Netbook For Daughter - Which?
 

My daughter wants a notebook computer for XMas. She does need one, much of her homework requires a computer and there's often a queue to use our iMac.

I'm thinking of getting her a netbook. I figure these are light and small (her book bag is pretty full), cheap, and powerful enough for her needs which are basically just productivity apps and the web. She doesn't need to watch HD video or play high-graphics-content games, this is for schoolwork.

But I'm having trouble finding anything to choose between the various netbooks out there. There are a couple flavours of Atom processor, but they are all wimpy. There's either Intel or nVidia chipset/graphics, I'd prefer the nVidia. Either 10" or 11" screens. Otherwise, they seem very generic. I guess for $300-500, hard to be otherwise? The only "different" one I've found is the Dell netbook that has a touchscreen, but I can't say I've thought of a big reason to want a touchscreen.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

(Not getting her a MacBook because my Apple budget is waiting for the 27" iMac display bugs to be worked out, and for the mythical "tablet". Anyway she prefers Windows because that's what they have at school.)

I don't have specific recommendations, but...

Look for one with more than 1GB of memory. The cheapos have only 1 GB and even XP likes more.

Get one with XP. The ones running Windows 7 will be nice, but pricy. The ones running "something else" are going to have issues, at some point. Something else is usually a customized version of Linux. The problem is Linux, it is the support of the customizations.

If she is just using it for school, and doesn't NEED to have Office 2007, I've found Open Office to work pretty darn well. It loads faster and is less ememory intensive than even Office 2003. Of course, since it is for a Student, Office 2007 is "cheap".

+1 james.....



Now if you are worried about specific brands... I always like dell... But IDK if you can still get XP from them....

I just got the Acer aspire one for my 10yo for $200 on sale, it has XP 160g hd 1g ram then I got a DVD drive $40 to plug into it and loaded up all her games office 7 and music, seems to work just fine but I may upgrade the ram to 2g for 35 bucks in the future.

For a student, I'd skip the "netbook" and just get a cheap laptop.

You can get an E-machines laptop for a similar price that is faster, and has more RAM and more storage than a netbook...and it will last a few years longer.

Netbooks are good for web surfing (but not streaming video) and typing papers. They suck with video, spreadsheets, games, or any program that requires any processing power.

Just my 2¢.

Looks like Win XP can't be had with over 1GB of RAM. A Microsoft licensing restriction. I'll have to add the additional RAM myself, will make sure there's room to upgrade.

Win 7 "Starter Edition" looks like a no-cost upgrade from Win XP. What is missing in "Starter Edition", anyone know? Oh, never mind - lots is missing. Like, changing your desktop image. I think a 14 y/o girl is going to be pissed if she can't have pandas all over her desktop.

The Dell netbook with touchscreen (Latitude 2100) appears to be an education-only model, not sure I can buy it, and its $550 so fairly expensive for a netbook. The only application I can think of, for a touchscreen, is Chinese character dictionary, and she has that in her iPod Touch anyway. So I'm leaning away from that model.

LeNovo has the S10 with 10" screen, Win XP Home, N270 Atom, nVidia Ion chipset/graphics, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, WLAN 11G, and 6-cell battery for $363. I can upgrade it to 2GB RAM myself. I'm kind of assuming (dangerous) that the keyboard is good, simply because its a Lenovo.

I just picked up a 10 inch Acer. Don't worry about the 1 GB of ram. You can get another stick for $40 just about anywhere.

Biggest differences are the screen sizes and hard drives. Some come with solid state drives in typical 4 or 16 gb capacities. Then there are the other ones with a standard 160 gb drive.

I prefer the traditional hard drive.

Don't sweat the Atom processor. They are perfectly fine for surfing, word processing, basically anything she needs for school will be no problem. Once you start getting into other processors the size and weight start getting up there and you might as well go for a traditional laptop.

Right now the MSI Wind and the Dell Mini 9 are 100% Hackintoshable.

Legion, I hear you on the underpowered aspect of netbooks, but size/weight is the thing. Netbooks are smaller/lighter than notebooks and she carries a ridiculous load of books already. She can't carry a "notebook" in her bag.

Legion, I hear you on the underpowered aspect of netbooks, but size/weight is the thing. Netbooks are smaller/lighter than notebooks and she carries a ridiculous load of books already. She can't carry a "notebook" in her bag.

Sorry for bombarding you all w/ posts on this but I realized I need to order today to get it for XMas. Doing my bit for the economy here. We're actually spending more this year on XMas, imagine that.

