Comments | cavgirl: Nothing very much at all...

cavgirl

Nothing very much at all...

May 09, 2009 01:28

'Cos really, life ain't that exciting right now. Seriously. I can some up my current activities in a handful of sentences. Let's see:

1. I have acquired nebook No. 4. Considering the whole netbook phenomenon only started less than two years ago, that's rather .... geeky.

2. And while we're on the subject of geekiness, I've installed Linux Mint on it ( Read more... )

difficult term, life, cbb

Comments 5

alchemine May 14 2009, 01:51:46 UTC

Which brand of netbook do you recommend? I promised my daughter one if she meets the goals I set her for the rest of the school year, and she's doing so well that it looks as if I might have to make good on it!

cavgirl May 14 2009, 14:49:02 UTC

A lot of it depends on your needs. For example, if you want something very light and cheap that is good for basic word processing, media and internet use, and don't need a lot of storage, then the Asus Eee 901 is not bad.

If you want something that's a bit heavier but with literally all-day battery life, then consider the newer MSI Winds, or the Eee 1000 range. If you like, give me a spec of what your daughter would need and I'll do some checking and get back to you. I have to say I've now had three Eees and now one Compaq Mini (which is the same as the HP Mini 1000) and I'm loving my current one. The only disadvantages it has versus the Eee 1000H I did have was the smaller hard drive (60GB instead of 80/150GB) and the shorter battery life. The latter issue should be resolved with the new battery I've ordered. Very nice keyboard as well - I'm a heavy user of the right shift key, and I found the small right-shifts on many of the netbook keyboards a bit of a nuisance.

alchemine May 14 2009, 18:30:54 UTC

That's great information, thanks! She'll mainly be using it for light word processing and Web surfing, so I don't think she needs a huge amount of storage.

I do want to make sure I get her something that's robust enough for her to be happy using it -- she's supposed to use my old iBook right now, but is constantly on my MacBook instead because that's the "good computer." (The iBook is on the slow side and has a fading battery.) I don't want the netbook to become the new "bad computer!"

alchemine May 14 2009, 23:26:11 UTC

Your best bet is probably the Samsung NC10. It's widely recognised as the best in its class - well made, light, lots of storage, and a stupendous battery life (8 hours, I believe). Also it's been praised for an extremely usable keyboard and it has a HDD of @ 160 GB.

But your daughter needs to recognise the limitations of a netbook - it will handle office documents well (use OpenOffice or Office '97-2003; NOT 2007), all web browsing, and play music and video files. It can cope with light image editing. It is not suitable for games unless the games are old - at least three years, and closer to five, and even then the graphics may not be good enough. Card games and mahhjong and so on are fine though.

cavgirl May 14 2009, 23:28:35 UTC

Whoops, that was me! Forgot to sign in.