Netbooks

[anunitu]

I am looking at getting a netbook,and wondering what is the best system for the price. There are so many different brands and different systems within each brand. Anyone that has had some experience with this type of system,your feedback would be most welcome.

[fearless]

I got myself an Asus N10J netbook couple years ago. Quite nice looking and well built for its price, had a onboard gfx card and a toggle switch to switch to a nvidia 9300M card  - which is nice. Has an atom cpu. Mostly i use it now and then, back up some stuff to it from my main pc, browse the web and other stuff when im not at the main desktop and am being lazy. Mostly nowadays tho, my brother borrows it to browse the internet, so i dont use it as much.

In my experience, not suitable for gaming really - altho mine could play a few games and ran quite well with that nvidia card, the cpu is the bottleneck, so older games older than say 6/7years or more would probably run ok, the older games like baldurs gate and the like would run absolutely fine, but modern day ones not really.

If you are going to be portable and need it for that then fair enough. Keyboard size will be important and you should take into account how much use it. If your going to do a good bit of typing on it, then dont go for the smallest netbooks, the acers or samsungs - keyboards are too small. Depending on your budget you might be better of with an actual laptop, even a small one 12" - 15" for example. The Asus N10 i got had a very good keyboard for it size, 98% full keyboard size, which meant that typing was ok on it, but is never going to be as good as a full sized keyboard.

What budget did you have in mind? what will you use it for? what features do you want/need?

Hope that helps start you thinking in the right direction

[anunitu]

I was mainly thinking of using it just to surf,using a wireless connection..

[clive]

Depending on how they have pricing any given week you can expect to pay between $165-$330

Pricing often has little to do with feature set, but stocks, and promotions. Acer has a lot of product in the channel, and is trying to clear it as they move to ultrabooks, and laptops. People are preferring tablets over netbooks in the 10" space, or 14"+ laptops. Ultrabooks being a far more expensive feature set.

I prefer the Acer Aspire One series, but these observations might apply to Asus

Operating System : typically Windows 7 32-bit Starter (Intel/1GB), can be Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium (AMD/2GB)
Memory : typically 1GB, but can be 2GB, Atoms are more limited, but 4GB can be used on AMD C50/60
Processor : Intel Atoms (various), AMD C-50 and C60
Screen : typically 1024x600 (cramped), can be 1366x768 + HDMI on AMD C50/60 (11" Aspire One 722, Target cleared the C50 at $165 last month)
Wireless : typically 802.11 b/g/n (2.4 GHz only), has a pretty good throw
Battery : 3-cell or 6-cell, the 6's are more humpy on the 10" netbooks, seem standard/flush on 11"
Hard Drive : 250-640 GB, some SSD

Memory/HD upgrades can require a lot of disassembly, newer Acer are easier than old ones.
OS is easy to upgrade through Microsoft key codes, Starter does not support "Switch Users", 32-bit cannot change to 64-bit

I tend to prefer the features/potentials of the AMD models, including AMD-V Visualization and 64-bit on all processor skews. Also tend to have more memory, bigger screeens, better OS.

Netbooks work well for coding, emailing, skyping, surfing. Tablets are a better if you just want to surf or play Angry Birds.

Shop your options, wait for deals.