A new breed of cheap and tiny laptops are appearing on the market - do these hit the mark for backpackers and travellers? A review of the Asus Eee PC 900 and some alternatives.
Jason - I'll add a little extra info;
Nvidia produce a motherboard called the Pico which has the 9400M ion and - upto 1080pHD on a HDMI port - usually Intel produce the motherboard for netbooks and it's hobbled compared.
Anand Tech Report
There are a number of netbooks coming out with 1366x768 screens - which stops websites putting out popup complaints about low resolution screens (btw: F11 is a really handy shortcut on netbooks - makes the browser fullscreen)
Lilputing - ton of stuff on that site.
On the 11+ inch netbooks - AMD is entering the fray with a processor called the Neo - I haven't read too much about it yet but should be interesting.
(but fair point - my previous list was sloppy and confusing)
Lesley - good choice - the NC20 was getting some really good reviews.
Reply to this That's a coincidence,
A mate of mine bought a HP Pavilion dv2 (12.1inch) last week which comes with the Athlon Neo MV-40 (1.6GHz).
On sale at $599 reduced from $899 here in Canada (with external DVD) it was a real bargain on paper, but still far from cheap for a netbook(By North American standards).
So for what it's worth, here's some in-depth market research based on Brett's new toy, one a week in: very sleek looking laptop which runs Vista Home Premium (64 bit) rather slowly. The fact that it came with 4GB of RAM is worrying since you'd think that would have sped things along a bit. Though to be fair, what netbook could even run Vista Premium 64bit?
Of course we're blaming the Vista. In the next couple of days he should receive the upgrade disc for Windows 7 and improvements are expected.
Anyway, I've got my final exams next week, which is why I'm on here writing about the processor in someone else's netbook;-)
Reply to this Oooh lots of food for thought. thanks guys. I've noticed that over the last 3 months I've spent enough money on internet cafes that I could probably have bought some kind of notebook by now! It's ridiculous! Free wifi in so many places is tempting too, but I hadn't wanted to lug something else around with me. I like your suggestions though!
Reply to this After much playing off retailer against retailer......
Reply to this Lonely Planet guides are great for size comparisons 😉
This is my baby I purchased in July this year - the 10.1 inch ASUS 1005HA. It has already survived an overseas trip; the lightness and smaller size of these netbooks compared to laptops is hugely beneficial when on the move.
One of the biggest factors in purchasing this model is that with the larger 6 cell battery I get more than 10 hours of battery life - and after road testing it for a few months, it is a genuine 10 hours, and it is not based on just letting it sit there without using any applications. Even with this, it still only weighs 1.3kg.
This battery life factor was important to me since any journey out of Australia (baring NZ and the Pacific) is long haul (at least 8 hours) so its nice to have that flexibility if I need it.
Reply to this That's the one I'm getting. Just hoping to get a bargain in the Jan sales.
Reply to this You wont be sorry with this choice Chris - the keys are really nice to use as well, plus setting up all the functions (wireless etc) and installing all of my programs (via a USB or the net) was a breeze - the whole lot took me under 2 hours.
The other bonus for me is the screen - bright with vibrant colours - good for sorting photos when on the road. The only minus with the smaller screen is that portrait framed photos look very small on this sized screen - landscape framed photos are fine. I just flip the photo at 90 degrees and view the netbook on its side to get a better look.
Reply to this Cheers. I love buying gadgets - brings out the geek in me 😊
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