Best Netbook Budget £250

mrsg26

My brother and I are buying a netbook for my Mum for Xmas. She doesnt need and all singing and dancing one but prefereably one thats not to slow. I have been looking at the HP MIni 210-1180. Dont know if its good or not. Can anyone advise or recommend one thats within our budget. thanks.

saffysue

Bumped as also interested, preferably £200 ish

richard734

Toshiba t110 -121 is one I bought for my daughter this year.
I have used Laptops Direct for a number of years and have had nothing but good service from them.

esuhl

I haven't kept up with the latest netbooks released in the last year or so, but I got a (seemingly unused) Asus EEE 901 on eBay for £150 and I'm really impressed with it.

The build quality is really excellent (although the keyboard could be a little more rugged) and hardware support in XP and Linux is great. Initially I tried the manufacturer's version of Xandros Linux, which was pretty awful - using the package manager at all seems to screw up your software installations. Windows XP installed easily and performs well overall, but had one major issue - it seemed to take ages to download and apply antivirus/anti-malware updates each day. So, I tried Arch Linux with XFCE, which has performed admirably, although I can't tether my phone to it using Bluetooth (as my phone requires Windows software).

I got my netbook to write on, but I seem to use it more as a portable TV... Anyway, the streamed TV is perfectly smooth and the audio quality not too bad considering the size and price of the netbook.

The great thing about the EEE is the battery life - up to 7 hours, if I remember rightly (probably about 5 in practice). Oh, and as it's a pretty popular netbook, there are a lot of support sites and forums about if you want to tweak or hack the device.

The EEE 1000H has a bigger keyboard, but is larger...

Anyway, I hope that helps. I hear the Samsung NC10 gets good reviews too...

By the way, in buying a netbook, you're trading speed for size. If you are concerned about how quick/powerful the device is (if you're doing anything other than web browsing, emailing or using basic office applications), you might want to look at full-sized laptops (although getting one for £200 to £250 might be tricky). Most netbooks have very similar CPU and memory components, so there is less variation in speed/power than with the wide range of desktop and laptop PCs.

sharkie

have a look at bigpockets and hotukdeals. Google your selection before purchasing

mrsg26

Thanks for the advice. To the OP who suggested a laptop for my mum...we have a home PC and both my brother and I each have our own laptops but as we are always using them for uni then it makes more sense to get mum a small netbook. she knows nothing about computers all she wants to do is check emails and facebook etc. So a netbook would be perfect for her. Will have a look at what has been suggested so far. if anyone has any other suggestions then please let me know. thanks.

esuhl

mrsg26 wrote: »

To the OP who suggested a laptop for my mum...we have a home PC and both my brother and I each have our own laptops but as we are always using them for uni then it makes more sense to get mum a small netbook.

In that case, you *might* also be interested in using the netbook as a virtual client to control your laptop/desktop PC. The netbook would send mouse/leyboard input to your desktop PC; the desktop PC runs the appropriate software operations and sends a copy of the screen output back to the netbook. Essentially, you can use a (low-powered) netbook to remote control another (more powerful) PC.

If you're interested, have a look at Windows' Remote Desktop or VNC applications (such as TightVNC).