Great deal on a netbook

[Kompresshun]

Woot.com has a Acer Aspire One 10.1” Netbook with Windows 7 Starter for $219.99. I ordered a red one for my wife this morning to replace her old laptop, thought i'd pass the good deal along to everybody here in case anyone else is looking for one. My supervisor has one of them and they're a pretty nice netbook for the money, that and $219.99 is a steal for a netbook in general

[AppleBonker]

FWIW, the three cell battery is pretty pitiful. The netbook is supposed to be extremely portable, and therefor should have a good battery. The price is still decent, but an upgraded battery would make it much better. My netbook with a 6-cell battery will last between 8 and 10 hours depending on how much I'm doing with it. Upgrading the battery might make the cost a wash in comparison to am un-used netbook with larger battery from amazon. Just something to keep in mind.

[Kompresshun]

FWIW, the three cell battery is pretty pitiful. The netbook is supposed to be extremely portable, and therefor should have a good battery. The price is still decent, but an upgraded battery would make it much better. My netbook with a 6-cell battery will last between 8 and 10 hours depending on how much I'm doing with it. Upgrading the battery might make the cost a wash in comparison to am un-used netbook with larger battery from amazon. Just something to keep in mind.

Thanks for the info, I didn't pay much attention to the battery in this case but my wife keeps her computer plugged up by the couch most of the time unless she takes it in the kitchen for a recipe or something. Her laptop crapped out last night and it's been on it's last leg for a while, so she told me to order her a netbook. I wasn't to fond of it having Windows 7 starter on it either but i'll probably just put Ubuntu on it and call it good instead of paying for the upgrade. If it were for myself I probably would've been more picky...

I will be purchasing one for myself soon as well though, so i'll make sure to get a 6 cell with mine when I get it. I like for my stuff to be portable, my laptop has a 12 cell battery in it for that same reason. I love the fact I can leave my laptop unplugged nearly the whole weekend without charging it.

I'm really tempted to get an iPad though since they're going to be adding multi-tasking but i'm not sure if I want to shell out that much for it vs the cost of a netbook to achieve a similar need.

[AppleBonker]

I've got both a netbook and the iPad. I would strongly recommend the netbook over the iPad. The netbook is far more functional. I would consider the netbook more of a necessity while the iPad is a luxury. My netbook is an Asus eee running Ubuntu (desktop version, not NBR) and it runs quite well. Not sure how easy it is to install on a Acer A1, but I imagine it wouldn't be too terrible. Win 7 ran well enough on my netbook, but that was only in testing the RC before the OS was released. For what most netbooks are used for, some flavor of Linux is ideal, IMO.

[Kompresshun]

I've got both a netbook and the iPad. I would strongly recommend the netbook over the iPad. The netbook is far more functional. I would consider the netbook more of a necessity while the iPad is a luxury. My netbook is an Asus eee running Ubuntu (desktop version, not NBR) and it runs quite well. Not sure how easy it is to install on a Acer A1, but I imagine it wouldn't be too terrible. Win 7 ran well enough on my netbook, but that was only in testing the RC before the OS was released. For what most netbooks are used for, some flavor of Linux is ideal, IMO.

Thanks for the recommendation, the iPad looks like a cool device but I agree that a netbook is more useful, plus I already have an iPod touch that barely ever gets used for more than it's music playing abilities so I doubt that the iPad would get treated much differently. I do web & graphic design so I want something I can keep in the living room when I want to browse the net, maybe do some admin stuff on websites, and e-mail so I don't have to bust out my 17" laptop every time I want to do any of that.

I've got Windows 7 & Ubuntu on my laptop and I can't even see what the use of the NBR version really is, it's not that bulky of an OS. I was planning on trying the desktop version first anyways but it's nice to know that it works well on the netbook for sure. Have you tried to installer for Ubunutu yet? I used it for my laptop and it's pretty awesome... A few clicks and it sets up your partitions for you and sets up a dual boot all in a few minutes. I'm not sure if it works the same on the netbooks but I was very impressed with it.

[sentrastace]

woot.com is the place to be....

[Kompresshun]

woot.com is the place to be....

That it is, between Woot.com and CheapStingyBargains.com, I don't see how I have any money at all

[Alfador]

For what it's worth...

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09 ... 4th.place/

ASUS is by far the best for netbooks and laptops, and Acer is one of the worst, down with HP and gateway. Netbooks already have a higher failure rate do to a combination of trying to cram all those components into a tiny form factor and the relative cheapness of the mass production process as well.

I'd recommend that no amount of money saved on an Acer is worth the potential hassle but I'm just a stickler for that kind of stuff.

[Kompresshun]

For what it's worth...

