I am not familiar with netbooks at all, but I may have convinced someone to try Ubuntu. Thing is the she wants to get a netbook with Ubuntu pre-installed. Will she be able to get the full Ubuntu experience viz. compiz ? do any netbooks come with nvidia/ati ? Powerfull enough for compiz ?
http://www.system76.com/product_info.php?products_id=92 This one will and it also comes preloaded with Ubuntu and full support and work flawlessly.
Most of the onboard Intels have been running Compiz fine..at least on the ones I've been using. I'm sure there might be an exception for a certain onboard Intel vid chipset or two...but so far, most handle Compiz fine.
netbooks has every thing very small on eyes i mean so small icons fonts please check some about 12 inch screen at least or 14 inch is best buy there are netbooks with nvidia chip like Asus EeePC 1201N but they lack battery life http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-eee-pc-seashell/1805-3121_7-33893147.html also ubuntu 10.04 i guss is pretty heavy on netbook i sure i dont have a net book but i try ubuntu 10.04 on Pentium D processor 2.8 ghz 512 ram and its open thing like you put some vista on p4 kinda very slow so i installed mint 8 xfce instead which is very fast low on resources only problem i face i does not have auto mount i have to write it in fstab to make it permanent also you can check xubuntu 10.04 -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLDnsDftzMg- and this is better for netbook EasyPeasy or jolicloud http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/jolicloud.html -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dhgZEpakz8- -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLmt8XH8L-Y- if you are ok with fonts size at end i highly recommend you to use notebook with 14 inch or 13.3 inch they are handy powerful and value of money if you going to buy atom processor are like p3 http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel Atom N270 @ 1.60GHz see the difference between core i3 and atom (Intel Core i3 M 330 @ 2.13GHz 1999) and (Intel Atom N470 @ 1.83GHz 356) best atom is (Intel Atom 330 @ 1.60GHz 633 which is dual core) still is very weak processor
Thank you very much mack_guy911, you are very helpful. I will check out your links and pass them on to her.
Netbooks can definitely run compiz, in fact mine doesn't feel sluggish at all with it. I find the problem (at least on some distros) tends to be more with general graphics driver bugginess than bad performance.