Netbook

[jack]

I'm thinking seriously of getting a netbook. (A netbook is a mini-mini laptop. The first famous was the Eee PC (sp?) which was ~£200, easy to use, had flash memory (?) and a reliable linux distribution (?))

Either whatever the best one I can for £200, or a more up-to-date one if I'm convinced I need it. I'm not sure exactly how I'd use it, but I think for grabbing when I know I'm going to be out, commuting or travelling all day and want to spod/hack.

Does anyone have any good advice? (Either for which one to get, or whether to get one at all, as opposed to a large mobile phone or a small laptop?)

Comments

[zarhooie]

I utterly ADORE my Acer Aspire One. I've got the 8" and my brother has the 10". I grabbed the bigger hard drive and a 6 cell battery and that ran ~$320 which isn't bad.

[hatam_soferet]

I have an Eee, and I like it very much for blogging on the road. It does sometimes occur to me that it's a pity it can't do phone and perhaps a Blackberry or something would be handier in that way; if I had a phone service that let me use web I think a large mobile would be better. But I don't, so the Eee serves me well at present :)

BTW, formatting oddity - the text entry field here extends beyond the edge of the orange box, and the Most Popular Tags box floats over it so you can't see some of what you're writing. In case you want to tweak it better :)

[liv]

I definitely went for a netbook over a phone because I barely use my phone a a phone, internet (which includes email and IM) on the move is a lot more useful to me than phone on the move. If I manage to get a contract for longer than a year, I am hoping to buy into a service that includes portable internet.

The thing with the reply box overlapping the sidebar is not a problem with jack's journal, it's a problem with the whole of Dreamwidth. It's on my list. So Jack, you can tweak it if you like, but it's gonna be fixed sitewide once we get to it.

[jack]

Thank you. I thought I hadn't customized my view at all, probably not even to choose a layout, so I was surprised I might have been able to get it wrong :) I would tweak it, but I do not think I will have time! :)

[jack]

When I got my current handset I resolved not to stay constantly online (partly because I wanted have real off-line time, and partly because I was resentful at Orange for making my upgrade my handset at all). But more and more I feel it would be _more_ relaxing to have email-on-the-go. However, I don't think anything phone-sized would satisfy the need to occasionally type seriously (writing long emails online or offline, plotting fic, writing code, etc). (A blackberry/communicator-type thing maybe, but I don't think so.)

I was convinced by the Eee when I saw Rachel using it, and it was just little, simple, and worked with (apparently) low hassle.

[hatam_soferet]

Yes, people seem to like Blackberries etc for clearing office email in downtime - whilst commuting etc - but I can't see writing serious writing on one. I mostly use mine for blogging whilst commuting, and it's lovely.

Eee

[crowsty.livejournal.com]

In many ways there isn't much difference between the market leaders. I think one has to decide whether one needs a Hard Disk, or if solid state (also remembering that with the inbuilt SD slot you can add 8GB for about £10 atm) provides enough capacity, and what size keyboard/screen you are happy with. This left me not really being able to choose between the Eee and Acer.

I'm happy to bring my Eee (901, it was about £250, I don't know what it is now) to PoohSoc sometime if you want a play.