I have both a netbook and a laptop, so I thought I'd share my experiences. I understand that "power" isn't the only consideration. ;)

They really are not that bad. Seriously. I installed CS4 on mine "just to see" and it runs Photochop just fine.

I'm not going to do heavy print work on it but for web graphics it'll do in a pinch.

Just make sure you spring for a 6 cell battery. These things will run for 6 hours on them.

The Dell mini 10 and 10v are either not user-upgradeable beyond 1GB RAM, or require a lot of disassembly to get to the DIMM slot. That's what some quick Googling says. The Dell rep (online chat) says there is no DIMM slot, the RAM is soldered on. So forget that model.

John - I guess I should have been more clear. It needs to be a machine capable of more than 1GB of RAM. Many of them are fixed at 1GB and even XP isn't great with only 1GB of RAM.

The Acer Aspire One 11.6" has dual boot between Win XP Home and Android. Interesting. Upgradeable to 2GB RAM. Rather large too. $350-370.

Next decision is going to be whether to install a keystroke logging program on her netbook.

Oh - gee I am at work so guess I'd better do some - will return to this later.

Damn, it was easier when all she wanted was Barbies.

you might want to consider a USB keyboard and mouse to go with the netbook as well. I like my Acer Aspire1 because of its portability but I find the keyboard is just too small if I have to type anything more than a quick email.

back when I started college, I bought the best power to weight ratio laptop I could find... it weighed a featherlight 8 pounds and had a 14.1" screen. I thought I would blow the money and get the smaller one so I could carry it everywhere... to class and such.

I think I took it to class a total of 3 or 4 times over the course of 4 years. Too frickkin heavy. 8 lbs of laptop plus 8 lbs of books in a bag cantilevered off your back 4 blocks to school just doesn't work.


I'm seeing these new netbooks that have 2-4 times the ram, 4 times the hard drive space, windows 7, better wifi, better batteries.... and weigh 2 pounds. for $400. ridiculous.

Agree.

I just bought the HP mini 110 netbook at costco for $350. It comes with Win 7, and at the time they had the Student Office 7 for $59 - more than half off! Costco doubles the one year warranty btw

I was going to get our kiddos a Netbook but opted for this...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1260812536.jpg

Seems good enough for a 7 and 10 year old...

Gee, what type of computer did you have when you were 10?

Probably just like mine, a chalkboard. :)

The HP Mini 110 is cheap, average specs, and has the best keyboard, I think.

I'm probably going to choose between it and the Lenovo S10-2, which has the Ion chipset/graphics, higher test scores than the Mini 110, but not as good a keyboard.

Would love to get her a MacBook Air but $1500 is steep - would rather put the extra $1K toward a DSLR. Wife thinks it is time to go DSLR but the ones I'd consider (full-frame, meter w/ Nikon Ai/AiS lenses) are still way expensive. $2600 body-only seems to be the price of admission (Nikon D700).

"$2600 body-only seems to be the price of admission (Nikon D700)."

John,
That admission price is pretty pricey. That's coming in from the top end. There are "lesser" models that would make most pros very content.

Sherwood

When I was 10 I would go to work with my Father and his computer was in a big room with all sorts of tape on reels and punch cards. This laptop has 250gig of memory. Pretty sure it has more storage and computing power then his did. Funny thing, he was with Naval Underwater Warfare. They had a bigass budget then and had all the best...

I friend of mine worked at the FAA when they were just getting computerized. They had rooms of tape drives and they could not shut off the computer because too many tubes would blow. My friend was a programmer and wrote super tight code. After he retired back in the days of 640K DOS 2.0 he wrote a program that would let you scroll back up a DIR list. He was embarrassed because it was a memory hog, it took 2K.

WHy an air? I got Calvin the lowest end macbook. Set it up with Bootcamp and he can run XP and game (where he uses FRAPS to capture in-game videos) then switch to Mac and use iMovie to edit, Office for WP, etc.

If you want FF is a dSLR, right now the Sony a850 is cheapest but still $2K. Next year FF might drop down towards the $1500 range but maybe not. That's a whole 'nother discussion...

The standard MacBook won't fit in her book bag and weighs too much. Really, it is nutty how many books, notebooks, etc she carries.

For the DSLR, I want to go Nikon and FF because I have a lot of MF Nikkor lenses I want to use on the DLSR. These are lenses that I usually use on stationary subjects, and it would cost too much to get them in AF anyway, or they don't make them in AF. For example, an AF Nikkor 85mm f1.4 is well over $1K. No thanks, I'll use my MF version.

