardware related saying its physical dmg, and you caused it.

The only company I would buy a laptop/netbook from other than pclaptops is Asus. The Asus Eee is a rock solid FAST netbook. Solid state drive and can take up to 4gigs of ram.

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You also realize that i have upgraded the ram and hdd in my dell mini 9... its 2 screws and you have access to the ram, ssd, wwan, and wifi cards... how is that not upgradeable?

Dell mini 9 upgrade how to

And you also realize that every single netbook out there has a soldered on cpu, and that every single netbook using the 945 chipset (IE 99% of them) accept up to only 2gb of ram....

As far as quality... my dell mini 9 kicks the crap outta the asus eee pc's

Straight from anandtech's review of the mini 9

Anandtech said:

Here’s where ASUS falls short and Dell succeeds: the Inspiron Mini 9 feels like it’s worth much more than you’re paying for. The Eee PC, especially the 901 is actually not all that low-cost, and while build quality has improved it's still not perfect. The problem for ASUS is that the Inspiron Mini 9, at $349, feels like a more expensive product. Consider the bar raised.

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As far as customer service, the best customer service i have ever had has been from dell their RMA dept kicks ***!

So essientally i have made every single one of your points mute...


@hyperasus... what size ssd did ur mini 9 have? was it the 4gb cus i had a 4gb one in mine and it was retarded slow... 30MB/s read, 6MB/s write... i upgraded to an 8gb and its over 2x faster read (75MB/s) and over 3x faster write (22MB/s) ... And it takes a lil tweaking to get xp running on an ntfs partition to play nice with lower cost ssds on any laptop.... mainly alinging the partition and optimizing it for 4kb writes by offsetting it by 128 sectors, and then other various tweaks makes xp FLY on my 8gb mini 9.

I'm happy with my 1000he. Does Netflix streaming and Hulu (360p) fine.

720p on a netbook is a waste. Screen is too tiny.

I've been looking at the NC20 myself, its a good bit faster than most atoms and still great size and price, although the lack of a dedicated VGA is stopping me from buying one right now.

It seems impossible though to find a laptop in the 12.1 inch area with a dedicated vga - but I'm not in a rush so still looking.

Sjaak said:

I've been looking at the NC20 myself, its a good bit faster than most atoms and still great size and price, although the lack of a dedicated VGA is stopping me from buying one right now.

It seems impossible though to find a laptop in the 12.1 inch area with a dedicated vga - but I'm not in a rush so still looking.

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I wouldn't expect that to change anytime soon. Most buyers of that screen size are looking for max portability, not neccassarily power. Adding a discrete video card is going to raise the heat in the small case and power consumption decreasing battery life. But I wouldn't be surprised to see Ion pop up in this segment.

Aye I know but so far my benq joybook 6000 which I've had for 3.5 years (!!) is only marginally slower or less portable than any of the 'ultra portables' on the market now, and with a new battery giving me 4 hrs of life it only really lacks a reasonable vga.

You'd expect laptops to have improved at least some bit over nearly 4 years

It may not be that much faster but the form factor is a bit more portable.

BUY!
http://www.woot.com/

HP Pavilion 17" AMD Dual-Core 2.1GHz Entertainment Notebook
$549.99 + $5 shipping
Condition: Refurbished Product: 1 HP dv7-1245dx AMD Dual-Core 2.1 GHz 17” 4GB DDR2 320GB HD eSATA HDMI Webcam Notebook

FWIW, if you're planning on running Windows on it, wait for the Nvidia chipset and GPU.

Niku-Sama said:

BUY!
http://www.woot.com/

HP Pavilion 17" AMD Dual-Core 2.1GHz Entertainment Notebook
$549.99 + $5 shipping
Condition: Refurbished Product: 1 HP dv7-1245dx AMD Dual-Core 2.1 GHz 17” 4GB DDR2 320GB HD eSATA HDMI Webcam Notebook

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Complete and total opposite of a netbook but good deal if you don't mind a refurb.

I like my MSI Wind, and I am fine on youtube but not in HD. If you buy a Netbook with streaming video in mind then you are probably looking in the wrong catergory. I like mine because it is lightweight and good to whip out and takes notes in class. And it was cheap.

