Category: Geeks r Us
Hmmm, I just searched back a few pages, because I thought there was already a thread about netbooks. I couldn't find it.
So, here we go. NetBooks seem to be all the craze right now. Post your raves, your gripes, maybe your wishlist.
My question is: the models that offer a 6-cell battery, what does it feel like at the back. I guess I'm confused, everytime I've read it sticks out a little bit, I pictured it protruding out the back. Is the case actually, it makes a thicker base?
I notice some of the 8-inch netbooks offer the 6-cell.
yes your correct on asuming that. the acer one comes with just a 3 cell witch is ofering an average battery life per charge for about 2 hours witch really isn't to bad. I have a full fledged acer laptop at my fathers home and it runs like a champ. judging buy the YouTube vids i've saw they run just as well. I think they're the cheapest ones as far as netbooks. if i'm wrong you may correct me. well they're the cheapest ones that run windows and offer a 120 gig hard drive and 160 gig hard drive for the same price and they offer one gig of ram also. the processor isn't to bad either. it gets what u need done in a timely manner. well, thats all your gona hear from me for now in this post.
thanks for reading and I hope i was able to help ya and give other users more info about the one i would get and might get. I'm thinking abot it...
peace for now...
Don't like the acer net books because half of the ram is intigrated in to the bord. Which means usually they are only upgradable to 1.5gb of ram.
I've used the asus 900HA and 904HA both of which I upgraded to 2gb of ram. The 904 has a 6 cell battery, and I get almost 5.5 hours of use! For a client I just ordered the ES10 from lenovo though I probably wouldn't use one of the puppies for me. As for the batery size it simply is a rounded edge on the bottom of the units closest to the monitor.
Have you all read of serotek's deal of $149 for an atom install of their screen reader? If you buy a netbook, you can get system access for it for $149.
BigDog, if the netbook is being used for surfing, word processor, and musics taks, what does the increased ram do for you? Does it make a difference with you tube for example?
Lol, my laptop here is a 1.60 processor, 512mb ram, and 80-gig harddrive. I'm imagining the netbook won't be a step down for me. I do have xp professional though.
Hey, does one of the tech folks share their knowledge and thoughts on ssd and hhd harddrives? Not sure if I have that written correctly. *smile*
Oh my gall, I need to find measurements. All this time, I've been leaning towards the 8.9 netbooks, thinking it will be smaller. Well, according to a review on justnetbooks.com, the asus 8.9 and 10-inch are the same size. The 8.9 must have more of a boarder around it's screen. Interesting...
As for ssd vs hdd hard drives, ssd or solid state hard drives are way more durable, quiet (because they do not need to be spun) and power efficient (same reason), also operate at a wider range of temperatures. They used to be much slower in terms of read and write speeds but I think they've more than caught up now and some might have even shorter access time than hard drives. Basically these benefits are not sufficient to the average user today to justify the premium, you can get a 60gb ssd for about the same as a 250gb or even 500gb hard drive. I'd go for the space for now and get the HDD offerings, this may change very soon, probably in about a year as the solid state technology is coming along fast now. I still haven't made up my mind regarding netbooks, torn betwwn the Acer one, buy.com had it for $289 the other day, with a 6-cell replacement battery (cost between 80 and 100 bucks) or the Samsung netbook for around $430 with the 6-cell battery and excellent reviews. I am going for the 10.9 inch since my hands will simply be too large to comfortably type on such a small keyboard as the 8 inch ones have, I think, that could be different for people of the female persuation though.
Hmmm, can a screen reader run on a ssd? Is the large harddrive necessary for it too run smoothely?
The netbooks out there with the 120gb drive, is plenty big enough for me.
Typically the biggest SSD drives are 40GB. They do make bigger SSD drives but they are usually not very cost affective.
While this is plenty big enough to run a screen reader, and It runs quite respectively from testing that I've done, I still prefer the larger capacity, for portability. This allows me to take anything I need with me that I may need out in the field.
I forgot to say the keyboards are a little bigger on the 10 inch netbooks, and usually feature home and end keys.
Can anyone speak to the Gateway Lt?
Thanks much,
Shanda
i love my nc 10 it's got a 140 gb hd when all's said and done, yes it's billed as 160, but let's be realistic here. the partition out of the box is seventy each way on c and d, and samsung use d as a backup storage for their backup util, which you can tell to go leap off a clif quite easily, as the pc comes with a recovery disc, which will restore from busted if you have an external cd rom drive.
Give ssd's a year or so and you'll find them to be worth the cost, but at the moment, i'd go with a normal drive.
I'm considering the MSI Wind U120. I'd be interested in opinions from anyone out there who has used one. Thanks.
Hi,
Are there any netbooks with a CD drive? It would be neat if they just had a slot that you slide the CD in to like they have on car stereos, and I think the Wii has it...
