Really cheap Netbooks on ebay/amazon

janet_harbidge

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Hi
I am tempted to purchase one of these really cheap mini laptop/netbooks advertised on Ebay/Amazon for about £70. Are they any good? I am looking to browse on the move; trains/planes and maybe check e mail but are they too good to be true?
Any advice? Thanks. Jan

prowla

I guess that battery life is the key consideration.
The performance of a netbook is pretty ordinary, and the screen size is small (I find it too small for me).

gaming_guy

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Darren_G

It will depend on the brand/type. I bought each of my kids one of the CNM Netbooks with winCE as the operating system so that they could do some basic browsing for school homework etc. They do the job, but there are a lot of things you can't do with them (no USB support in the windows CE one, can't view Java enable web content or flash videos - there is a special 'youtube' viewing app for videos though).

Also, they are not very robust and the charging socket breaks off easily. Unlike 'normal' laptops, they (specifically the CNM ones I bought, and probably all the other generic chinese made ones) are integrated into the circuit board, so you can't just solder a new one in. We only have 1 of the 3 left working, as the other 2 have had the charging sockets snapped off..

spannerzone

If it's a Windows CE version I'd personally leave well alone... you can spend a bit more (admittedly double) and get a netbook that has full blown Windows or Linux that will be far better for everyday tasks.