Netbook advice

[Cyrano]

Since 5 people into a PC and laptop does not always work we are giving some thought to adding to the choice for the family.
Rather than another laptop we are thinking that a netbook would give us portability
For school work and serious computing power the PC and laptop will be the mainstays.

Internet, email and downloading photos on holiday will most probably be the newbooks main uses... though others may have additional suggestions.

What about this machine ?

What to look for and what to avoid appreciated

 

[A Small World]

I loved my netbook - an Acer. It was great for internet, Email and msn. I would definitely recommend them - once you get used to the smaller keyboard its great

 

[mikki.young]

I think a netbook would be fine for your purposes. Have you considered this one. It has great reviews, windows 7 and 10 hours battery life! That plus the bigger hard drive should allow a bit of future proofing.

 

[PoppyAnna]

We have a variety of machines (desktop, laptop and netbook) I like the netbook (Asus), it does what it says on the tin! IYKWIM! They are great value too It's great for taking away on travels and the idea was that it was for DD6 to use for homework. Both DD's use it for cbeebies and Nick Jnr
However, we do not save data to our machines (we have a NAS) so I'm not sure how this affects their performance in the future when they get more full. Our machines to us are just "dumb terminals".

Our Asus is not the same as the one in your link, but not far off. We went for a bit more RAM but your choice looks good - and fantasic value. We have been very happy with the build quality of Asus.

 

[wicket2005]

I have the original Asus EEE which started all this netbook revolution. I have Linux on it as I really didn't want to be bothered with antivirus and firewalls. I just use it to blog and surf the internet, though it did come with automatic links to Google office suite where you can save documents online and download them to your main computer. This provides storage without the need to buy it on your computer, just a slightly different way of computing.

The machine has been reliable.

I think the machine that came out tops recently, don't know if it was on the Gadget Show but was one of the Samsung ones.

What I would suggest you do is actually fine one in the shops just to see how you find using the keyboard. My keyboard is fine but as I am a woman my hands are not as large as men's, so best to check useability.

 

[Cyrano]

Thanks for the suggestions and comments.
Not that I have a motive, but my hand luggage for WDW would be lighter if Santa brought this

 

[Pinky166]

I fully agree Reid.....the hand luggage is definately lighter!

I bought DH one for his birthday in June, I got the Samsung NC10 - he loves it and uses it every day mainly for the internet & email. We took it to wdw last month and it was so much easier than lugging around a laptop, it takes a little while to adjust to the smaller keys but that will be the case with any netbook.

If you have any questions about the NC10 I will ask dh for you.

 

[ukstitch]

Personally I prefer something a little larger than a "netbook".

My main computer (until I loaned it out to a small world) is a macbook air and this is ideal for me - it's very light and still quite small (13" screen) but it's got the full size keyboard that makes it really nice to do work on should I actually need to.

I appreciate the macbook air is quite an expensive computer, but I suspect there are pc equivalents at a more reasonable cost with similar size and weight specs

 

[T16GEM]

Personally I prefer something a little larger than a "netbook".

My main computer (until I loaned it out to a small world) is a macbook air and this is ideal for me - it's very light and still quite small (13" screen) but it's got the full size keyboard that makes it really nice to do work on should I actually need to.

I appreciate the macbook air is quite an expensive computer, but I suspect there are pc equivalents at a more reasonable cost with similar size and weight specs

I would hav loved an Air, but our budget didn't stretch to that. DH bought me an Acer for Christmas last year and some extra memory, he also had XP installed instead of the Linux, I use it every day for email, work, pictures and surfing the web, in fact I'm on it now!!
It took me a while to get used to the smaller keyboard, and I kept putting an extra "a" in words becuase the caps lock is smaller!

Found it great when we went to WDW to upload pics to FB etc so that the grandparents could see what the kids had been up to.

Everything was great untill DD4, managed to jump on it a couple of weeks ago and it needed a new LCD screen, cost me £50 but I use it so often that I had to get it repaired - sharing a laptop at home is so last year!

 

[CustardTart]

...I bought DH one for his birthday in June, I got the Samsung NC10 - he loves it and uses it every day mainly for the internet & email. We took it to wdw last month and it was so much easier than lugging around a laptop, it takes a little while to adjust to the smaller keys but that will be the case with any netbook.

If you have any questions about the NC10 I will ask dh for you.

We have the NC10 and it definitely does what it says on the tin. Robust, lightweight and extremely portable... I'm not a PC person but Windows XP is straightforward enough. The only thing I'd say is, that apart from travelling, we don't routinely use the netbook as the keyboard's a bit too scrunched up for regular use...

Personally I prefer something a little larger than a "netbook".

My main computer (until I loaned it out to a small world) is a macbook air and this is ideal for me - it's very light and still quite small (13" screen) but it's got the full size keyboard that makes it really nice to do work on should I actually need to.

I appreciate the macbook air is quite an expensive computer, but I suspect there are pc equivalents at a more reasonable cost with similar size and weight specs

I have a new 13" MacBook Pro and I thought that was light until I looked at a MacBook Air - wow!!! DH wants to replace his MacBook soon (he loves my Pro) so I think we'll get one then...

 

[A Small World]

Personally I prefer something a little larger than a "netbook".

My main computer (until I loaned it out to a small world) is a macbook air and this is ideal for me - it's very light and still quite small (13" screen) but it's got the full size keyboard that makes it really nice to do work on should I actually need to.

I appreciate the macbook air is quite an expensive computer, but I suspect there are pc equivalents at a more reasonable cost with similar size and weight specs

And I really appreciate the loan - . I was lost without a computer of some kind. And Im becoming very attached to it

 

[Cyrano]

As much as I would like to step into the Mac world the budget will not stretch to this

 

[Beep]

As much as I would like to step into the Mac world the budget will not stretch to this

Same here. My best mate works for the Dixons group and even with his great 'Friends and Family' discount it wasn't happening.

I got an Advent 4211C and absolutely love it. We have a PC and i have a Dell laptop for work but wanted my own surfing machine.

I use it every day and it is great. It took me a while to get used to the smaller screen (10") and the keyboard but can highly recommend it.