HI STW brains trust,

So I’m in need of a portable and useable netbook for the rest of summer (and beyond) as I’m travelling around riding and racing my bike. Any suggestions? basically I want net access and surfability, being able to download photos from my SD card, and download polar files. Music storage etc isnt a big issue.

I’m keen on one of the Asus models. But what are your thoughts and experiences??

Smiker

Samsung N series are the best at the moment

The Aspire One is £150 at ebuyer at the moment

Watch out for Asus battery life – we have a couple and they have the older battery type and have short lives – think this may have been resolved or you can get better ones aftermarket. Otherwise they are brilliant esp with a mobile broadband dongle thingy.

Samsung N10 is a little blinder. I prefer it to the big laptop.

Samsung have 7 hr batteries alegedly, but test show that they outrun other brands.

If you can wait, there are some lower power integrated processor/HD graphics chips. They should be out by Autumn. Can’t remeber the name, but it’s an Intel chip.

I’ve started looking at the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE 10 inch job on amazon for about 300quid.

As my previous laptop has been an asus I’m keen to stick with them. But is this one overkill? Would I benefit more from something smaller and cheaper? Am I asking questions only I can answer?

£120 Acer Aspire One from Dabs being used for pretty much just that here and well happy with it, not the greatest battery life, but could get bigger battery pack for about £50
Dad has an early Asus, 7″ screen is definitely tiny

Personally, I think the Acer has a smarter finish and certainly has the cheap end of the market sewn up

Go with the Asus Eee PC 1000 HE as the price has started to go down a bit now. Just upgrade to 2GB Ram when you get it.

guess you’ll be needing one with win xp if you’re running polar sw… Unless you have a copy spare;)

I’ve used a dell mini and think the keyboard is the best of any netbook… It’s worth going to somewhere like pc world and try out a few next to each other… Then give somewhere else your cash rather than pc world!

The Advent 4211 is a great machine, if you can a 6 cell battery for it it’s even better.

I’ve got two of the buggers (one’s up for sale if you’re interested for £200, will be going on the classifieds later today) but the wife deosn’t use hers much as she just uses the big laptop at home all the time.