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Sub-notebooks?

i n c u b u si n c u b u s Registered User regular
edited July 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
So I've noticed a lot of buzz lately about these new "mini" notebooks floating around like the Aspire One, Mini Inspiron, and Eee PC. Excuse me for being late on the bandwagon here but can anyone kinda clue me in on these things? They seem really interesting and I am in the market for a laptop so the low prices on these things are really attractive but are they really something I should really depend on or should I just save the money for a full fledged notebook? Pros and Cons possibly?

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Posts

  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    What do you need in a "full fledged" notebook?

    Because I've been hearing "hey, man, why not just buy a real notebook" but I still don't get what these are missing. I mean, other than an optical drive. And weight and volume. Yes, they're not going to be gaming, but gaming laptops are for suckers: I know this because I own one.

    Anyway, I've got the new EEE 901 on preorder and if Asus ever actually bothers to ship out the hardware I'll post my impressions somewhere.

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  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    I have the original Asus EEE 4G with a 16 gig SD card and upgraded RAM to 2 gigs. I'm running XP and even play games on it up to about the quality of Morrowind. It's pretty much an awesome little machine that runs like a trooper despite low specs. It runs far better than you'd expect. Well worth it for me, the size makes it great to take anywhere.

    The main thing to look for is a low price, at least $100 less than a more standard laptop. This is surprisingly a problem among the flourishing subnotebook market, most manufacturers don't understand that the most attractive part is price/size. Instead they're trying to marginally increase the specs and make it cost as much as a normal laptop, which to me would not be worth it. You pay the same price for half the processor/RAM and no optical drive, with the low form factor as the only benefit.

    For me the original 4G was the best deal, and now that the market's growing so quickly I can sit back and wait for them to sort out this arms race and get the next best thing in a few years.

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  • i n c u b u si n c u b u s Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Well I'd really just need something to take with me to school (I'm a junior in college) and possibly use in class. Im a graphic designer so I'm not sure if any of these machines are ideal for my line of work but I really dont want to pay a grand for a macbook. Also I'd just be using it for surfing the web and puting my iTunes music library on it. SO all in all:
    -homework
    -Websurfing (youtube, PA, etc etc)
    -Photoshop CS2
    -iTunes for a 30G iPod

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  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Well, the only thing in your way, really, is disk space, in that there are few cheap subnotebooks that have as much space as that iPod. Find one with a hard disk instead of Flash, I guess.

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  • i n c u b u si n c u b u s Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Oh wow I dont know why I havent noticed this until now but these things lack a disk drive. Not that I'd be watching dvds or anything but running software from disks would've been nice. I guess thats why these things are so small. That might be a deal breaker for me...

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  • UncleSporkyUncleSporky Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    i n c u b u s wrote: »
    Oh wow I dont know why I havent noticed this until now but these things lack a disk drive. Not that I'd be watching dvds or anything but running software from disks would've been nice. I guess thats why these things are so small. That might be a deal breaker for me...

    I used an external USB drive to install Windows and software on it.

    There's also virtual drive software that lets you load .isos but that is more of a computer geek's thing and you need lots of storage space for those .isos as well.

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  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    i n c u b u s wrote: »
    Oh wow I dont know why I havent noticed this until now but these things lack a disk drive. Not that I'd be watching dvds or anything but running software from disks would've been nice. I guess thats why these things are so small. That might be a deal breaker for me...

    Eh, it's 2008; you can probably get by without after the initial setup. Or, y'know, get a USB DVD drive. You don't need to carry it with you, just use it to install stuff once in a while.

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  • Monolithic_DomeMonolithic_Dome Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    One thing to watch out for is that Intel recently released it's atom processor, which gets better battery life at the same performance as the kinds of processors that were originally in these things.

    The Atom comes on the new EEE (9xx series), Aspire one, and the Wind. Not sure about any others.

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  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Monolithic_Dome wrote: »
    One thing to watch out for is that Intel recently released it's atom processor, which gets better battery life at the same performance as the kinds of processors that were originally in these things.

    The Atom comes on the new EEE (9xx series), Aspire one, and the Wind. Not sure about any others.

    minor correction: The Atom comes on the EEE 901, but not the 900, which has a disappointingly short battery life.

    (This is basically why I'm waiting for the 901 to, you know, actually ship, given that the "release date" was like a week ago.)

    But, yes, the Atom is awesome, according to reviews. Apparently the 901 can get seven or eight hours on the battery, compared to two hours in the Celeron-powered 900. The Aspire has a much lighter (read: shittier) battery but still gets like three hours, apparently.

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  • i n c u b u si n c u b u s Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Daedalus wrote: »
    Monolithic_Dome wrote: »
    One thing to watch out for is that Intel recently released it's atom processor, which gets better battery life at the same performance as the kinds of processors that were originally in these things.

    The Atom comes on the new EEE (9xx series), Aspire one, and the Wind. Not sure about any others.

    minor correction: The Atom comes on the EEE 901, but not the 900, which has a disappointingly short battery life.

    (This is basically why I'm waiting for the 901 to, you know, actually ship, given that the "release date" was like a week ago.)

    But, yes, the Atom is awesome, according to reviews. Apparently the 901 can get seven or eight hours on the battery, compared to two hours in the Celeron-powered 900. The Aspire has a much lighter (read: shittier) battery but still gets like three hours, apparently.
    I was actually interested in the Wind but I'm guessing this new processor makes the price jump up a lil bit? Also where can you buy these things from?

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  • DaedalusDaedalus Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    The Atom is very new and Atom-powered subnotebooks are just coming out. The EEE901's release date was a week ago but nobody ever got stock for some reason, for instance.

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