Laptop buying advice forum: I like the portability of Netbooks, but is it for me?

Dear Fran
You are right to hate the slowness but please mention that the current capacity of the present netbooks is not the cause of their slowness.
The slowness is related to the CPU speed ,its cache's size and the RAM size and its specification.
I suggest you to choose a netbook with a speed more than 1.66 G and as you mentioned 2 GB RAM.
You said that you are interested to video/audio player so you have to pay attention also to the graphic card of the netbook. The RAM size of the graphic card as well as its accelerator are important features for HD video, TV and gaming station.
The hard disc drive of netbooks have limited capacity to reduce their size. However i suggest you to select a netbook with a sata hard disc drive (is faster) and attention to its speed (at least 5400 rpm).
You can use an external hard drive to solve the low capacity of internal hard disc.
The netbooks are not equiped with a DVD/CD drive that looks important for you but you can use an external portable DVD/CD drive with a USB power plug (not a wall plug that limits its use).
Finally, the battery is important depending of the manner use of a netbook but 3 cells battery is of reasonable weight and price. Try to use the adapter as much as possible especially if you use an external drive.
The built in card reader looks important for your purpose.
Such a combination also replace a NOTEBOOK ! But with a much lower price.
After getting your netbook ,you should delete the unwanted files and change the antivirus if it is making slow your netbook ( e.g. McAfee and ZA that are good for a desktop but not for a netbook).
Enjoy surfing and dont forget to subscribe to all CNET publications.I am member of CNET since years and enjoy Lee's letters and miss them when he go to vacation (last time he went to Hawai). I appreciate also Jessica's cordiality.

There are different terms, like ultralight or ULV, but mostly you just need to look at the CPU (processor). They will have the SU designation, like SU3500. These are much faster than the Atoms in netbooks, but can offer similar battery life and weight. The cheapest ones are $400-500. Get some ideas from Fatwallet.com's Hot Deals forum (use the search feature). They offer, I believe, the best of both worlds, albeit at a higher price.

My wife usually uses a high-quality Lenovo Thinkpad for both desktop and travelling. At 6+ pounds, it was somewhat of a travelling nuisance, but acceptable.

Then my wife ended up in the hospital and rehab from a broken pelvis. Since her business is all online, she needed something to fill the gap, a light-weight computer she could use at the hospital and rehab center even when she was in a weakened state.

I bought her a Dell Inspiron 1012 two days after her admission. Even numb and feeble, she was able to lift the computer with ease.

"What didn't you get me one of these before," was the first thing she said.

It is a truly limited machine. With the most basic Win 7 on her, I couldn't even change the desktop image.

Big deal.

What she could do was the following:
*Use the computer constantly. Without an external USB wireless card, she got the seven hours of use, just as advertised. With the wireless card, she got between 6 1/2 and 7 1/2 hours before needed to plug it in for recharging.

*30 second (or less) access. Using the sleep and/or hibernation modes, the computer took 30 seconds or less to get from lid open to desktop availability. It was there when she needed it, in other words.

*As good internet access as any of our home-based office machines. Access was wireless and the speeds of wireless are fairly limited. That being said, the machine itself was fast as anything it could get to, wired or unwired.

*Usable without creating impatience. Some office programs appeared to open slower than they would on our 3.1 desktop, but not different enough to make her (or me) impatient. And some opened just as fast. Without bloatware, a machine like this is perfect for standard office work (Excel, Word, etc.)

*Roomy enough to hold ALL her data files for the past ten years! It made me realize how much room on our office computers are essentially filled with junk. It's a business computer -- who needs to have 16,000 hours of MP3 music files.

*Functional without an external CD/DVD drive. Although I originally thought I would use my USB DVD reader/writer for her machine, I discovered that was absurd. I have known for sometime that optical media is soon to be a thing of the past. A free software download and I was converting our DVD selections to playable files on flashdrives. 20 minutes or less on an otherwise unused office machine and I'd have a files I could put on a 1 or 2G stick and which she could play back. The machine wasn't for entertainment; it was for professional use, but if she did need entertainment (later, when she was travelling by plane to a conference), she had something she could use. And, when it comes to a CDs: for data files,just copy them to a stick; and music files, use Window Media Player to convert them for free to MP3 or other forms. One flashdrive can hold up over a hundred hours of music.

*Reliable for her media work. Her job includes photo-documenting conferences as well as writing about them. Offloading images and doing the basic necessary photo-editing was a breeze using her USB wireless mouse. Even that huge elephant of a program, Adobe Acrobrat Pro Extended, did not have or create any problems.

*Synchrozined easily and wirelessly with our office machines when she needed to leave on a trip or returned home.

*Could almost be a desktop substitute. Well, at least, temporarily. With an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor, it would be a good enough machine for the basics.

*It is TRULY a laptop machine. It works just fine without a desk. A wireless, laser mouse on a clipboard or leg or side-table gives remarkable control. The built-in touchpad is, well, a touchpad and does as well as any touchpad does. It's light; it doesn't overheat; its screen is delightfully clear, luminous, readable, and displays images that are pleasureable to look at. Unlike IPads, which are useless in the lap for long document work, this machine was almost invisible in terms of how easy it was to use.

