Netbooks

[asuhoru]

Re: Netbooks

I have the Asus EEE 1000H netbook. It has the 10.1 inch screen. I bought it as a secondary laptop and am very pleased with it. I did upgrade the ram to 2gig to speed things up a little. If you decide to get one, there aren't too many cases for these netbooks other than sleeves. I ended up buying a case bag for a portable DVD player and it fits inside perfectly with lots of room for the power supply, wireless mouse, and a USB external DVD burner.

I gotta say that I love this little guy. When I bought it, it was rated high for performance compared to similar models at the time. It was $500 bucks maybe 6 months ago (i don't remember exactly when I got it), and I saw it at Best Buy for $300 or so a couple months ago.

I find myself using it A LOT more than my regular laptop. Perfect for email, browsing the net, some gaming and lately I rip a lot of my DVDs to AVI's or WMV's to watch on it, too.

Yeah like one of the posters said- if you're gonna use a flashdrive make sure you encrypt it. I personally use Folder Lock which you can install and secure stuff on your PC AND on your flashdrives.

Heres a quick pic of my netbook next to my main lappie.



I plan on getting a newer model ASUS netbook sometime this year and pass the 1000H on to my son. If you can wait, the next gen netbooks are coming out with optical drives within the next couple months.

[islandguy]

Re: Netbooks

I bought the 160 gb HARD DRIVE version with windows xp service pak 2 and 1 gig of ram for walmart ($312) and I love it for mobile/compact computing! Everything you need is built it, and it works GREAT! The wireless is VERY GOOD!

[helen]

Re: Netbooks

I bought the Acer netbook from Walmart back in October.
It's too small and cramped to work on long Word documents, but it has done wonders as an MP3 player for performances and as my handy-dandy Powerpoint buddy.

I have the same problem with the ASUS netbook but what one can do is to hook up a USB keyboard to it. Granted you don't want to haul that keyboard around but it would be useful at home (or the office) if you are doing a long term typing session on the netbook.

[tutusue]

Re: Netbooks

Would a netbook be good for an elementary school student to do homework and gaming? If it doesn't have a cd or dvd drive, how does one install applications? Just curious...

[helen]

Re: Netbooks

The quick answer would be is to get an external CD-ROM drive. I picked up a HP external DVD+R burner (HP model dvd555s) for around $110 a couple of months ago from Best Buy. In a way this works out for me because this one unit can be used on either of my two Netbooks since those two don't have a CD-ROM or my laptop (which has a CD burner but not a DVD burner) or my desktop (never bothered to replace that computer's CD burner).

In a way I think not having a built-in CD-ROM for a Netbook is the way to go if the reason for using a Netbook is to save on weight.

[tutusue]

Re: Netbooks

[...]In a way I think not having a built-in CD-ROM for a Netbook is the way to go if the reason for using a Netbook is to save on weight.

Thanks for the info, Helen. In my case, weight and size aren't the issue. Money is. My daughter is looking for an 'inexpensive' (a relative term, I know!) laptop for my 11 year old grandson and netbooks seemed to meet that criteria. Just trying to figure out what they might not meet.

[helen]

Re: Netbooks

If the family has other computers around their household they can use those computer's resources either by transfering the contents on the CD-ROM to a flash drive or setting up their CD-ROM so it will be available from other computers in a network setup.

[tutusue]

Re: Netbooks

Thanks, Helen. Does a netbook work for games? I guess what I'm asking is if the netbook is just a scaled down laptop, capable (within the constraints of it ram and HD size) of everything a laptop is capable of.

[helen]

Re: Netbooks

Depends on what kind of games that you are taking about. The standard games that comes with Windows XP Home are there for Netbooks that do run WIndows XP Home.

To be honest the only games I play on my systems are Freecell, Spider Solitare and Nethack.

[shaveice]

Re: Netbooks

i bought the ASUS Eee PC 900HA 8.9-Inch Netbook for $255 thru amazon. it's great but i'm trying to sell it cuz my hands are too big for the keyboard. otherwise, it's an excellent laptop....

[Random]

Re: Netbooks

Thanks, Helen. Does a netbook work for games? I guess what I'm asking is if the netbook is just a scaled down laptop, capable (within the constraints of it ram and HD size) of everything a laptop is capable of.

Don't expect to play Fallout 3 or any hardcore 3D computer games on a netbook.

Just be mindful of your netbook's system specs (typically 1.6 GHz, 1-2 GB RAM, no 3D graphic accelerator video card, etc.), and look for games in bargain bins (read their system requirements label).

[tutusue]

Re: Netbooks

Thanks, Random. I'm computer game illiterate so would've never considered those specs. I've emailed my daughter the url to this thread so that she can see the pros and cons.

[Peshkwe]

Re: Netbooks

The major problem would be the video card for playing any kind of graphics intensive games, a netbook just wouldn't be able to handle it.

If he's into MMORPG type games it'd probably work ok.

This is what an mmorpg is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMORPG

[Peshkwe]

Re: Netbooks

Oh...one thing with the netbooks is if it's one without a CD/DVD drive you really should make a flash drive type recovery 'disk'. Kids don't always surf in the best spots and some game cheat sites are virus heavens. My nephew was always infecting the family 'puter looking for codes and button combos.

If he gets a bad virus on the netbook without a CD/DVD rom it's a real pain to fix it being the recovery is on a partition on the netbook hard drive...if that's borked no matter how many times you press alt/F10 it won't go back to factory default. Then you'll have to buy the recovery disks and an external CD/DVD drive to use em with.

[Random]

Re: Netbooks

Thanks, Random. I'm computer game illiterate so would've never considered those specs. I've emailed my daughter the url to this thread so that she can see the pros and cons.

The only good thing about a netbook is to let you surf on the net, with just enough juice (1.6 GHz Processor) to let you do video and high-quality audio streaming (as long it has a headphone jack or two, the netbook's speakers aren't even decent, IMNSHO).

Good for kids (below 14) if you don't want to spend more than $400 on a laptop for them, though. Would be nice if those netbooks actually come with parental control software (not just Windows version) preinstalled, rather than let the customers go out and look for them and install them DIY.