[Closed] netbooks

anyone know any good techy or review sites?

The Samsung NC10 is the Skoda Octavia of the STW world. Bluddy brilliant - buy 2!

Seriously, they are excellent. It will do 99.9% of the things most folk want and need to do. The 6 hour battery life is real. Mine even runs OS X as well 🙂

I thought Id have a stab at a netbook, but not throw too much cash at it.

I got an Acer Aspire One from expansys for £190. Came with 16Gb SSD and an integrated 3G card. I particularly wanted the SSD for robustness and the 3G card for online work on the move without having to BT to my phone or have a dongle hanging out the back. The SSD is expandable with a further 16GB SD card in one slot, and theres another slot on the other side too, so theres quite a bit of storage all in.

The light Linux OS on it is not great - Linux Im sure gives geeks hard-ons, and thin OS is good for dumb people, but for regular skilled users its just a dog. So I put an Nlited XP build on and it works a treat. Needed a bit of optimising for speed because of write speeds to the SSD, but works well.

Bargin for £190, but required a bit of research and time for a build to get it how I wanted. Others may want to spend a bit more to get something thats flying straight out of the box.

We just got a [url= http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/samsung-n-110.aspx ]Samsung N110[/url], which is the replacement for the NC-10.

NINE hour battery life, 1GB memory, XP, wifi, Bluetooth and a usable size keyboard.

Anyone know if I could use one as a tv?

Quite easy.

You can get a DVB-D USB stick from maplin or scan etc for about £30-50 I think.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=dvb&source=15

The battery life on the Samsung swung it for me

I bought one of the Aspire One models just before last Christmas as an emgenency purchase (large laptop failed). Its been excellent and I am happy to recommend it. I run microsoft office and photoshop creative suite 1 on it with no problems. It won't run CS2 photoshop as there are screen size constraints built into photoshop, which is a right pain, but not the Acers fault in any way.

Cameron Sino brand extended hour batteries (see Amazon) seems to be good and reliable and really boost up the 'freestanding' time, though if you use a mobile broadband stick it about halves the time you get on any battery brand due to the big power consumption.

@cynic-al - Yeah, you just get a USB freeview receiver or you could get a slingbox.

i also just got a n110. very pleased with it. got 2Gb of ram for it for about 12 quid.

NC10 a bit cheaper, with lots of good reviews - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150183

basically the same bit of kit.

Ta all.

Deals are on this site too - lots of acer (think they have pish batteries?)

http://www.hotukdeals.com/search?action=search&keywords=acer

I've had one of the Saumsung NC10's since the start of the year. Excellent bit of kit - small, light and with great battery life (I can get 7 hours out of mine). Mine has 2GB of RAM and the standard 160GB HDD and has been powerful enough for the web browsing, MS Office stuff and DVD viewing I use it for.

thanks people integrated 3G sounds good as do flash drives, battery life is important, thanks for the photoshop info.

I'll have a look a bit more

picked up an aspire one for £120 from dabs, just an extra toy, so no great demands of it, probably now the most used computer in the house - batery is poor compared to the Samsung, will just squeeze 3 hours, but can get aftermarket battery, though not bothered as generaaly near a plug anyway

the one you're looking at is bigger and newer, but I have no doubts over build quality, good thing mine is SSD for the trips it's made off the sofa arm