Netbook Became a Notbook
So I had decided on getting one of those netbooks. The idea of portability,and terrific battery life seemed just too great to pass up on, and the low prices seemed too good to be true. I had decided in a Toshiba NB205, which retailed for $349. I was gonna buy it online, but decided that it was worth the trek to my local B&M see it before purchase.What a total let down. The item appeared to be a hunk of plastic, and not even high quality at that. After a few minutes, this netbook thing was totally out of my system, and I wanted to look elsewhere to see what I could buy. There was also the issue of the Atom N270 processor. A while back I had decided that anything I bought computerwise should be dual core, and the Atom simply isn't. Wasn't the point of a new laptop to get something faster?
I rounded up the usual suspects, and decided to go through some online retailers sites looking for a totally awesome deal. At 10 inches it was only netbooks. At 12 inches I couldn't find much besides the HP dv2 which ran hot enough to toast bread on, and at 13 inches the price was going up, not down. Believe it or not, for whatever reason, at 14 inches, I stumbled upon a good deal, actually a really good one in my mind.
It is the MSI VR420. TigerDirect, as part of their back-to-school sales had it for $399 (they are all sold out now as this thing was a hot seller). It included a 14" screen, an optical drive, 2 Gb of RAM, and 160 GB hard drive. Best of all, this baby has a dual core processor, the Pentium T2410, which runs at 2 GHz. It is basically a Core 2 Duo with half the cache. The OS is also Vista Premium which I prefer, and not XP which for whatever reason, I detest at this point. As a bonus, the Windows 7 upgrade will be coming next month for ten bucks shipping cost, which sweetens the deal one step further.
I got it last month, and it has been a pleasure to use. While my 15.4" notebook rarely gets moved from its connection to the printer, this 14" model is often shifting locations, and is frequently on the kitchen table, in the den, or in the dining room. Compared to my 15.4" Acer, it is just enough smaller, lighter and thinner to not sit in one spot. In the end, the biggest competition to netbooks in my mind is real notebooks with more robust hardware. While I didn't get an all day battery life of a netbook, I gained, for close to the same cash, a much larger screen, and a more powerful computer. As I keep seeing netbooks increase the screen size, I can see why they keep growing up to something more sizable and useful.
Jonas
Labels: netbook
posted by digitaldoc at 9:41 PM
2 Comments:
Well let me piss some people off :)
I dont mind Netbooks, but if they get any bigger than 10" just buy a cheap laptop. You will get a ton more product for your money, even with a $450-$500 laptop compared to a netbook. Netbook have their place, as a secondary internet device, twitter device, etc. I can see netbooks being used for travel, but once you get into anything heavy duty, you might as well just throw the netbook out the window, as it will likely die trying to process that 3d image, etc ;)
I know of quite a few people that have bought them and they are now sitting in their living rooms, bedrooms, etc to be used every once in a while to look something up, get email, etc.
I think the whole netbook craze is out of hand! Why would you spend $300-$400 on a netbook, when you could get a 15.4" or 17" laptop that will do 1000X more for less than $100 more in price?
Mike
Yes, I always have to stir up the controversy :) They have their place, but they should not be advertised or even talked about in any sentence that has laptop or notebook in it ;)
I have to agree. Netbooks are a heck of a lot more compelling if they are priced $200 to $250. As they head north of $400 the cuteness just doesn't cut it.
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