Tell me about netbooks

SN2005 · Tue 01 Jun, 2010 16.16

OK, so my recently (semi-)retired and ageing mother has recently started giving the writing she has always done as a hobby a little more attention. This includes joining an over 60s writing club. Anyway last week they met in the cafe in British Home Stores (and definitely not BHS) and I'm told one of the *older* ladies proceeded to show off her new netbook which was met with judgemental oohs and ahhs. She explained to mum what a 'thrill' it is to tap out a period romance whilst travelling the length and bredth of the UK on National Express coaches. Fabulous. You can imagine how won over mum was when she described how easily she can browse and write e-mails to her younger friends and family. Double fab.

The long and the short of it is, is that mother now wants a netbook of her own. She has always refused a laptop citing them to be too big/heavy for her (she's quite petite), but a netbook - why, it is the perfect size! After telling me all of this on Saturday, she has been pestering me ever since to find one befitting of a mid-morning liaison with her gal-pals over coffee. I have looked around and can see very little variation in the specs, but I defer to your greater knowledge. Is there a brand particularly well known for it's build quality? I fear she may be a little bit heavy handed with the keyboard. Any horror stories of models to steer clear of?

Also, a couple of years ago Dad got fed up with windows and installed Ubuntu, they have been very happy ever since as it's intuitive for mum to use and Dad has had the opportunity to explore his geeky side with code etc. I see that they now have a dedicated netbook version of their os which would be ideal - out of interest how well does XP or 7 run on a netbook?

Pete · Tue 01 Jun, 2010 16.24

Samsung, without question, have the best keyboards. Given you've already noticed that there is bugger all difference between the majority of them the usability of the keyboard is therefore amplified.

The main differences are which version of Atom they use (the newer ones are faster obv) and whether they are XP or 7.

Also look out for offers, I got my netbook, a Samsung NC10, as it was being discountinued in favour of the n110, for £199 (so long as I spent £30 on Norton, which I then flogged on ebay for £20).

But honestly the best thing to do is to go into Staples, PC World whatever at fire up word and see which one is nicest in terms of build quality as there are some very squidgy ones (dell) that aren't nice to type on at all.

Jovis · Tue 01 Jun, 2010 17.16

Samsung N140 is what I have, and it's brilliant - but I echo Hyma, try them out yourself in a shop.

stu · Tue 01 Jun, 2010 17.41

I have a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v - it pretty much does everything I throw at it, the keyboard is 92% normal size and feels alright to use. The 160GB HD would take a while to fill up. XP runs brilliantly on it even with 1GB (but RAM upgrades require taking the whole thing to bits) - I wouldn't have thought Vista or 7 (basic editons) would be all that quick unless you upgrade the RAM. You can also stick Mac OS X on it should you want to. Again, try before you buy!

SN2005 · Tue 01 Jun, 2010 19.00

Thanks for the advice and pointers, it definitely does sound as if the quality of the keyboard is important so we'll be going to have a look at some later in the week.

Jovis · Tue 01 Jun, 2010 23.19

stu wrote:I wouldn't have thought Vista or 7 (basic editons)

7 has a special netbook edition - 'starter'.

Inspector Sands · Wed 02 Jun, 2010 01.11

stu wrote:I have a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v - it pretty much does everything I throw at it, the keyboard is 92% normal size and feels alright to use. The 160GB HD would take a while to fill up. XP runs brilliantly on it even with 1GB (but RAM upgrades require taking the whole thing to bits) - I wouldn't have thought Vista or 7 (basic editons) would be all that quick unless you upgrade the RAM. You can also stick Mac OS X on it should you want to. Again, try before you buy!

Yep, I've got a Dell Mini 10 too and it's great. When shopping around one of the things I liked about it is the keyboard which seemed bigger than most other netbooks.

Mine has Windows 7 Starter and it works fine. At one point they came with a DTT tuner which might be a nice extra, although I think that's been discontinued (it didn't work with Win 7 apparently).

bilky asko · Wed 02 Jun, 2010 01.17

SN2005 wrote:Thanks for the advice and pointers, it definitely does sound as if the quality of the keyboard is important so we'll be going to have a look at some later in the week.

This is a review for a Toshiba netbook - I only chose it since it comments so positively on the keyboard.

Philip · Wed 02 Jun, 2010 11.58

The problem with checking them at the shop is that usually in PC World and John Lewis, they're either running a Flash app which you can't exit or the user has a password.

Inspector Sands · Wed 02 Jun, 2010 12.50

Philip wrote:The problem with checking them at the shop is that usually in PC World and John Lewis, they're either running a Flash app which you can't exit or the user has a password.

The other thing to be wary of in shops is that the ones on display don't have batteries, therefore you can't really gauge size, shape and weight. The battery makes a lot of difference especially if you get a 6-cell one

Gavin Scott · Wed 02 Jun, 2010 13.24

Inspector Sands wrote:
Philip wrote:The problem with checking them at the shop is that usually in PC World and John Lewis, they're either running a Flash app which you can't exit or the user has a password.
The other thing to be wary of in shops is that the ones on display don't have batteries, therefore you can't really gauge size, shape and weight. The battery makes a lot of difference especially if you get a 6-cell one

Worth noting that if you're about to spend a few hundreds pounds in a shop - its perfectly acceptable to ask them to let you try a proper one out for weight and speed. If they say they can't open a box for you, tell them you can't spend your money there and walk away.