Laptop or netbook

pammy14 · 21 January 2011 at 9:33AM

I am due to travel to NZ for 6 weeks and would like to be able to use my own computer whilst away. At present I am only used to a PC.

Any recommendations on what to buy.

I will be using it for email, skype and general surfing the net.

mr_fishbulb · 21 January 2011 at 9:40AM

How are you planning to access the internet on it?

It may be cheaper just to use internet cafes when you are there. This will also force you to see more of the country as you won't spend your whole time on your laptop

Internet cafes are everywhere, and cheap.

fiddiwebb · 21 January 2011 at 9:58AM

I suppose it depends what you are going to do over there, will you be travelling around or staying in one location?

If you are looking for something to carry around with you then a netbook would be the answer or as Monsieur fishbulb says you could use internet cafes to save money.

Found this handy zoomable map of free & nearly free wiFi hotspots covering NZ but check if it is upto date.

http://jahoog.org/wifi/

Russel245 · 21 January 2011 at 10:10AM

Go for a laptop, netbooks have a terrible failure rate, and whatever you do, don't buy an Acer, they're cheap for a reason...

fiddiwebb · 21 January 2011 at 10:19AM

Russel245 wrote: »

Go for a laptop, netbooks have a terrible failure rate, and whatever you do, don't buy an Acer, they're cheap for a reason...

Do they? (don't know about Acer's though)

Had my Samsung NC10 now for 20 months and not been a problem, in fact use it more than the desktop or lappy now.

BackOnTrack · 21 January 2011 at 10:23AM

Also got a samsung nc10 here and it's a great little machine and I highly recommend it.

pammy14 · 21 January 2011 at 10:31AM

Will be with family in Auckland but don't want to take over their computer as will want to skype to husband back home.
Also need it on other holidays for keeping in touch.

Russel245 · 21 January 2011 at 1:56PM

fiddiwebb wrote: »

Do they? (don't know about Acer's though)

Had my Samsung NC10 now for 20 months and not been a problem, in fact use it more than the desktop or lappy now.

From the report I saw however I remember Acer having a failure rate at around 25% within one year.

Good suppliers had failure rates between 15 and 18% I believe Asus and Toshiba came out top for reliability, which puts Acer at nearly twice the failure rate of good laptop manufacturers.

It's just a little annoying to see so many people buy cheap dirt brand laptops. My experiences of buying such products have been it lasting the 30 day period until breaking and then spending the remainder of the warranty going back and forth to repair shops.