Buying a Netbook

The_Economist

When we was looking for one something came up about the wireless conection or download rate. If my memory serves me right some do it at somthing like 50 mps while others are at a much higher rate. The higher rate ones are obviously the better ones.

Hammyman

The Packard Bell was on The Gadget Show recently in a netbook roundup and got top slot.

Hammyman

The_Economist wrote: »

When we was looking for one something came up about the wireless conection or download rate. If my memory serves me right some do it at somthing like 50 mps while others are at a much higher rate. The higher rate ones are obviously the better ones.

Oh. Dear. They can only download faster if the router they're connecting to is a "N". And even then, you're not going to notice with downloads from the internet, even on Virgins 50Mbps service. You'll only notice in local network file transfers.

And I think battery life, a good keyboard and being able to run programs faster are far more important than a theoretical maximum network throughput you'll never achieve.

The_Economist

[

=Hammyman;37791318] They can only download faster if the router they're connecting to is a "N".

Again if my memory serves me right it was something to do with the video quality, ie sites like YouTube. The higher the mps the better the picture.

Hammyman

The_Economist wrote: »

[

Again if my memory serves me right it was something to do with the video quality, ie sites like YouTube. The higher the mps the better the picture.

Considering you can view 720p HD videos on Youtube quite easily with a few MBit/s which is less than half the capacity of the original 802.11a wifi speed and less than 1/10th of what a 54g can achieve then its all academic. Its even more academic as it'll be your broadband connection thats the bottleneck. And it becomes completely irrelevent when you consider the quality is actually set by the person who created the video and no amount of bandwidth can make a 360p Youtube video look like HD.

Even Sky Player only needs about 0.13Mb/s.

Still, it doesn't stop the clueless salesdroids trying to convince the gullible.

busenbust

Hammyman wrote: »

The Packard Bell was on The Gadget Show recently in a netbook roundup and got top slot.

yes, unsure if it's the same model I mentioned above ??

Hammyman

No idea but its the current one DSG group have been selling and Gadget Show is sponsored by PC World so its safe to assume its the same. Tried to look on their website but to no avail.

busenbust

Hammyman wrote: »

No idea but its the current one DSG group have been selling and Gadget Show is sponsored by PC World so its safe to assume its the same. Tried to look on their website but to no avail.

sure, i'm just specific about that make/model :cool:

Chr15_2

Just set mine up and must admit I'm impressed so far, the keyboard is easy to use and the screen is very clear, the set up was easy although it doesn't come with any office software but you can't expect everything for £229. I now have the problem of getting hold of a dongle.

Katie-Kat-Kins

Chr15 wrote: »

Just set mine up and must admit I'm impressed so far, the keyboard is easy to use and the screen is very clear, the set up was easy although it doesn't come with any office software but you can't expect everything for £229. I now have the problem of getting hold of a dongle.

That was going to be my next question, how do you set up a laptop/netbook with wireless internet access? I've only had a Desktop connected to a modem with a wire in the past so I haven't a clue about dongles and stuff!