Mini-notebooks?

[Debbie Jean]

I am thinking of buying one of the mini-notebooks for size and portability to use mostly for travel. They seem to run around $500. Are they worth it?

Brands I've seen are Acer, HP and Dell. Anyone have any experience? Also is there a huge difference in 8" vs 10" screen?

TIA

 

[megsters]

i have the mini 9 from dell, and i LOVE it. i have a regular desktop at home, but i use my laptop for travel and it works awesome, and it fits in my purse or backpack for school. its really light and easy to take and go. i got a belkin case from target (its by their acer laptops with the linux systems ) i recommend getting one with windows xp, but im not a linux fan. the keyboard is a little smaller, but after about ten minutes, you dont notice at all!! im actually using it right now.

hope that helps, let me know if you have any other questions !!

meghan

 

[a1tinkfans]

For about that amount you can get a better deal just buying a laptop which would have much better usage. Its okay for email checking but not for applications. Did you consider even trying Walmart, they carry HP and have good prices and great lap's.
Good Luck!

 

[bookgirl]

My nephews have the acers. They are great for them because they are basic. Email, surfing and games. They absolutly would fit in for a second computer or just a travel item. Wireless, no disks only flash stick.

 

[Mau Loa Disney]

Hi, I got The Acer Mini, Dh actually got it for me for Christmas so when we travel (vacation travel not business) I would have an easy to tote laptop. It is small and it is fits in most of my purses. I take mine to Dr appts and around town.

it does have some negatives:
small screen -tends to hurt your eyes after long periods
No Cd drive (you have to use a thumb drive to download your programs)


But overall I like it!
I love the webcam and i havent run into any problems using simple programs like word or excel and playing on the internet.

I dont use it as my main computer, but mostly because my eyes get tired quickly and a traditional desktop is easier for me at the house.
Dh says it is the best Christmas present he's ever bought me because I actually use it

Here is the one I got: (HSN is to high on this -we paid a TS price it was about $100 cheaper, but I know you can get a much better deal at Walmart or Sams- they do have the smaller 120GB and 3 cell also which drops the price alot)
http://electronics.hsn.com/acer-asp...er_m-10041831_xp.aspx?web_id=5381979&ocm=sekw


see Walmarts price: (it should link to 6 cell battery & 160gb)
http://www.walmart.com/Acer-Aspire-AOA150-8-9-Inch-120GB-Laptop/ip/10890053


HTH

 

[sherry7]

I just bought DS a netbook for high school graduation, so I did a lot of research on them. He'll be using it for college classes.

We ended up buying a Asus 1000HE from ZipZoomFly.com (Amazon has a good price on it too). Be careful that you look at the HE model, not the HA model. There's a small difference in price, but the HE model is much better.

There are several reasons we chose this particular one:
*9.5 hour battery life (some netbooks only get 3 or 4 hours)
*Intel Atom N280 processor (currently the fastest one)
*1 GB RAM, and VERY easy to upgrade to 2GB. This makes it run faster than other netbooks. Costs about $25, and time involved about 5 minutes. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that show you how to do it, if you don't know how. Some of the netbooks are very hard to upgrade the RAM on. For example, on the Dell Mini, you have to remove the entire keyboard to do it (which also voids the warranty).
*Wireless N, as opposed to the older wireless standards.
*Chiclet style keyboard
*10 inch LED-backlit display. We looked at the 8 and 9 inch ones, and they were just way too small for comfortable use.
*92% size keyboard...some of the netbooks have very tiny keyboards, which are hard to type on.
*Bluetooth compatible.

There are probably a few other reasons I chose it, but those are the ones that come to mind. I suggest going to BestBuy and trying out a few, so you can see what size of display you're comfortable with. However, you're going to get the best price by buying online. BestBuy doesn't even carry the model I bought, since it's newer to the market.

 

[AnninIowa]

Can you hook up a printer to these? I'd like to get a smaller computer for the kitchen and a basic all-in-one printer.

 

[megsters]

you can hook up a printer using a usb cable. at our house we hooked it up to the wireless network and you can print that way, too. hth

 

[jennifer293]

I just got the Blue Acer 8.9 inch for my DD's 5th b-day. She has so many websites that she plays games on so we just set it all up in her fav's and she knows which ones to click on. We will buy our other DD one for her bday coming up so they don't fight over this one!!!

