Notebook Joy - TTLG Forums

thefonz on 3/3/2010 at 21:38

So my laptop fried at the weekend and as such I've been re-assessing what I actually do with my portable device (notwithstanding my future HTC Desire mind).

To that effect I've spent this week trolling the web reading and watching reviews on the multitude of netbooks on offer since basically all I want is to be able to watch movies (Eg on the train), use the interwebz (various and youtube), high def would be nice and use ms office suite - not gaming since i have my xbox for that. Although I may give a whirl to Machinarium/Braid but those are flash anyway.

Hence, after much deliberating I've found that I quite like:

(http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5122)
as the Asus Eee PC 1005HA.

My budget is £300 so for that I can grab an extra gig of ram to speed it up.

So my question is; has anyone got a netbook and if so which one? Do you like it? Could you suggest another one that I've perhaps missed?

Al_B on 3/3/2010 at 22:31

Braid in flash? Not aware of that one, I'm afraid.

Probably not quite what you're looking for as it's a little larger and is a bit more expensive but I bought a Samsung N510 towards the end of last year and been very happy with it. The display is nice and bright and it does better with games than my GMA based laptop as it has the NVidia ION LE chipset and handles hi-def video pretty well.

thefonz on 3/3/2010 at 22:36

Hmm, yeah thats a bit over my budget.

I'm liking sofar what I see between Asus/HP/Samsung.

The thought of Samsung making laptops/netbooks is weird though...

thefonz on 4/3/2010 at 22:11

So now gaming is out the picture (Well...Machinarium but thats flash!).

So I've spent alot of time this week looking at things and I've narrowed it down to the following two:

Samsung N140
Asus 1005HA

They're both suitable, play hd (480 which is fine for me) and are within budget to the extent I can grab a 2gig upgrade for 20quid and both run windows 7 which is also very important.

Which one would you suggest?

bikerdude on 4/3/2010 at 22:49

What did you do with you old laptop, you says its fried - how..?

Fonz, AMD based net/note-books are available now which utterly spank the intel atom platform, see below -

(http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/product/41862/HP-Pavilion-Notebook-DV2-1115EA-AMD-Athlon-Neo?source=googleps) £339 - 12.1" (1280*800), AMD Neo 1.6ghz, Ati HD3410 GFX(will play T3, Doom3, TDM, etc), 2GB ram, 250Gb HDD, Magnesium chassis - 1.7kgs, 3x USB ports, WiFi Bluetooth, Vista Home premium, 4hr battery life, the list goes on.....

or the intel alternative (which is cheaper but much slower)

(http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/Laptops/inspiron-1012/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-1012&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&ref=lthp) £229 - but this is inferior in every way, slower cpu, smaller hdd, smaller, screen res, crap gfx, etc....

Don't forget Most net-books (like the dell, Asus, Samsung) don't come with a CD drive, but the Hp above comes with a DVD/CDrw drive...

thefonz on 4/3/2010 at 23:00

Such as? For £300 there isnt much and I want something compact thats easy to carry around.

It fried because I left it on for pretty much a whole week and finally turned it off on saturday; switched it on sunday and there was a burning smell...now it wont startup atall.

bikerdude on 4/3/2010 at 23:37

Quote Posted by thefonz

See above, ive updated my post - if I didnt already have a loptop the Hp above would be my weapon of choice, I was surprised by the spec and features for the cash - and its brand new like... awesome little device. The only thing i would do though, as its a Hp it will come with all of their bloatware which any self discerning pc user would uninstall.

Ah ok, well you will be able to salvage the Ram and the HDD from it.

Al_B on 4/3/2010 at 23:52

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

(http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/product/41862/HP-Pavilion-Notebook-DV2-1115EA-AMD-Athlon-Neo?source=googleps) £339 - 12.1" (1280*800), AMD Neo 1.6ghz, Ati HD3410 GFX(will play T3, Doom3, TDM, etc), 2GB ram, 250Gb HDD, Magnesium chassis - 1.7kgs, 3x USB ports, WiFi Bluetooth, Vista Home premium, 4hr battery life

That's a very good price for that laptop - it's normally closer to £500. I would possibly argue that the battery life and larger size are not as good as an optimised netbook but I guess it's down to what you're looking for.

Pardoner on 5/3/2010 at 02:23

I've been using an Asus N10J as my portable. And it's generally fantastic. As far as gaming, it can even handle Call of Pripyat (barely, though). If I got rid of Vista, it might do very well.

The downsides are no internal DVD, and a tiny max resolution (1024x600). I think I paid 750 USD for it, which I imagine is something like £400.