Netbooks

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Just a little heads-up here :) I bought one of the thingies two weeks ago (Acer Aspire One) and I have to say I'm delighted! Such a great little toy.

I got the 1 GB version with WinXP and 120 GB HDD in iMac-white. It weighs less than 1 kg and is half as big as a regular notebook, runs on battery for good 2 hours and works with no glitches whatsoever. The screen looks awesome for its size despite the relatively low res (1024x600). Even the integrated sound had no problems running FruityLoops with Asio4all, so I was able to produce some drum tracks with it in the holidays. Also had no trouble hooking it up to my TV, so it's also very usable as a media PC for the living room.

If you're looking for a new toy when on the road and don't need serious gaming muscle, I recommend one of these babies over any regular notebook out there. Right now there are several models from Acer, Asus, Medion and some others and they all cost way less than a regular notebook.
 
A good two hours? And that's a new battery? Ouch.
 
It is miniscule, that's great for its size. That's two hours of real work, not idle. But if that's not enough for you, there is also a bigger one available with double the capacity.
 
It's nice that companies are finally pricing these subnotebooks below the price of a fullsize one. A few years ago these subnotes were in the $2000 range and some still are. I've always wanted one of these subnotebooks but the prices have always been too high. The ones I'm referring to are th P series subnotes from Fujitsu which even have built-in DVD drives and some even come with a touchscreen.

http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=P1620
 
I got my daughter an Asus Eee 901 (linux version) and it's great other than the tiny ass keyboard. My fingers don't fit! Fortunately hers do. Upgrading to Ubuntu next week...
 
I am thinking about getting one of these. Now that I moved out of the house for school I need something of a laptop to take with me when I go home and do some text processing, browsing, watching movies, little low end gaming (Like the original C&C). I like these things as they are small and relative cheap, Though I'm still not sure if they are a better choice than lets say a Dell M1330. That is still small, but the 13.3'' inch screen with the higher reso is more comfortable, its lots faster, the battery lasts way longer (like 6 hours with the extended battery), keyboard is bigger so that is also better for alot of typing and maybe even using it at school etc. Only downside is that you end up paying atleast 800 euro's (anybody knows why 13'' laptops are so damn expensive anyway?).
 
But you can get a 15'' equivelant for like 400 or 500 euro's, a screen cant be that more expansive? I mean thats a 300 euro price difference, you can buy a very good 22'' screen for that I doubt its that much more expensive to produce?
 
RudeCurve said:
Probably because 13" screens are rare so you don't get economies of scale for the screen. Standard screens are 12.1, 14.x, 15.x etc.
Click to expand...

Eh? Some of the best selling laptops have been 13.3". The Dell XPS M1330 for one and then the Macbook, now the Macbook Air. 13.3" is the best form factor for a laptop right now I think. My M1330 is just wonderful, the best purchase I've made in years. It does everything you could ever want in a computer (besides gaming) and integrates it in a fashion that is very light, very attractive, and has tremendous battery life (surfing my M1330 on the 9-cell lasts upwards of 7 hours).

I also don't think 13.3" models are that much expensive. Compared to a similar M1530 and you're paying only $100 more. More likely the reason is you can't purchase a 13.3" that's part of a budget line for the most part. The XPS is just a nicer unit overall compared to say a Dell Studio or similar HP unit.

I'm staying away from netbooks simply because for something like that I'd want it to be a mobile device. Two hours is unusable for me. What's the point of a netbook if you're going to be tethered to a wall?

Also, a netbook != sub-notebook. They're not really comparable, a sub-notebook has premium hardware in a small form factor. The Fujitsu units for instance are using ULV C2D's which are much faster than a Atom. They're including Vista preinstalled, have high quality touch screens, include high capacity batteries by default, and you can guarantee what material it's made out of will be miles ahead in quality. I think a better comparison to a sub-notebook will be Gigabyte's touch model but again it's still WAY over to the netbook side of this equation.
 
As said, the 6-cell battery lasts 5-6 hours under moderate load. I just didn't bother getting one, since I usually have it plugged in.
 
If I was going for a 13 inch notebook thats ultralight I would look no further than the Voodoo pc offering. Steep on the price but I just cant resist carbon fiber!
 
Skrying said:
Eh? Some of the best selling laptops have been 13.3". The Dell XPS M1330 for one and then the Macbook, now the Macbook Air. 13.3" is the best form factor for a laptop right now I think. My M1330 is just wonderful, the best purchase I've made in years. It does everything you could ever want in a computer (besides gaming) and integrates it in a fashion that is very light, very attractive, and has tremendous battery life (surfing my M1330 on the 9-cell lasts upwards of 7 hours).

I also don't think 13.3" models are that much expensive. Compared to a similar M1530 and you're paying only $100 more. More likely the reason is you can't purchase a 13.3" that's part of a budget line for the most part. The XPS is just a nicer unit overall compared to say a Dell Studio or similar HP unit.
Click to expand...

I'm well happy with my own XPS 1330 (particularly after I tried very hard to kill the G86 in it, but it's still flying after 3 weeks of on/off Furmark), but if I were buying right now I'd give the Vostro 1310 a serious look.

This is almost exactly the same notebook, except for fewer build options, a somewhat dimmer screen and a missing fingerprint reader and bluetooth. Which seems reasonable considering it starts at less than half the price, or around EUR 600. That puts it pretty close to netbook territory, but arguably much more useful. 13.3" is starting to get less exclusive.
 
I don't know about the prices in Europe but the Vostro 1310 in the US is only $100 less for a comparable machine, that's $899 vs $999. Judging by the look of the 1310 and similar styled past Vostro's that I know about (from researching my laptop purchase) I'm going to guess it's also considerably heavier. Again, premium notebook vs low end business notebook. It is nice to see the format though go lower in price. 13.3" is a platform that should be looked at much more, I honestly compare my M1330 to 15.4" every day and I'm so happy with my 13.3" each and every time.
 
I wouldn't mind a 13.3" with netbook specs, to be fair I don't really understand why laptops have such distorted specs.
Rather than a core2duo and 3GB ram I would be happy with a single core sempron which I would dynamically or not underclock, 1GB ram, AMD 780G chipset with dedicated video RAM and 7200 rpm HDD.
 
Blazkowicz said:
I wouldn't mind a 13.3" with netbook specs, to be fair I don't really understand why laptops have such distorted specs.
Rather than a core2duo and 3GB ram I would be happy with a single core sempron which I would dynamically or not underclock, 1GB ram, AMD 780G chipset with dedicated video RAM and 7200 rpm HDD.
Click to expand...

And run what on it? Can't do video editing on that, can't do any serious photo editing, multitasking would blow chunks, and the experience in general would be horrible. I don't see the point in not using a C2D and 2GB of memory, the performance is great, when you're not using much it clocks way down and saves battery life. So I can't really grasp why'd you want a Crippletop (tm).
 
Blazkowicz said:
I wouldn't mind a 13.3" with netbook specs, to be fair I don't really understand why laptops have such distorted specs.
Rather than a core2duo and 3GB ram I would be happy with a single core sempron which I would dynamically or not underclock, 1GB ram, AMD 780G chipset with dedicated video RAM and 7200 rpm HDD.
Click to expand...

Well that Vostro 1310 can actually be specced pretty low end; 450 EUR including tax gets you a Celeron 2Ghz, 1GB DRAM, X3100 chipset grfx and a dvd burner. With a 1280x800 13.3" screen and a keyboard which is much more suitable for heavy use, I'd say the value proposition compared to most netbooks is good.
 
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