We have an Acer Aspire One with XP, 1GB RAM and 160GB HD. It works perfectly for what we need. It would probably benefit from the additional 1GB of RAM, but it manages fine for web browsing and I can even play Top Gear episodes from a flash drive without any problem. It's size makes it perfect for sitting on the sofa in the evening or taking on trips for internet access, as easy as carrying a paperback.

Okay, Santa is bringing dearest daughter a netbook. Here's details in case anyone is shopping too.

I bought the HP Mini 110 from Costco for $340. With Win 7 Starter, alas, so I'll probably upgrade to full Win 7 someday. I chose this one, despite the higher price and poorer specs (compared to the alternatives, see below) because I thought its keyboard was definitely superior.

Alternatives -

Costco had the Acer Aspire One with Win XP Home for $300. This machine has better specs than the HP, with Bluetooth and 802.11N.

The best deal I found, in a chain store anyway, was at Radioshack. They have the Lenovo S10 for $280 (that is with no 3G contract or other strongs, also for free w/ a 3G contract). This may be the version of the S10 with the nVidia Ion chipset/graphics, I didn't check, but anyway is a great price.

I may swing by Costco. Those sound pretty darn good.

I pulled the trigger on 2 of the ACER Aspire 10.1" units. WOOT had refurb units for $229.99 plus $5 shipping (for both!). I won't get them before Christmas, but mom and wifey will end up with Netbooks. With Tax and shipping, $503.34 for both.

Red get a new Dell Laptop, but it won't arrive until mid January.

I bought the same one off WOOT a month ago. Red. Biggest issue with them seems to be battery.

If the battery on those things gets run all the way down it won't charge. Easy fix though, just make sure it has the latest firmware and reset the power manager, remove battery and wall power, hold power button for 20 seconds and it's reset.

Some people were reporting getting the upgraded 1.66 processor and or Bluetooth. Shipping did take a while as mine came out of the depot in Jersey.

You're a good son and husbandy.

Daughter and I were driving yesterday. She tried so hard to convince me that I should intervene with mom and let her have her own computer.

She needs it for school (very true), she's been studying really hard and getting good grades (true), someone else is always using the Mac when she is trying to do her schoolwork (also true), she doesn't like the family Mac and wants a Windows computer (horrifying but true), she's really responsible and doesn't email or chat with anyone she doesn't know and doesn't have or want a Facebook page (also true), blah blah blah (true true true).

Nevertheless, she's not getting her own computer until she goes to college. (Not true, but I sure enjoyed saying it - being evil is so fun).

Urrgh. Setting up daughter's netbook. IE is covered with HP and AOL co-branding; have to download and install Firefox. Norton Antivirus 2009 nag screen keeps coming up; have to download and run Norton Removal. Have to download and install AVG Free. Windows needs updates; have to download and install 150MB of updates. Windows won't allow changes to the desktop image; have to download and install third-party app. Etc etc and allthis needs repeated restarting. I've spent over 2 hours getting this machine set up. Reminds me why I buy Macs for myself . . .

I do like this little machine. I may buy another and Hackintosh it.

That is my plan with my acer. Right now there are only 2 that are 100% hackable, the Dell Mini 9 and one of the MSI Wind boxes.

The Acer 10.1 needs ethernet and sound worked out.

Everytime I santize a machine to give to a family member, I format the drive and reload the operating system. The update cycle is usually a PITA, not because it is difficult, but because you can only download and update a certain number at a time. I have the SP2 & SP3 loads handy, so takes care of most of the updates from my very old XP disks.

I will be doing this on 2 machines, and loading open office on them, plus firefox, thunderbird and lightning. My Wife's machine will get a load of Quickbooks, Adobe Acrobat, and Office 2003. It should allow her to be on the road with the machine.

Update:

My new notebook arrived. My old Dell had 3GB of RAM. So I pulled the 2GB module out and popped it into the Acer Aspire 10.1. Big difference in how it starts and runs. I will be upgrading my other 2 netbooks to 2GB of RAM.

I really like this thing, except for the touch pad. It is not the fault of Acer, I don't like touch pads in general.

No the Acer trackpad really just sucks. Too small, odd sensitivity.

My MacBook trackpads rock.

I prefer a trackpoint.

apple-itablet to be announced january 27th , will be the deal! Can't wait to get 1 myself! I've had all the problems with the mentioned brands of computers, never again!she would be able to keep it for 6-7 years, microsoft 7ista sucks, doesn't have bill Gates anymore, does have Balmer( a complete joke)!It's going to be revolutionary & good for school