Chris
I've never seen a netbook with a CD or DVD drive, but many manufacturers make external USB drives you can hook up to the netbook. I onstly think there's insufficient space for a CD drive inside the netbook, although Ihave seen a few 12 inch laptops with a cd drive. Personally, I am happy without one since I use them so infrequently. I bought the Samsung NC-10, excellent machine, runs well, battery lasts for as long as they say it does, between 6 and 7 hours, the remaining battery life shows up right in the system tray so you don't have to go look for it all over the place. The only downside I can speak to is that the keyboard does not have the home and end keys, which I think is silly, unless there is some key combination using shift or ctrl keys I am not aware of.
I can't speak to other netbooks but I have heard the MSI Wind is good, I've neverheard of any good experiences with Gateway laptops, but I've only known 3 or 4 people who used them, all very unhappy, and none recently, so they could've improved drastically for all I know, but I remain very uninterested in a Gateway netbook.
Hi, all,
Have a Gateway desktop which the tech guy over at Services for the Blind got, and have no complaints. <smile> Hp, complaints yes, Dell, yes, but there again, I'm sure others think they're wonderful.
If anyone can speak to one with a good hard drive--over 100 gig, and good RAM, then let me know. Decent battery would be a plus of course. <smile>
By the way, had a Dell laptop once, and hated it. LOL
Shanda
i have no complaints about my nc 10, it is great with jaws, and absolutely can't be touched when using System access. bloody quick, and i believe if you knock the monitor on the head, turn down the backlight and such, you can get sheds more life out of the battery. i'm getting about five hours out of it at the moment.
I believe the NC10 uses the FN key modifier for the Home, End, Page Up, and Page down keys.
Hi all,
Okay, upon further researching expeditions I've come up with the following that I muchly desire and want to know if anyone has had any experience with this Netbook. It's rather new, so...
Anyway, the Netbook is the Asus Eee EPC1000. Right now the screen is 10", but supposedly, they're coming out with an eight-inch version or 8.9" or whatever. That would be splendid for me personally. Battery gets great reviews as well per every thing I've read. The advertised time is 9.5 hours, and although I don't think many are getting, those who've reviewed seem to all be saying seven and above.
But, anyhow, does anyone have experience with this particular netbook?
Thanks much,
Shanda
Hi, again, all,
Forgot to specify that it's the Asus Eee EPC1000HE...
Thanks,
Shanda
okay so i probably shouldn't treat this topic like a search engine, but what the hell. here are my requiements for a netbook:
a good sized hard drive with good ram
able to run a scren reader like jaws or window-eyes with no problem
support windows xp and possibly vista
a good battery life
a good netbook for word processing, internet browsing, email and media playing
those are my main requirements for a netbook. can u suggest one that fits those criteria?
thanks
Hi,
The Asus Eee EPC1000He has:
160GB hard drive space 5400 RPM I think but people have upgraded the drives in them
1 gig RAM upgradable to two which many have done
originally runs XP Home with SP3, but others have dual booted with Linux and some are running Vista--still others run Windows Seven
Best battery life of any I've seen--advertised 9 and a half hours. Some are getting that with various things turned off--web cam, bluetooth, wireless ETC. Most are getting easily above seven and lots are getting above eight. It depends on how bright you have your screen, what exactly you're doing--watching a lot of movies, ETC. what performence mode you have it set in--high performence, power saving ETC. So, easily seven and lots are getting eight and above per 200 and some odd reviews... Also, some are getting above nine.
Comes with Star office preloaded but you can load OpenOffice or Office 2007 or whatever to do your word processing.
Has wireless b/g/n--2.4 GHZ only supposedly... Ethernet as well.
HTH,
Shanda
thanks. is there a website i can go to to read a detailed review and possibly even purchase this netbook?
The website is:
http://www.justnetbooks.com/1000HE-none-B001QTXL8C-ASUS_Eee_PC_1000HE_10_Inch_Netbook_166_GHz_Intel_Atom_N280_Processor_1_GB_RAM_160_GB_Hard_Drive_10_GB_Eee_Storage_Bluetooth_XP_Home_95_Hour_Battery_Life_Blue.html#reviews
And, you can buy it from Amazon for $389 no shipping charges. More reviews to be had on both Amazon and NewEgg I do believe--about thirty-five on NewEgg, not sure of Amazon. The site I've given you has 236 as of this writing.
Thanks, HTH,
Shanda
ok 3 things to throw my 2 cents in on. www.pricewatch.com is a good place to search for low prices on a particular product .
As for netbooks .. at this point they are all generally similiar hardware I mean did you guys know the msi wind and the dell mini are pretty much the same exact thing with two different names slapped on it? So find one with enough screen size a keyboard you like and enough storage and the operating system you want,at the best price you can find.and you are set. They all now come with 1GB of Ram upgProviding the hardware vendor didn't put any software on theire to screw things up you are good to go. So Short of hardcore gaming or heavy multitracking recording or anything like that a net book will be fine for what you want to do.
