Which Netbook?

[GregDL]

Hi everyone,

I'm going to college in a year, and my current netbook (a gift) is going to be to slow since I'm going to study 'office management' and it's sometimes slow in Word. Battery life is somewhat important (but most netbooks have a good battery life nowadays).
So I'm thinking about replacing it, and I've found a few netbooks here that look interesting.
!Also, I would like to play some games on it (low settings are ok for me) like Sims 2 (3?), GTA Vice City, maybe San andreas!

Budget around €300 - €400

1. HP MINI 110-4110sb: 10.1", Intel Atom N2600, intel GMA 3600, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD (€299)

2. HP 210-4120: 10.1", Intel Atom N2800, intel GMA 3600, 1GB RAM, 320GB HDD (€329)

3. ACER ONE AO722-C62kk: 11.6", AMD Fushion C60, ATI HD6290, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD (€399)

4. HP Pavilion dm1-4110sb: 11.6", AMD E450, ATI HD6320, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD (€429)

Which one should I be looking at?

 

[WR2]

I'm going to college in a year

Some big changes taking place in the next few weeks/months.
Including replacements for all those AMD APUs and Intel CPUs in the models you listed.
Probably not a good time to be choosing a new 'Netbook for work that starts a year from now.

 

[jsc]

#3 and #4 are really not "netbooks". They are more like inexpensive ultra-portables.

#1 and #2 match the "standard" (as we know it today) netbook specs.

WR2 is right, though. If you do not need it right now, wait. Specs and prices probably will be better a year from now.

 

[GregDL]

I don't need it right now, I can wait a year.
Thanks for the info!

 

[nbelote]

Give it a bit, Ultrabooks will come down in price over the course of the next year and you'll do better with one of those having a full-sized keyboard than you would a netbook.

 

[CaedenV]

A few things on netbooks:
1) wait for windows 8. Installing that on both netbooks I have (Acer Aspire One, and ASUS EeePC T101MT) sped them up dramatically. Even a clean Win7 install was noticeably slower than win8 on both machines.

2) 2GB of RAM is an absolute necessity, though 4GB may be overkill for a netbook (only the new Atom CPUs will take more than 2GB of ram anyways)

3) Touch screen is a great netbook feature as the screen is small enough where you will actually use the touch feature. Larger laptops and desktops are a pain in the neck for touch screen as they force you to raise your arm to chest height, which gets tiresome very quickly: Netbooks do not have this problem. My ASUS netbook actually folds into a tablet, and while it is a bit old by today's standard and does not have a retna display, it is still more capable than most tablets I have seen, and you still have the keyboard/mouse option, as well as real storage space, x86 program support, for the same price as a tablet... seriously, why would anyone get a tablet when you can get a convertible netbook?

4) Seriously consider getting an SSD. While Atom CPUs are not all that quick, the bulk of the bottleneck is still on the HDD. The only problem is that a decent sized SSD can costs about as much as the whole rest of the netbook, so this may be a good 'aftermarket' upgrade when SSD prices come down a bit more.

5) If a long term purchase then get one that can take an extended battery. Some Acer netbooks have 12 cell aftermarket batteries that give them a 20+hour battery life, which can be handy if you are often out and about.

6) Heavily manage your startup options. When I first purchased my Acer netbook it was slow as dirt and only got a sad 3Hr battery life. After removing Norton and Mcafee (how it ran both of those at the same time is beyond me), as well as all the other junk that came with it, and then going into msconfig to disable all of the auto updaters (adobe, java, etc) it runs pretty quick (well, quick for a netbook). Install a lightweight but effective antivirus such as Microsoft Security Essentials and you will be golden. Running a 64bit OS (assuming you have at least 2GB of ram) will speed things up a little as well. With everything optomised I now easily get 4-6 hours of battery life (depending on what I am doing), and an astounding 8 hours if I am just playing music and turn the screen and wireless off; not bad for a 2 year old device on a 3 cell battery!

7) As others have said; if you have a year then please wait on your purchase. Win8 is coming, higher resolution touch screens are coming, lower power screens are coming, USB3 is coming, solid state drives are becoming more standard, more memory is becoming standard, better battery tech is always being implemented, and cheap ultrabooks will drive the netbook prices down below that they already are.

I would never want a netbook as a 'daily driver', but as a desktop accessory they are a great platform. Just as cheap as tablets, while offering real program support, better battery life, bigger storage, more ram, and the almighty keyboard and mouse, it really is the way to go if you can stand having a device that is thicker than a piece of paper!