Foo - Netbooks?

Hey kids,

Did a mini-search and didn't find anything, but sorry if it's been done before... I'm at work so I'm trying to rush through this.

Anyway, anyone have experience with netbooks? I want to give one as a gift this year, and I'm looking specifically at the MSi Wind with Intel Atom. It's going to be used for general interneting, looking stuff up, emailing, no big deal. No gaming or music downloading or anything heavy like that, just the typical light stuff. Just wanted to see if anyone has any feedback about these little dudes. They sure have caught my attention... I'd trade in my laptop for one in a heart beat if I didn't download so much music. Anyway, drop a note! Thanks :)

http://www.hardwareinsight.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/msi_wind_black.jpeg

http://www.helpdesk.ilstu.edu/itunesu/images/ipod-touch.jpg

My wife uses an MSI Wind as a secondary blogging computer and loves it. She's able to access everything she needs with it. We did bump up the RAM to 2GB when we bought it. There's a YouTube video tutorial on upgrading the RAM. It took me longer to watch the video than it did to add the RAM. She also picked up a USB travel mouse with retractable cord because she hates trackpads.

I'm running an Asus Eee 900 with my preferred flavor of Linux on it, and it's fantastic. Some people find the keyboard too small, but I'm too sold on the portability/durability to give it up. (Besides, I have only about $150 invested in it, and it does everything I ask of it.)

I do download music on it, and watch movies, and do multitrack recording on it (recording 2 tracks at a time and layering tracks), in addition to the usual web browsing, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation stuff that goes with business use.

I picked up an Acer One at the beginning of the year for travel. 8gb SSD plus an 8gb SD expansion slot so it's like having 16gb drive. It's slower than my 5.5 year old emachines laptop, but it does what it is supposed to do. I've found it great for internet access, travel photo organization, basic documents (using open office). Currently has WinXP but I'll probably switch to ubuntu over the holidays.

And I disagree with the iPhone/iTouch comparison. The physical keyboard and greater screen size of a netbook really differentiates the two.

I use the Dell Mini 10 for taking notes at school and I really enjoy it. It is what it is. It operates pretty quickly. Has Windows XP and has enough RAM and storage to function well.

I have the MSI Wind and I absolutely love it. I have the one with a 120gb hard drive then I upgraded it to 2gb ram, which makes it comparable to my Dell Inspiron E1405 laptop. I use mine for pretty much everything--downloading music, watching movies, recording sound, and even gaming with some of the older games like Diablo, Sims 2, Starcraft (using the crack files so no need for cdrom) and emulators. Only thing I can't do is the newer processor-sucking stuff. As a person with small hands, I like the keyboard, and I find normal sized keyboards too big for me now.

I've been looking at them for a while as a traveling complement to my desktop. The ASUS Eee PC 1005 and the Samsung NC10 are two that have caught my eye. I know of no major complaints about the MSI Wind series either.

I personally wouldn't trade a laptop for one because of the limited processing power, but it would be great to have on the road when I don't need all the horsepower my desktop has.

A bit of techie wisdom: Most Netbooks come with the Intel Atom N-series processors (N270, N280). These were designed pretty much with netbooks in mind. There's a couple with Z-series processors (Z520). These are related, but more targeted at fully mobile devices (tablets, maybe smart phones). This processor has some neat stuff under the hood, but is optimized a little more for energy efficiency than performance. If you find yourself undecided between two similar models, one with an Atom N and one with an Atom Z, I would recommend the Atom N.

I'm not sure it's a big enough difference that I'd jump brands just to get it, but if all else is equal, go N.

I have an Asus 900 netbook...9" screen, 1 Gbyte RAM, 160 Gbyte HD, N270 CPU. I kinda wish I'd bought a 10" screen version, not for the screen, but for the bigger keyboard. Other than that, I really like it.

I just bought one with my wife. They are all pretty similar spec wise save for battery life; Asus seems to win by a long shot. Also upgrading to 2gb of RAM is cheap and makes a huge difference.

I just bought one with my wife. They are all pretty similar spec wise save for battery life; Asus seems to win by a long shot..The sticker on my Asus says 5 hours...but the computer's software far more accurately says about 3:30 on a full charge.

The sticker on my Asus says 5 hours...but the computer's software far more accurately says about 3:30 on a full charge.

My wife's Asus 1005HA gets over 9 hours of real time use; 6 and something for watching films.

My wife is a Sony freak, so she had to spend the extra $ to get the Sony. The good thing was that she was in Japan and found a Sony with XP instead of @#!& Vista. She loves it; hasn't touched her other laptops in quite some time.

How's the wifi connectivity on these? Do they pick up well? He'll be using this both at home with our wifi and out and about... coffee shops, Panera, bars that have wifi :), etc.

The Sony works just the same as any other laptop. So does my friend's HP that we gave her for graduation.

How's the wifi connectivity on these? Do they pick up well? He'll be using this both at home with our wifi and out and about... coffee shops, Panera, bars that have wifi :), etc.

My wife's Asus works great. It was easy to pick up a connection outside of coffee shops at night.

How's the wifi connectivity on these? Do they pick up well? He'll be using this both at home with our wifi and out and about... coffee shops, Panera, bars that have wifi :), etc.

Can only answer for my Acer, but I've had no problems picking up signals in hotels, coffee shops, airports in US, Germany & Italy.

When she was using an Eee PC 2G Surf running Linux, my wife had issues with connecting to WiFi. Now that I use it, I've installed XP Pro on it and have no WiFi issues.

The only issue she's had with the MSI Wind is at a specific location, where pretty much everyone had issues with it, regardless of device.