A trick for adding a dv drive to any computer including netbooks. If you have an old desktop with any CD/DVD drive that you wouldlike to use (burners included) take it out of the desktop and get one of those usb to IDE or usb to SATA enclouseres that are usually intended for connecting and internal Hard drive as an external Hard drive and plugh your cd rom drive in to that and plug the usb into your net book or other computer .. those enclouser are pretty cheap if you shop around online. The ones for hard drives are 3.5 inch enclousures and if you want to spend a little more you can find some 5.25 inches enclousures floating around (thats the correct size to actually hold a desktop Cd/DVD drive.)
I'm curious which netbook has a keyboard that is most like a standard PC keyboard as far as layout is concerned?
To me the 8inch netbooks had either weird keyboard layout or keys so small I could not comfortably use them. I think most of the 10-inch ones like the Samsung or MSI Wind have pretty similar keyboard layout and that closer to desk tops or regular laptop layout. The fn key is a bit of a trick for getting some of the buttons like home, end, thanks to Wraith for pointing it out to me.
I find the only difference is hard drive size and solid state vs laptop har drives, I go for the latter since the former are still expensive in dollars per gig terms, although I am sure it'll have changed in a year or two, and battery life. The Samsung is excellent on that but really any netbook with a 6-cell battery will do good. Since I intend to use this laptop for cars/planes I wanted one with at least 5 hour battery life and I did not feel like shopping around Ebay for a 6-cell battery so I went with the Samsung, the Wind also comes with a 6-cell, at least the newer model.
But, like I said, for the Asus there's plenty of 6-cells on Ebay and elsewhere, for between $60 and $100, you can even get a 9-cell for most of them, although I've never tried one out.
Cheers
-B
So, how do keyboard shortcuts work that involve home, end, page up and down?
Hi,
For some netbooks at least, you use the FN key and up/down/left/right arros.
HTH,
Shanda
Oh yeah, I'm definitely going for a ten-inch model with a hard drive for now, and more and more I'm looking at the MSI Wind or something similar. Are the Acer Aspire One netbooks pretty well-made machines as compared to some of the other netbooks?
fn plus page up and down might be the command for end and home. hmm, fn plus up arrow increases brightness on the samsung nc 10, down arrow to decrease, and fn plus left and right arrow is up and down volume i think.
For the money the 1000he from asus is the best you can buy!
I can get nearly 10 hours from the battery with some tweaks and the keyboard is about 93% of a normal keyboard!
The fn and control keys are right next door so keystrokes envolving control home or end are easy. I'm not a big fan of the acer units. I had multiple problms with the aspire 1 with office 07 and I returned it with in 2 weeks.
I have had 4 asus units and can't complain
Well, I just got an Acer Aspire One (the 8,9 inch model) and love it. It's small, light and easy to use. But I do have a few questions which I asked in another thread. Since one relates directly to the netbook itself I'll ask them here. I can't get the home key to work with WebbIe and NVDA. When I hit it and alt it does nothing. I've also tried function page up and got the same result. How do I change this? I asked Mom where these keys were so I'm pretty sure I'm using the right ones. Also, where can I find a six or nine-cell battery for a decent price? I've been looking all over with no luck. As for Office, Macafe and Works, I've deleted them all. The Macafe really is something to watch out for, since it causes alot of problems by popping up constantly if you don't delete it and the uninstall wasn't that accessible with NVDA. Can't speak for other screenreaders here but you may need sighted assistance. Also, the version of Intenet Explorer that comes with the netbook is horrible so you'll probably wanna switch to WebbIe or Firefox asap.
check the manual for your netbook to see if you don't have to use another key like the "FN" or Function key in addition to the home/end key for them to funtion normally as its common on netbooks to have multiple uses for keys like that. Also if your netbook is running XP home SP3 its the same version of IE thats on any version of XP home SP3 not a specialthere isn't a speacial versions for netbooks as faras I know. So its probably not knowing the key mappings thats messing you up. As for the battery you can try ebay, or pricewatch.com newegg.com buy.com and amazon.com are good places to check. www.pricewatch its a price search engine for computers and parts and other comsumer electronics.
OK, this is just a curiosity thing, because I've never actually bought my own computer, save for one time and somebody else set it up. Now, I'm to understand that Windows XP Home is pre-installed on netbooks. However, my guess is that when I first start up the computer, it doesn't just boot up to the desktop. Will I need sighted help with the initial set-up? I figure once I reach the desktop I can have an installer for a screen reader in a USB drive of some sort and install it at that point, but not before. What's involved in setting up the computer before it will boot to the desktop?
My Netbook is an Asus, and I did need sighted help for the initial setup. Once it booted into Windows, I was able to get narrator going and hook up my external hard drive so I could install Jaws from there.
Wow. The battery life on netbooks sound amazing compared to my laptop with barely 1 hour before i have to charge it. windows XP, and just under $400 is also pretty neat.