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09 ... 4th.place/

ASUS is by far the best for netbooks and laptops, and Acer is one of the worst, down with HP and gateway. Netbooks already have a higher failure rate do to a combination of trying to cram all those components into a tiny form factor and the relative cheapness of the mass production process as well.

I'd recommend that no amount of money saved on an Acer is worth the potential hassle but I'm just a stickler for that kind of stuff.

Nice to see that Toshiba is right there with Asus, I've got a Toshiba Satellite A505 for my personal/work laptop. I wouldn't ever buy an Acer for a laptop or a desktop but as far as a Netbook goes, i'm willing to give it a try for that price. My wife just browses the net and plays Farmville 90% of the time anyways, so hopefully it can stand up to that kind of use. I definitely don't want her to have junk but I think it can hold up to what she will use it for. I plan on doing more research when I buy one for myself though because i'll put it through a lot more abuse than she ever will most likely.

[Otto.]

IB4Jesda

[Captain Slow]

Cool. I've been needing something like this for a while. I've had my laptop for 5 years now, and it's almost kaput. Surprisingly, it's a Dell Inspiron E1505. The screen is dead, it's slow as crap, had the BSOD several times, had to reinstall windows 3 times. But it has been a good computer.

[RCA]

A33 this thread inspired me to buy a netbook today.
thinking-of-buying-netbook-but-t490710.html

Thank you!

[Kompresshun]

Cool. I've been needing something like this for a while. I've had my laptop for 5 years now, and it's almost kaput. Surprisingly, it's a Dell Inspiron E1505. The screen is dead, it's slow as crap, had the BSOD several times, had to reinstall windows 3 times. But it has been a good computer.

Yeah my wife has the 1501 and it's the same story, it's been nothing but an utter piece of crap. I've tried everything to breathe new life into it, upgraded from 512mb of ram to 2GB, formatted it and reinstalled windows, new battery & power supply and it still sucks. My wife finally said last night, "Ok, i've had enough of this stupid laptop. I give you permission to find me a netbook." which i've been trying to talk her into for over a year. She won't hardly ever buy anything big for herself so I know it's bad when she asked for me to find her one... Needless to say it was perfect timing seeing that one this morning.

A33 this thread inspired me to buy a netbook today.
thinking-of-buying-netbook-but-t490710.html

Thank you!

It's a good day to buy

Looks like Asus is the way to go for myself when I get one. The price is reasonable and seems like everyone likes them, I was looking at the Toshiba but it's nearly $100 more than the Asus.

[AppleBonker]

Looks like Asus is the way to go for myself when I get one. The price is reasonable and seems like everyone likes them, I was looking at the Toshiba but it's nearly $100 more than the Asus.

Yup. You said you use Linux, so I'll let you know that Ubuntu Karmic works out of the box on my slightly older 1005. I don't think there are many hardware changes from mine to some of the newer models, other than the cpu and possibly the HD. I posted in RCA's thread, but I swapped in a SSD and upped the ram to 2 gigs. Now the netbook functions quite well. I even have compiz running for some eye candy and it does a decent job.

[Kompresshun]

Looks like Asus is the way to go for myself when I get one. The price is reasonable and seems like everyone likes them, I was looking at the Toshiba but it's nearly $100 more than the Asus.

Yup. You said you use Linux, so I'll let you know that Ubuntu Karmic works out of the box on my slightly older 1005. I don't think there are many hardware changes from mine to some of the newer models, other than the cpu and possibly the HD. I posted in RCA's thread, but I swapped in a SSD and upped the ram to 2 gigs. Now the netbook functions quite well. I even have compiz running for some eye candy and it does a decent job.

That's good to know that Ubuntu works well on it, i'll probably run a dual boot like I do on the laptop. The only thing that has disappointed me with Ubuntu is the fact I can't get my wireless card in my laptop to work with it so far, so if I want to use the internet I have to be wired. I use Windows 7 as my primary OS but I like having Linux too, although it'll probably be the other way around with a netbook. I pretty much live on Windows for my day to day because I have so many programs I use, Linux is nice for when I just am browsing the net at home though because it's so lightweight and has so little issues.

Is there a big difference between the SSD and a normal HD? I've heard they boot up a lot quicker, but haven't understood the benefit of going to a smaller drive other than that. I'm sure the ram makes a difference too, is the ram pretty reasonable in price for an upgrade?

[AppleBonker]

Wireless on Karmic works out of the box on my netbook. It required some work-arounds on Jaunty. Not sure about Lucid yet since I'm not testing the beta release that's out now (or is it still the Alpha?). In fact, I'm typing this right now from my netbook on my couch over wireless.