*And, last, but definitely not least, after six months of 50% usage (I take it to work sometimes - it's nice to be able to hold it aloft, while lightly gripping the edge with only two fingers), there has not been a single crash or problem.

In summary, as a SECOND machine, used by a professional for professional activities, synchronized as necessary with a FIRST machine, it has proven everything we could ask for. (By the way, we picked the DELL because - of the machines I looked at - it was the only one with lightly contoured, slightly textured keys on the keyboard - perfect for a touch-typist to maintain orientation).

It is not a toy, and by that I mean two things: 1, it is a real machine that does remarkably well at its assigned tasks; and 2, it is not for gamers, whose needs are beyond my own interests.

And they're cheap. I mean cheap! If I start travelling, that will be my next requested stocking stuffer.

To my mind, really tiny netbooks tend to be used mostly for light internet surfing and email. These days--a Droid X can do that, too.

If you're talking about a relatively big netbook, though, you can get ultraportable computers that are about the same weight and identical size that are actually real computers and are full featured, with dvd drives and big hard drives and real power, like a Toshiba Portege.

There's only one real reason at this point to get a netbook--$$$$. The ultraportables can match netbooks in size and weight. The difference is really that a full feature, miniature machine costs more. So, are you willing to spend the extra $500 for a Toshiba Portege or the like (and other models can cost way more...)? If so, if you're not price sensitive, don't even consider a netbook. There's just no point.

Hi Fran,

I didn't think a lot before buying a netbook. I investigated a few netbooks in my price range and got an Acer last year and added another GB for speed. I regret buying the netbook,I have tried since May to create backup discs. I have purchased 2 different ext dvd players in my attempt and also purchased an upgrade to Windows 7 premium. It overheats and stalls out,so I purchased a cooling pad for netbooks. It is very difficult to get support service for it from Acer; haven't succeeded with that yet either.

In the long run, this has cost me far more in dollars and aggravation. Get a notebook.

marciamac

For an reasonable additional price, I recommend you to look for 13.3" or 14.1" notebooks. These are full PC's, some of them without DVD burners, but with i3 or i5 cpu's. That means Win7 fully operational, fast work without any limitation or drawback.
The weight is under 2 kg, screens are quite large and agreeable to work with.
Lenovo Edge is one example, but Dell, LG, etc... have their own models.
14.1" large notebooks are larger and heavier and more powefull (i7), but not so much as the standart 15.6" wide bulky machines.
I would definetly recommend you to stay away from weak and limited netbooks and step up to 13.3" machines.

I always tell my customers where I work, is portability and high battery life a big factor? If not, the processing power and features you get even in a cheap entry level single processor notebook absolutely win for the cost.

Pros:
- Portability
- High battery life

Cons:
- Cannot perform heavy tasks well such as photo, video editing, or large Office documents.
- No DVD/CD drive/burner.

Cost should NEVER be the reason in my eyes, especially considering you can pay the same amount for an entry level notebook that is a lot more powerful and versatile. Also, if your in the opposite boat and can spend upwards to $800 or more, you can find lightweight laptops.

I think an IPAD is awesome BUT a netbook is about 300 dollars and an IPAD is almost 600.

Have studied this isssue and I came to the conclusion
that an iPad or its clone aPad or ePad etc are a
better solution to work with them on the go throu
WIFI whenever available or with 3G or Gprs connection
like a telephone.
Give it a thought make a Google search to find the
right device that will suit your need.
Regards.

I was so excited to see the netbooks. I wanted the small size and portability so I bought one. I was terribly disappointed in the speed. I was showing my students how to use Skype. One of my students brought in her notebook and went into another room. We tried to Skype. While they could hear me, my face was frozen on their computer. In fact, I went over into the other room and saw my face. It was that slow! Wait and see if they upgrade them. Or just spend a little more money and get a notebook--you will be so much happier.

For CD/DVD drives, I simply burn an ISO of the disc at the office, transfer it to the netbook, and then use a Virtual Drive program to mount it under Win7. The Netbook then *thinks* it has an optical drive. It's *sweet*.

On the CD drive issue, there's nothing stopping you from dumping the entire contents of a CD on to a 2GB or higher SD card (use another laptop or desktop) and then use the card reader on your netbook as if it's the CD drive. Works well for me.

I have an Acer netbook that is 8 months old. I primarily use it for travel, and only for using the internet and word processing on the road. The small size and low weight make this very convenient for my carry-on luggage. But I never would use this as a primary computer. Instead, I just transfer files that I need from my office computer to the netbook when I travel. The low cost also makes it not a worry should an accident or theft happen. I make sure not to keep personally revealing files on it.

My MSI Wind was $300. I paid an extra $75 for an external DVD burner and an extra $25 for a 1 GB RAM upgrade. The only things I can tell you are this.

(a) RAM upgrade - Essential I run Win7HP x86 on my Wind. 1 GB just ain't enough.
(b) DVD burner - Useful, but not essential if you share an optical drive on a network.
(c) Get a bigger battery! Minimum 6-cell battery.
(d) For most regular office tasks, this netbook is way capable. Online is speedy. Office is acceptably speedy. If you're a content creator, video prosumer or someone who needs high-end processing, then skip netbooks altogether until Starfleet comes out with the PADDs you must want.

Just my $0.02...