Netbook Questions

I'm in the market for a netbook (obviously from the title) and I've come across a gateway with an athlon 64 in it. The price is comparable to one with an N280 atom processor and I'm wondering in the board's humble opinion if getting one with something a little more performance oriented would be worth the $50 difference, of course it also has 2gb of ram compared to 1 and a bigger drive. I've been completely out of the loop with computers for awhile and really just need a basic bare bones type of system. BTW I have a 64 bit version of xp to quickly replace the 32 bit version it is shipped with....

Why the hell do OEM's put 32 bit os's on all the 64 bit computers???? Yeah this model comes with the wizz bang 64 bit processor.... but it won't be utilized at all.

Dell has 15% off all ther outlet netbooks with a coupon on slickdeals.net I'm just sayin'... I've been looking for another mini9 for my son to use, just under $200 is hard to beat. Personally I wouldn't want a netbook with a desktop processor and all the power it will turn into heat with the small batteries they come with. If you want performance a netbook is not what you want.

Because of the fear of compatibility issues between 32 and 64-bit operating systems, their drivers and software.

pigeon wrote: If you want performance a netbook is not what you want.

That would be my input. Let the netbook do what they do best (low resource tasks like internet, email, and light office apps, and little else) and they will rock hard. Trying to treat it like a hardcore desktop seems an effort in futility.

Minor thread hijack here:

My wife wants her own laptop. She mentioned that she'd like one like my sister's Netbook ("because it's cute").

Her need's are pretty simple: Internet, managing photo files of the baby and maybe some word processing. Should we consider a Netbook, or a budget laptop?

Yep!

The screens can be on the small side so managing pictures can be hard, but an external monitor could be used in a pinch.

Woody wrote: Minor thread hijack here: My wife wants her own laptop. She mentioned that she'd like one like my sister's Netbook ("because it's cute"). Her need's are pretty simple: Internet, managing photo files of the baby and maybe some word processing. Should we consider a Netbook, or a budget laptop?

The ones with a solid state drive don't have a lot of room for stuff like photos. The ones with a normal hard drive could be used for this.

I just got one, not my main computer but for portability. It fits in my notebook binder.

Because of that, I got one with a great battery life. I can get a good 6-8 hours of use before re-charging. I would assume a solid state HD would take less power and boost power life but I wanted to store movies and what not. I don't know what processor claims more power efficiency or if 64 claims more power efficiency.

Mine came with xp32, I shut down everything and it runs pretty quick. But, if you want more than web browsing, movie viewing (for people with good eyes) or light word processing you should get something else. If I'm at a table the smaller keyboard takes a few seconds to get used to but IMO is actually easier and quicker to type with than a full size keyboard.

I would put emphasis on power efficiency on every option, as opposed to power. I got a 2 gig stick for about $20, so don't let the stock memory make a decision for you.

Something super cool that I have not utilized, but mine has a COM port as well as super fancy blue tooth compatibility. What that means to me is I have a few options to use this to run data logging software on older cars and probably emulate or burn chips on the go.

FWIW, laptops have come down in price as well. You can get a decent one for around $300, $50 more than what I've seen netbooks go for...

I got my wife an Asus a while back. 160 GB drive and a 6-cell (I think) battery. I also have a decent laptop of my own that actually has surprisingly similar specs other than processor speed and screen size.

There's a definite difference in performance - you can see hers stagger once in a while. But she loves her little netbook. It's used for web surfing and iTunes almost exclusively. We took it to Australia with us and it was really handy. The battery life is fantastic, about 7 hours. That's a big part of the appeal for the device, and I would not sacrifice it for a hotter (literally) processor. It's just simple, easy computing. It's not the price, although that's nice. It's the convenience of it.

Her mom recently picked one up as well (a Dell 9) to use for writing up patient reports after house calls. I set it up for her, and other than getting rid of the usual Dell "helpful" software ("your screen resolution can be improved, would you like me to set your widescreen 1024x576 screen to 800x600?") it's pretty much the same deal. Better keyboard, crappier touchpad, smaller battery.

BTW, I believe MS's licensing rules only let OEs install XP on machines with no more than 1 GB of memory. That's why all the netbooks peak out there unless they come with Vista or Linux.

Windows XP is a good fit for a netbook. I've heard reports of them becoming very sluggish under Vista with any amount of eye candy.

I wouldn't recommend XP x64 for a netbook. Driver support is limited (even more so since Vista/7 x64 have stole the show) and there are compatability issues with some apps. The apps just aren't there to make x64 a clear advantage.