Do you own a netbook ? These little , small and cute portable computers are becoming more and more popular every day . If you don't have one do you plan getting one soon ?
I've got one . Actually , this is my second one . I like them most of the times but sometimes feelings are mixed
Had 1, actually XMas gift for the wife last year, Dell Mini 9 After an hour of "Oh how cute"...she started to not like it. Too small, cramped keyboard, and the resolution is so danged small it's practically useless to do anything online or do Office documents. I have a couple of Thinkpad X41s, they're 12" screens..which is as small as I can go, but I don't use them much...actually 1 is for the boy for his linux beater, the 2nd one I technically use all the time, it's my router/firewall..running PFSense. But 12" is a bit too small for me to do my usual forum stuff, although in typical IBM style, the keyboard is full size and nice. My usual laptop is a 14.1"....perfect combo of small/light portability for me, yet still large enough to be useful. This past XMas for the wife I got her a 13.20" Vostro laptop, it's good for her too.
In October 2009 I started a thread about people's impression of their netbook, and basically the main issue was the size of the screen. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=254892 I have an Asus Eee PC 1002HA, and after being initially skeptical about the 10" screen (my other Asus is a 17") in the long run I have grown accustomed to its pros and cons. It is a pleasure to take it with you anywhere (roughly 1 Kg), it matches its big brother in everything except speed and screen size. On the other hand, running XP Pro, the difference in speed is not so noticeable. I agree with YeOldeStonecat, if I had to buy one again, I'd probably get a 12" screen (oddly enough they are a lot more expensive though). The netbook is a typical design challenge in terms of a compromise between performance, portability, and battery performance. I don't have a desktop computer and will never buy one in the future therefore a small laptop as a second computer seems a natural choice. For people who look at desktops as their main machine, a netbook could be too much of a change in size and performance. Last but not least, the design appearance of my netbook is to say the least dazzling. I personally do care for this aspect as well.
I should have listened to Blackcat's advice. He warned me NOT to get a Netbook. But I got one anyhow. I hate its microscopically small print, tiny icons, etc. I would give it away but I can't think of anyone who I dislike enough to foist off this ap-cray upon them.
I've used a netbook as my main PC for over a year and am very happy with it. I beefed it up by adding a 320 GB 7200 RPM HDD and increasing the RAM to 2 GB - the maximum for the Atom processor, which my machine (an MSI Wind clone) can overclock to 2 GHz. There's no optical drive, but the HDD stores the iso files for my software CDs (copied from an external drive), which I mount as virtual CD drives when needed. After years of lugging heavy laptops (TravelMate, Satellite Pro, ThnkPad, etc) around the planet, the netbook is a real pleasure to use - and it was 1/3 of the price of my previous laptop and 1/12th of the price of my first laptop (a 25 MHz 486 TravelMate bought in 1989). Of course, the Atom's not as fast as the latest dual-core processors, but it's adequate for most of what I do, mainly using MS Word, PowerPoint & Excel, scientific programming in Mathematica and C++, and surfing the web. I'm tempted to buy a more powerful lightweight notebook next, such as the new ThinkPad X201. That would be nice to have, as it'd save me a few minutes here and there when evaluating Mathematica notebooks. But, at 4x the price of a netbook, that's an expensive option.
I stupidly bought one. And I will never buy one again. Oh sure, the portability is nice, as is the long (though of course not as long as advertised) battery life. But this thing is incredibly underpowered, and has driver bugs in both Linux and Windows. And this is a 1005HAB. The 1200 series, one of which I returned... Well suffice to say that, aside from the Linux-incompatible Poulsbo chipset, it has an unfixed BIOS bug that locks video RAM to eight megabytes. Yes, EIGHT MEGABYTES, and the screen resolution is 1392x768. Just do the math. Needless to say, that thing was dog slow on any OS.
Definitely not. The only small screen device I have is my Sony Ericsson K810i (cellphone) and I don't try to do the things I do in computers there.
I have an Asus Eee 901 running XP. It is great for what it is, a small compact, reasonable size keyboard, unobtrusive PC which I use when I go away on holiday to read my company emails (my own support company that has 1 employee). The screen is too small to do anything too serious, but big enough to carry out simple tasks easily. A simple compromise between a full size PC and a single finger tap smartphone. Trying to email someone how to fix something or prepare a quote using a smartphone is virtually impossible and likely to take a whole day.
Samsung NC-20, 12.1" screen, 1280x800 screen, fantastic resolution screen, great keyboard (and I'm very picky about screen resolution and keyboards), very happy with it. Running XP, going to put Windows 7 on it. Only thing I don't like is the honking big power brick. Review: http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_0428_samsung_NC20
