Buying a small laptop

alexb123

Hi all,

My g/f graduates next week and I wanted to buy her a small laptop to say well done.

She already has a 10.1 Netbook but it so slow. Therefore, I wanted to get her a faster laptop but the screen cannot be any biggest than 11.6 or there-abouts.

I cannot spend more than £500

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated

jaydeeuk1

Acer ferrari one.
I have one, much faster than the atom CPU's as it has a dual core 1.2ghz athlon, radeon 3200 gfx, 3gb ram, fantastic 11.6" LCD with LED backlight, and 250gb HD. Keyboard is also a joy to type on. Also comes with windows 7 home premium. About £370 brand new.


Only 'downside' is the marmite looks. And got rid of the annoying multitouch drivers that all laptops seem to come with nowadays.


Review here (although this one only has 2gb ram). Although they're a bit harsh imo.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/laptops/review/2009/10/02/Acer-Ferrari-One---11-6in-Netbook/p1

tweeter

While you're looking you could speed her netbook up with a different operating system that is free.

http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook

trish_insight_tech

The reason netbooks tend to be a bit slower is they usually have "Atom" processors, and these are built for low cost and low battery usage, not performance.

What I'd suggest is you look at a small notebook with a proper processor (like an Intel Pentium, or Core2duo), and at least 2GB of RAM. Something like the Samsung X120 maybe. My last notebook was a Samsung Q45 (was a little bigger than you're looking for, 12" screen), but it really motored through most tasks, though it was appalling for gaming! Only issue I had with it was the glossy casing attracted fingerprints like crazy. Matte is the way forward for me!