aug 26th, 2009
folks, thanks for all your input on this topic. someone mentioned the forthcoming nokia netbook with 12 hr battery life, but we shall have to wait and see. but the price i heard was steep: $799.
i have narrowed my choices down to the following:
a) toshiba nb205-310 series at around $399
b) asus ha1005-pu1x at around $389
any good/bad experiences with these? the toshiba only has a 0.3 mp webcam and its speakers are supposed to be crummy, will this be a problem for me since i do a lot of skype talking to friends and business associates?
the asus is supposed to have some problems with its power supply and charging systems.
both have very long battery lives. the toshiba has an accelerometer that will shut down the disk if you drop the computer.
some further questions.
1. is it important to increase the memory from 1 gb to 2 gb if i only intend to run xp home on these machines?
2. if i have an external flash/SD memory card, say 8 gb, how difficult is it to get the system to use this as additional memory?
5 comments:
RAM - The more the load, the better it is to have more of it. Upto a limit, depending on hardware and software limitations. Hardware - server machines have more slots for RAM. Software - For 32 bit OSes, the theoretical limit is 4GB and practical would be 3GB. 64 bit OSes can use a lot more than that.
1GB is good enough for office applications, antivirus and net-surfing on WinXP, but 2GB is desirable as more applications keep getting installed.
I am not sure about how to use flash memory as main memory in Win XP. Vista provides that feature out of the box, but I am not sure in what edition. Also, I have no idea about the amount of performance boost that it gives.
1GB may be good enough, use it for a while before you upgrade.
Flash cannot be used to augment the RAM in XP.
Both models have 600 lines resolution which is the main drawback with netbooks.
Accelerometer may turn out to be a life saver.
One minor drawback with long battery life is that the additional weight the 6-cell battery adds. It still feels lighter than a notebook.
Not aware of Asus power problems. Price right now is $368 at B&H Photo
I recommend more than 0.3MP camera. 0.3 camera is grainy and the colours are wrong. A side-by-side comparison with 1mp shows a dramatic difference. Also, 1 mp will give you convenient snapshots for sending off to conferences and the like.
Don't need >1mp, though.
Also, recommend at least 2GB. 1B is okay, but it will hurt when you hit peak load and your system hangs or crashes. No such thing as too much RAM. Wdn't be a prob with Linux, though.
I bought a acer aspire One netbook 6 months back in blore,manipal centre for 20k and guy has freely up upgraded to 2GB. Its one of lovely items I bought having used allmost all high end brands vaio,ibm,toshiba,dell. Its being used as true multimedia device rather than laptop as we can use it for making voip calls without any headset.even the integrated webcam is quite good.
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