We (husband and I) are looking at getting ourselves netbooks. I was wondering what people like so far. I have done different searches on CNET and stuff, but I want to get feedback from real people. I want to spend $400 or less, it needs to be small and portable. It does not need to have a large hard drive for storage. We have a regular desktop as the "family" computer that is used for storage (500 GB hard drive is plenty). We need something that would be good to go to the internet (our college classes are all online, which we love). We are going to be apart for about a year, so we want to get something that we can Skype on. I'm have some knowledge with tech speak, so feel free to talk geek!
Thanks in advance :)
I know this is late, but after reading recommendations I ended up getting the Asus EEE seashell... and I love it! I have been working through all my college classes on this thing and it hasn't let me down. It just wouldn't work well with my router's highest security setting, but I got that fixed after some workings with it. It takes WPA, but not WPA2... oh well. It was reasonably priced and had lots of features. Oh one more thing was that it came with a partitioned drive, which I am not too thrilled about. I have figured how to unpartition it if that is even possible.
thanks for all the suggestions :)
I have an ASUS EEE PC Seashell. I wanted a relatively cheap, relatively small netbook mainly for the same purpose as you: Skype and Internet.
It is less than $400, has a really long battery charge and I am quite happy with it.
The only thing I wanted in addition was an HDMI out, so I can do skype and watch movies on our big TV screen. However we also have a laptop that does this, so it didn't really justify the extra expense.
Good luck!
The Asus EEE pc netbook wins hands down. I read about it and confirmed with both my friend, who is in programming and computer security, and also my daughter's father, who is a network engineer, that this is one of the best out there and an amazing value as well. It is super light (it's my 4 year old's laptop as she's used to seeing every family member having their own so she wanted one as well, plus she uses it to Skype with relatives), and she can carry it with her wherever she goes to watch movies or play with her computer learning software. It has won numerous awards and it's quite cheap for all it does. I think I got mine for $299 last Thanksgiving at Best Buy. The cover is scratch-proof so you don't have to worry about it getting ruined if it rubs with other items in your laptop case. It has a great battery life, the only con is being a netbook, there's no internal CD player, burner or DVD player, so if you plan to burn movies, play movies or music, you'll have to find an alternative way (like a thumb drive), or buy an external CD/DVD-ROM. The keys are a bit small so you may have to get used to that as well. You can also find small, thin laptops, but if you want something very portable and light and you can sacrifice not having a CD-ROM, then the netbook's the way to go. By the way, in doing my research, I did not find a single laptop that came close in price to the EEE pc, the cheapest started at $399 I believe, and you have to add tax and all so it will definitely be over $400.
I like our laptop WAAAAAAY better than our netbook!! The netbook was only $100 cheaper than the laptop and if I would have known how incredibly slow it was going to be, I would have just spent the extra $ for another laptop. We ended up having to buy more memory for it b/c it was so slow and so we ended up spending the $ anyway and it's still slow. Our laptop is a Toshiba and we love it! It was only $400 at Best Buy.
My future son in law is a computer tech and he said that you should stick to a small laptop if you are going to be using it for school. I also was speaking to a tech at Staples not long ago before buying my laptop and he said you can purchase a laptop cheaper then a netbook. Also that the netbook does not have all the features a laptop does. He said for the money a laptop is a better deal. My daughter has a friend that got a netbook for school. She ended up having to get a laptop. So if I were you I think I would stick to getting a laptop if you are going to be using it for school.. I wish you well...hope this helped..
I just bought a netbook from Best Buy in May and it was an .. Asus - Eee PC Netbook with Intel® Atom™ Processor - Midnight Blue
Model: 1005HAB-RBLU005S | SKU: ###-###-####
ENERGY STAR Qualified
Intel® Atom™ processor N270; 1GB DDR2 memory; 6-cell battery; 10.1" widescreen; 160GB hard drive; built-in webcam; Windows 7 Starter
The netbook have 7 hour of battery life and its good on travel. I have Skype on it and the video is very clear. Just looked at it and cost only 299.99 right now, but you may pay extra for warranty and things like that cuz I did pay for 2 years warranty because I have a 10 years old son and he want to use my netbook to look up the internet so better pay extra for the warranty if you plan to travel with it.
Otherwise, I am happy with my netbook.. took me a while to use it cuz the screen is so small after using a notebook but its less heavy and longer battery life which is good for me... just check it out. I hope I helped.
Go look seriously at an iPad from Apple. They're at the Apple store and Best Buy...they're amazing devices! It's big enough to see, has full internet plus all the fun apps.
