I am about due for a new computer so I started looking around a bit. I saw an Acer Aspire Netbook at WalMart and they seem perfect. They are very portable and cost around $200.00. I mostly use the computer for the internet, I Tunes and occasionally word processing. The only drawback to these that I can see is that they come with a somewhat small 250GB HD and no CD or DVD player but I am assuming that these can be added or upgraded later. Anybody have any experience with these? Are they wifi ready out of the box? The other question I have is are they reliable? I have thousands of songs I don't want to lose so I want something with a very reliable HD. I have tried online backup services but they are slow and storing thousands of songs can be costly.
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I've been using a netbook almost exclusively lately. I love mine. I've had it since 2008, and though it has some minor hardware problems, the core functionality is fine. I don't find optical drives that useful, but if you really want one, you can get a USB drive. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 on my machine.
I consider netbooks disposable. If a $200 computer lasts a year, you're even money. Anything over that is a bonus. If you're trying to do computing on the cheap, buy an inexpensive desktop, and use the netbook for portability. That gives you a home base for duplicating data, and full size peripherals for day to day use.
BACKUP YOUR DATA!! Computers are junk. Whether it's a 3 year old netbook, or a brand new MacBook Pro. They're lovingly assembled by robots in China, and shipped out without testing. You might be the unlucky guy that gets the beat computer. External enclosures are cheap, and you can get a 1tb drive for about $50. Buy 2 of them for redundancy ;^) -
Netbooks break down into two categories. Those under $300 that provide a basic level of usability and those in the $300-$450 range that try and be an ultra-portable.
First thing to consider is what you are going to use it for now AND in the future. Some things to get out of the way.. Netbooks are best when thought of as a companion device to a desktop computer or a stationary full powered notebook at home. Netbooks are good because they are light and the batteries usually last for 7+ hours nowadays.
If I were picking one up I'd look for the core features:
Dual core Atom processor at a minimum. Without this, even youtube and Hulu flash can be a pain
2g ram
I prefer a resolution above the standard 1024x600 personally, but that's just me.
As for backup, I of course back my core data up locally but any important docs I have I use dropbox for and keep things synced across my desktop, work laptop and my personal "netbook".
Try and stay away from Windows 7 starter as there are some core functionality of the operating system that are disabled. Keep in mind though that my opinions are of a person who might be considered a power user. My job relies of computers and I have a pretty narrow band of acceptability when it comes to notebooks.
I'd honestly go down to best buy or staples (they have great deals sometimes surprisingly!) and check out what they have. Think of it as a disposable device like lxskllr said and you will have a hard time not being happy with it.
One thing to keep in mind though... I tend to treat computer purchases as a minimum of a 2 year investment. My thought is that $200 per year on a device is a good bargain so I look at it like this:
Netbook: 2 years (keep it around $400)
Laptop: 3-4 years (Keep it around $600 to $800)
Desktop: 5 years (Keep it around $1000)
I won't throw any apple vs pc into this discussion because for what you looking for, everything apple is way overkill in price but I did find a great compromise device that takes the place of my laptop and netbook now. I picked up an Alienware 11x "netbook" and while it's heavier than a netbook, the battery lasts almost 10 hours on integrated graphics and compared to any netbook it just kills. Best Buy had an R1 (revision 1) model on sale for $599 and that's a steal of a deal for what that laptop is. I've not found a game yet that it can't play and I can easily run every program I do on my desktop on it while on the go. I leave it in my car and since I use exchange for email and dropbox, it doesn't matter what I do on any computer I use, it's all synced and ready to go where ever I am.
I could easily see this lasting me 3-4 years so it made sense to me plus it allowed me to trickle down the tech through the family
One thing to think about as an alternative to iTunes (which is a dog even on high end systems) is Amazon Cloud Sync. Buy one album and you can store as much music as you want on their servers per year and stream it. I keep my wife's 20 gigs of music on there and we just stream as needed.
After having to re-rip her music after a hard drive crash (and her not backing it up :P) I didn't want to have to do that again!
I realize that I may have complicated your question a bit but I think it's always best to go into any purchase with your eyes wide open!Comment
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Excellent advice! Thanks for that! I went back this weekend and they had a nice emachines desktop for $398 with the monitor and I am strongly considering that now. The netbook I was looking at only had 1gb of memory and was running on Windows 7 starter. It seems like the cost of a netbook versus a desktop are similar when you start comparing like features. I will definitely look at Amazon Cloud. One of the things that scares me about these cloud services is that companies can pull the plug on these.Comment
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What's wrong with the computer you have now?Comment
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The colors in the monitor are distorted and the 150GB HD is just about full. I was thinking about getting a new monitor and upgrading the HD but it also has a Pentium 4 631 processor with 512 MB memory so it would probably be cheaper just to go new at this point.Comment
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The ram's really the weak part. You should be able to get some used DDR ram cheap from Craigslist or something. That would be the only "waste" of money since it couldn't go into a new system. A new monitor, and *hd will transfer to a new machine.
*Assuming that's a SATA drive. If it's PATA I'd get an external drive, and use that for data. That would transfer to a new system also.
Edit:
Or you could just get a new machine :^D The above would be the most cost effective route, but if you really want a new box, you might as well get one.Comment
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I have had a couple of netbooks. They serve a basic function sort of well but for my purposes they seemed to try to be two things at once and did neither well. That being said if you need small laptop buy a small laptop and if you need uktra portable device then buy an android tablet or ipad. If you want a netbook still thouh I have one I was going to list on CL this week.
KenComment
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