Any Experience with Netbooks?

[Gregoshi]

In less than two weeks I'll be taking an extended (7-8 week) vacation in Australia. My wife and daughter have laptops they will be taking but that leaves my son and I out in the cold as far as our internet fix goes. I've been kicking around the idea of getting a netbook for us to share during the trip. The primary use would be for internet surfing & email. What got me thinking of this was seeing an Acer netbook on sale for $230 (USD). I see they range up into the $400+ range which brings them into the price range of low end laptops. I can read reviews and such (and will) but does anyone here have one or has had experience with using one? If so, what did you think of it? Like it? Hate it? Somewhere inbetween?
does it perform fast or sluggish? How about surfing speed?

I was in Best Buy today and looked at a few models. Some were downright junky looking and their keyboard/pad felt junky. Then I saw a higher end Asus and that one looked and felt well made.

Anyway, I'm just looking for some real experiences to suppliment my reading.

[Xiahou]

I have a EEE PC (linux version) that I'm pretty happy with considering the cost of admission. When I bought mine, I went for a model with more disk space, but apparently the 16GB "Solid State Drive" was really just a soldered in SD card... which wasn't so great performance wise....

Nonetheless I'm still pretty happy with it- it does what it's supposed to. I can get on the Internet via Firefox, place videocalls via Skype and type papers via OpenOffice. It sometimes seems to bog down a little with multiple tabs open with Flash video, ect.- that may be due to the slow drive, but either way, I never expected blazing fast performance from it and it gets good battery life when unplugged. It would make a poor replacement for a proper desktop PC, but for a way to stay connected on the go, I'm satisfied.

[Chimpyang]

I have an Advent 4211 - which is a cheaper rebranded MSI Wind.

Specs are :

-the usual atom processor
-integrated graphics - struggles a little with iPlayer HD but ok for youtube and -watching lower rez stuff
-1 GB of ram - some have managed to up it to 2 gig though.
-80 GB HDD - not bad - not the greatest but it works
-Windows XP
-10in screen
-2hr battery with occasional wireless use - 2hr 30 if you save a bit

It's got a good keyboard - which is pretty nice to type on - only thing is that the Fn and the Ctrl are swapped - and it takes a little getting used to.

Pros:

Decently fast - dont load up XP with too much to do at startup and it'll boot quite quickly - you can always install Ubuntu if you want as well - both the netbook remix and the standard editions support most of the hardware as it is a popular model.

Wireless is better at holding signal than the MacBook pro what my flatmate has - you many need to update the drivers to the latest version manually though. The older one had a weird 20 min cutoff bug for the wireless

Good Keyboard - responsive - you probs want to have a go on one first though.

Standard touchpad design - I dont like the acer one's one with the buttons at the side - I am perhaps more clumsy than most though.

Cheap - I got mine at refurb for £199 - they are coming down more as MSI have released a new Wind recently and Advent have a similar copycat version - better batt life but essentially the same till better atom's come out

Cons:

Battery life isnt great

USB ports seem a little smaller than usual - my flatmate's USB stick just would not go in - maybe casing or whatever - but def. odd.

Charger is a bit bulky - not the nicest thing ever, but altogether the thing doesn't weigh much.

--------------
I love the thing, and it's been rated as one of the better models out there. Happy hunting though!

[Gregoshi]

Well, it sounds encouraging. A few annoyances, but that is par for the course with most things. Thank you for taking the time to respond gentlemen.

[Furunculus]

i have a lenovo ideapad S10e.

great build quality, second only to the HP 2140.
screen is an annoying 1024x576 which is problematic for running old games, as most need 600 vertical resolution.
but gaming on any netbook is marginal and the screen is fine for video and t'internet.

if you want more resolution then the HP 2140 and the Dell Mini 10 can be ordered with as 1366x768 10" screen.

the Dell mini 10 has a integrated chipset that is even worse than the typical GMA950 found on other netbooks, but does have the option of a GPS module which might be nice.

if battery life is what you are after then the samsung and recent 10" asus netbooks are very good.

if you can hold off then i would highly recommend waiting for the 11.6" 'netbooks' to arrive as they should use much better hardware platforms such as: nVidia Ion, AMD Athlon Neo + 780G, or Intel CULV.
these have the advantage of 1366x768 screens combined with hardware that actually can play most older games, even if at low specs.

[Gregoshi]

if you can hold off then i would highly recommend waiting for the 11.6" 'netbooks' to arrive as they should use much better hardware platforms such as: nVidia Ion, AMD Athlon Neo + 780G, or Intel CULV...

This is creeping very close to small laptop territory. Will these be better than the current crop of 14" lowend laptops? How do current highend netbooks compare to the lowend laptops? Or is a full blown laptop still better (general) capability-wise than the netbooks?

[Chimpyang]

I forgot to add - screen rez is 1024 x 600 - with support for a fudged version of 1024x768.

I can run MTW VI perfectly fine in 800x600 and HoI2 works okayish in the fudged version of 1024x768. (In that resolution you have to scroll down for the missing bit of the screen..not too bad when you can control game speed a bit).

Sound is alright as well - but the speakers are understanbly shocking. Headphones make it okay.