Netbook help

[maidenglao]

Hey all, so I know this may be kind of an annoying question, but an internet search on this topic didn't turn up anything completely pertinent and I'm kind of lost on this whole topic...

I'm going to be graduating from college in a few months, and money is going to be quite tight. My current Dell laptop (E1505) is dying, and even though I could keep it alive for a few more years it doesn't really fit my needs anymore. I'm thinking of buying a netbook, since portability and battery life are two of my top priorities. I'm thinking of buying the ASUS Eee PC 1000HA (Amazon.com: ASUS Eee PC 1000HA 10-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel ATOM N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 10 GB E-Storage, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery): Computer & Accessories) but I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with this or any other netbooks, and had some advice to offer. Basically I'm just looking for advice on powerful and portable laptops that could fit into a strict budget. I'll mostly use it for basic browsing and (sadly, in a year or two) academic work, but I also would like something that could handle digital audio workstations, movies, music...that sort of stuff.

If anyone has had any good experiences with this sort of stuff, could you post a quick recommendation? It would be much appreciated.

 

[mikee]

As long as you don't plan on doing any photoshop video editing or gaming or anythnig like that a netbook should be fine. That one you are looking the eee pc 1000ha is really starting to show it's age now, also that price is ridiculous.

Amazon.com: ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-PU1X-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook - 10.5 Hour Battery Life: Electronics

This eee pc is cheaper, newer model and longer battery life

 

[Alvin.C]

Hi,

I had a 10.1 inch Asus Eee PC 1000HE for a brief period. I bought it with the intent to use it in my studies at University. However, I ended up selling after only 1 month of using it, and bought a notebook instead with a larger screen and better processor.

At first, I thought it's portability and long battery life was advantageous - I could easily carry it to and from lectures and run it off the battery for long periods without constantly having to plug it up to the mains. But after using it for while for my studies, I found that the small screen and slow performance was hindering my ability to work productively, to the point where it was frustrating almost. It was difficult to type essays, read large journal articles and lecture slides due to the size of the screen. Also, multitasking was noticeably slow, especially when working with, and switching between, many documents and PDFs at once.

Personally, my advice is that for use as a primary computer for serious academic work, a netbook is not well suited for the task. It's alright for use as a secondary computer (in addition to a desktop PC or laptop for example) for when you want take lecture notes, check and compose emails and to surf the web etc... but when it comes to the important academic work, you're better off using a laptop with a bigger screen, and perhaps a better processor. Trying to get your reports and essays done into the long hours of the night is not a nice experience, even more so when your sitting in front of a small 10.1" screen and typing on a compact keyboard.

Having said that, if you do choose to use a netbook as your primary computer for academic work, you could always hook it up to a larger monitor and an external keyboard & mouse. It would make life easier that way.

 

[farinha]

Agree with Alvin.C If you're looking for a powerful and portable laptop, as you said, a netbook isn't the way to go. It's good to surf the web and make some office production, but to work with spreadsheets with a lot of data, lot of columns and rows, it no good because of the small screen, you'll have to scroll a lot, and because of the lack of processing power.

 

[mikee]

There are netbook like laptops by gateway that have the portability of a netbook and long battery life but have a bigger hard drive and an athlon 64 processor instead of the atom.

However if size itself is an issue then I would recommend something in the acer aspire timeline series. They are light, still have large enough screen and enough storage and power also the battery lasts very long about 7-8 hours on a charge.