The Aspire one that i just got seems fine on Youtube except for the HD stuff also.

So far i really love this little thing. Looks great, great screen (10.1") pretty fast for the most part, and not nearly as cramped to type on as i was thinking it would be..

I can do 720p on my Asus 1000H no problem, but 1080p will stutter unless I overclock to ~2ghz.

You may want to go for either the Dell mini 10, though note that you cannot upgrade the ram (soldered, no free slot), a netbook that eventually will have the GN40 chipset, or one that has the Ion chipset. All those will have h.264 acceleration.

Anyone got a list of new netbooks coming out? Also in the same boat as OP, and would be nice to see what there is to wait for.

(don't mean chipsets, I mean actual netbooks).

ah, ill just mention briefly that the claims of h264 working properly on the new intel chipset are kinda bs.. yes it DOES work, but it looks like *** and runs poorly in 720p. my aspire one was able to at least keep up the video stream, even if it desynched heh.

kinda wish i had an msi for the option of overlocking, and i bet the 1.9ghz oc on it could handle 720p.
for what it is though, i like my mini 12. the screen is so much nicer than any other netbook and the keyboard is actually useable. overall, its big for a netbook, but i use it.. a lot. if it had a wacom, it might be a perfect netbook, since it also gets up to 7 hours on 6 cells and is like 0.75" thick.
if i had the 3 cell battery, it WOULD be a macbook air. and the 6 cell isnt even really big. probably the best designed netbook there is.

Waiting to see the itablet.

im looking to get one for the long roadtrips and out of home time.

the laptop kinda eats through the battery and when the exhaust fan run which is alot sometimes the batt goes down quick.

Just thought I'd chime in here.

I've toyed w/ the Acer 10" and one of the lovely cramped keyboard Asus 8.9" @ Fry's and BB. Also, I picked up an HP Mini from Fry's and used that extensively. Finally, I met w/ a pair of guys that own the Samsung NC10 (white) and Asus 1000HE.

After playing w/ all of them, I can easily say the Samsung's head and shoulders above all. The HP has large flat keys that work fairly well. The Asus' essentially a MAC keyboard w/ smaller keys. I found my fingers slipping off them as I typed quickly. The Samsung's keys are in between the HP and the Asus, but they're slightly concave. The right shift button's normal size, unlike the Asus, and overall I had the best typing experience on the Sammy. Typingtest.com's Wizard of Oz test confirms the best accuracy as well.

The display on the HP's glossy and drove me mad. To the point where my eyes will actually hurt. I simply must have a matte screen which both the Asus and Samsung had. But to my eyes, the Sammy had inkier blacks and a brighter screen. The actual lid on the Asus goes down the furthest however. Once again the ANGLED bezel on the LCD of the Asus picks up everything. I used it in a mall and the fingerprints, glare, and other shiny things distracted me far too much. The white Samsung however has a matte finish even on the lid! It shows no dust, fingerprints, and does not distract from the screen.

The touchpad on the Asus' large, that's for sure. The feel was great too. I'll have to suffer a bit w/ the Samsung or cave for the $70 more SE from Amazon.

The HP gets hot, ball busting hot. The Asus and Samsung both stay much cooler and quieter. The Sammy IMO feels a bit less warm overall and the build quality of the Samsung felt better than the the "made by mattell" Asus.

The 1000HE may have the spec edge w/ proc and battery, but the screen's .2" less and just doesn't "feel" as solid as the Samsung IMO.

I'll update w/ some pics when the Samsung arrives. Good luck hunting!

$400 shipped from costcentral.

I just picked up an MSI Wind U120 today, ditched Win XP, installed a 32GB G. Skill SSD, and install Ubuntu Netbook Remix...runs excellent! For running small apps, surfing, emailing, ebaying, etc...it fits the bill very nice. I got tired of lugging around my Toshiba Satellite, this is much easier to carry.

Sir Barton said:

Ubuntu Netbook Remix

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Oooh...

Mine comes today, I'm pumped!