I got hers for $278 at Wal-Mart

 

[crisi]

We have an HP.

If you are going to use it a lot, you want a bigger screen. If its seriously "just for travel" a small screen is fine.

Battery life is good on the SSD ones, but SSD drives are very small. Add a spinning disk and the battery life goes down (but you get a lot more storage for the same price).

Linux is fine if you primarily use web apps. They don't have the horsepower to do much more than web apps and maybe a little wordprocessing anyway. Windows carries about a $50 cost upgrade.

No DVD player - and without internet access it isn't terribly useful for doing much other than playing Solitaire.

But with those things in mind, we love ours. It fits in my purse, has enough battery to sit outside for the day. Great little thing.

 

[Crazy4Disney06]

i have the mini 9 from dell, and i LOVE it. i have a regular desktop at home, but i use my laptop for travel and it works awesome, and it fits in my purse or backpack for school. its really light and easy to take and go. i got a belkin case from target (its by their acer laptops with the linux systems ) i recommend getting one with windows xp, but im not a linux fan. the keyboard is a little smaller, but after about ten minutes, you dont notice at all!! im actually using it right now.

hope that helps, let me know if you have any other questions !!

meghan

I could have written this post myself! I am a college student as well as travel often. We have a large HP 17 inch laptop that I love to use at home, however my husband got me the Dell mini 9 for my birthday in February and I LOVE IT!! It fits perfect in my purse or carry on and is fantastic for taking to my classes.
We hooked it up to our printer with a wireless network. I really like Windows XP over Linux so that is a bonus as well. It also has a 16GB Solid State Drive which requires NO de-fragging of the hard drive. It has a long battery life even when on the internet, as well as bluetooth that allows me to use a wireless mouse, as well as a 1.3M Pixel web cam. We pretty much added all of the extra options that Dell offers for the Mini 9 and the price was about $530. For the basic model I believe it is more around the $300 dollar mark.

 

[Debbie Jean]

I would be using it mostly when traveling on vacation or to conferences... very simple word processing, email, and surfing... I hate having to drag the big one along, so this sounds like it would fit the bill perfectly. I'm so glad to hear that people have been pleased with them!

Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions! I'm off to check them out.

I can always count on the DIS

 

[nunzia]

I just got a mini Dell..the 8" screen. I really like it! It has XP and does internet great. Also has Works so I can do some writing. It is only for travel, and it will work great for that. It came in at about $300.00

 

[AnninIowa]

Sam's Club has these - not sure the brand - for under $300 and in lots of colors...including PINK!!

 

[SylviaL]

We just got a mini Dell 9 and LOVE it! We got it with Linux for $179 and then DH spent about another $100 for memory/upgrades, etc. He was able to put Mac OS X on it so it's a mini Mac or "Hackintosh." We mainly got it for travel. We are bringing it on our trip to DL in June. DD2 can watch movies on it on the plane, we can surf the internet at the hotel and do our airline check-in.

 

[zeusywoo]

We got the Acer, DH bought if for me for my birthday. But, he uses it just as much as me. He got if for traveling too. I use it for my message boards & email. It will be nice to have on vacation.

 

[KT27]

We just got the Asus EEE PC on Amazon.com for $339.00; it arrived last week and I am in love! This thing is so light!

We also have a Sony Vaio Desktop.

 

[jpeppers]

I bought the Acer with a 6 hour battery at Wal mart and paid $350. It works great and is awesome when traveling. It didn't come with a DVD drive but I went on E-bay and got one for around $30 and it works great.

 

[Tinkbells BFF]

I bought an Acer from Walmart for $298. We went on a cruise in February and I didn't want to take my big, heavy laptop to upload pics daily and for email, etc. It was awesome!! We took over 1000 pics and since I uploaded them daily we had a clean memory card ever day. Was also able to send emails with attachments to people at home so they could keep updated on where we were and be very jealous - ha, ha.

Since I use this strictly for travel, it was well worth the money.

 

[mamamzee]

My husband surprised me with one of these. It is a Samsung and it is a 10 inch. He picked it based on recommendations from some tech co-workers and one of the big factors was battery life. It is very light weight and great for using the internet and will be perfect for travel.