Netbook versus laptop

dark1here

I have got a good laptop, which weighs a ton. I have access to Terrabytes of server space so dont need much portable storage.
12 months ago there were cheapish netbooks for travel which allowed basic internet browsing and email, had solid state drive, and goodish battery life.
I have tried several High St, stores with no success, being offered anything from 80 to 160 Gbyte drives based netbooks which frankly look and sound similar to my laptop, and which only have one advantage - they are lighter.
Anybody point me to a source of netbooks which are small, light and have flash drives and so are likely to be more rugged?

Marty_J

How about a MacBook Air?

You don't specify a budget, so I assume you have an unlimited amount of money.

AirCooledHeaven

Yes I'm also lugging a heavy power hungry laptop around and was looking forward to buying a SSD netbook when the EEEPC was first launced by Asus. Not being an 'early adopter' I decided to wait for the second generation netbooks with larger screens, slightly larger SSDs and even longer battery life. But it never happened. Seems all you can buy now is a 'small laptop'. I wonder if they copped out to accommodate vista?

totalsolutions

Goto WHS Smiths an get a copy of PC Pro mag. all you need to know in latest edition.

dark1here

Thanks for the Mac Book Air. It does exactly the same as my dual processor Toshiba laptop except it is 3 times the price.
All I want is a simple rugged light netbook for email, browsing and the odd letter

Marty_J

dark1here wrote: »

Thanks for the Mac Book Air. It does exactly the same as my dual processor Toshiba laptop except it is 3 times the price.

If your Toshiba laptop is already less than 3/4 of an inch thick, weighs 3 lbs and is made out of a solid piece of metal, then you're all set.

No need to buy an additional sturdy thin and light laptop; just use that one.

All I want is a simple rugged light netbook for email, browsing and the odd letter

You can get a Dell Mini 10 with an 8 GB SSD for £199, or a 16 GB SSD for £239.

You still don't give a budget though, so it's a little difficult to suggest something.

PlutoinCapricorn

I have an ACER Aspire laptop with plenty of memory and disk space, but it is too big and heavy for me to take out unless absolutely necessary.

Last year, I bought an ACER Aspire One netbook for £179.99. It is the basic model with flash memory and LINUX. It is fine for browsing, emails and it can create documents. If you look around, you can get better prices now as other netbook models have appeared. The battery life is 2 hours max but you can get bigger batteries.

-TangleFoot-

Either of these do?

• Grade A1 - Acer Aspire One A110L (£125 @ Laptops Direct)
• Grade A1 - ASUS Eee 900A (£168 @ Laptops Direct)

ManAtHome

I have an Acer Aspire One (1gb ram, 16gb SSD, 8.9" screen, reasonable keyboard, Linux). It's around half the size of a 15" laptop and does the email, web, and WP stuff pretty well. Is getting a bit thin on the ground now the "arms race" has started though. Asus have some similar models, but I haven't tried any of these.

TopCat888

Hi there,

can I suggest an alternative to the netbook craze? An IBM/Levono X series12.1” Laptop

I had a Medion 10" netbook when the Sainsbury’s offer was on back in March, I since sold the unit after 1 trip to the US. ( I only wanted it for travel, since I have a capable desktop and macbook to use at home)

It worked and was light BUT for me it was still painful in using the 10" screen with 600 pixels down the screen. I think I’m getting old! And the keyboard was a tad small too...

I have since brought a 2nd hand IBM or Lenovo X60 12.1" running 1024x768 laptop; for £200 off fleabay it had a single core T1300 CPU(1.6Ghz) with 1GB RAM and 40GB SATA HD, with 8 Cell battery. It weighs about 1.62KG inc battery but ex charger.

These units are incredibly well built and should last a while since these units were designed as road warriors for constant travel. I am planning when I get the funds to upgrade the HD with a SSD, so the laptop should be a lot faster and more reliable too. Granted this X60 with the single core cpu won't be able to run Windows 7 or Vista with all the fancy graphics, But for email, internet documents, playing video and music under XP it will be fine. You can spend a lot more and get a much better spec machine, but since this is a “travel” laptop, you can save yourself some cash here.

Just my 2p. I'm much happier with the IBM, not sure if the cpu is slower than the current gen Atoms though but for my needs I feels like it is.
TC

dark1here

Thanks I think I have enough to trawl various mags, and it looks like an older Asus or Acer netbook.
Frankly I cannot see the point in having yet another slightly smaller laptop, as my Toshiba is 17 inch all singing and dancing, and neither am I prepared to use a mobile phone to get emails, mainly because my arms are not long enough, without a magnifying glass, and dont mention the lack of keyboard!
I think the Netbook was a great idea small cheap and light, but the product has been hijacked, to become a slightly smaller verion of the current laptops, which goes back to when the laptop only had 12 or 14 inch screens. Maybe I should put the Toshiba in the washing machine and shrink it to about 12 inches?