As far as the ram goes, I think I bought my 2 gig stick for about $27 maybe. Newegg or other computer parts stores have the stuff at a decent price. Since my netbook isn't DDR3 compatible, it's running DDR2 which I believe remains cheaper for now. I'm not sure there is a huge benefit in Ubuntu since it is a light OS relative to windows. Using windows 7 in a dual boot might benefit a bit more from the extra ram.

For the SSD, it definitely makes a difference, but it is still costly right now. I've actually got 3 SSDs in my desktop (one running Ubuntu and two raid 0 running windows). I've got another SSD on my netbook. When I get the funds, I'll probably be getting a 160 gig SSD to run windows on my laptop, take the 80 gig SSD from netbook and use if for Windows on my desktop and then move one of my 30 gigs from my desktop to my netbook, one to my HTPC and leave the third for Ubuntu on the desktop. Now that I've used SSDs as OS drives, I'm going to have a hard time going back. The benefit on the netbook is slightly diminished as it only has SATA 1.5 connections. It is far more noticeable on the desktop. However, there was still a decent performance bump on the netbook. If you're planning on dual-booting the netbook, an SSD might be tough as 80 gigs will fill up really fast with windows and Ubuntu.

[Kompresshun]

Wireless on Karmic works out of the box on my netbook. It required some work-arounds on Jaunty. Not sure about Lucid yet since I'm not testing the beta release that's out now (or is it still the Alpha?). In fact, I'm typing this right now from my netbook on my couch over wireless.

As far as the ram goes, I think I bought my 2 gig stick for about $27 maybe. Newegg or other computer parts stores have the stuff at a decent price. Since my netbook isn't DDR3 compatible, it's running DDR2 which I believe remains cheaper for now. I'm not sure there is a huge benefit in Ubuntu since it is a light OS relative to windows. Using windows 7 in a dual boot might benefit a bit more from the extra ram.

For the SSD, it definitely makes a difference, but it is still costly right now. I've actually got 3 SSDs in my desktop (one running Ubuntu and two raid 0 running windows). I've got another SSD on my netbook. When I get the funds, I'll probably be getting a 160 gig SSD to run windows on my laptop, take the 80 gig SSD from netbook and use if for Windows on my desktop and then move one of my 30 gigs from my desktop to my netbook, one to my HTPC and leave the third for Ubuntu on the desktop. Now that I've used SSDs as OS drives, I'm going to have a hard time going back. The benefit on the netbook is slightly diminished as it only has SATA 1.5 connections. It is far more noticeable on the desktop. However, there was still a decent performance bump on the netbook. If you're planning on dual-booting the netbook, an SSD might be tough as 80 gigs will fill up really fast with windows and Ubuntu.

Yeah i'm running Karmic on my laptop and so far no dice for wifi, from what i've read Karmic doesn't like Realtek wireless cards though. I've tried to do some of work arounds but i'm not so good with the whole command prompt stuff in Linux. I'm not familiar enough with it to understand how to make it all work right. I'm hoping i'll have better work with Lucid on the wifi issue though.

With the SSD, that's what i've seen so far. They seem like they will be great once the price comes down but I don't have any complaints on load time with my laptop at all and the desktop isn't bad either for an almost 4 year old Dell. I could see using one for a primary disk but I enjoy having 500GB on board and 500GB external with me at all times in my laptop. I think it would be great for a netbook though since I wouldn't require as much space.

[Jesda]

Wal-Mart has an eMachines netbook, identical to the Acer except for the color, for $219 new. The woot deal is a refurb, but you dont have to pay sales tax with Woot.

[Captain Slow]

Wal-Mart has an eMachines netbook, identical to the Acer except for the color, for $219 new. The woot deal is a refurb, but you dont have to pay sales tax with Woot.

I am currently boycotting Wal-Mart. I haven't went in one for 6 months, and don't plan on going into one unless it's a life or death situation for quite a while. I'm perfectly content with buying a refurb.

[Jesda]

The current Aspire One has touchpad buttons set in from the edge making them hard to push. The previous Aspire One was more solidly built with a higher-contrast LCD and firmer keyboard with less flex. Its plenty powerful though, perfect for school and bedporn.

I'm currently using a Lenovo S10 but it has some weird quirks, like loud beeping in the middle of the night.

[Jesda]

And now its completely dead. ARGH.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Does anyone make a netbook with an optical drive yet? That's the real killer for me. Optical media is too convenient/prevalent for any computer without at least a CDROM drive to be of any real use to me. Music, movies, older games that are otherwise ideally suited to netbook use...all of them require (or are at least made simpler by the presence of) optical drives.

And don't tell me "real" netbooks don't have optical media. Atom=netbook.

[Jesda]

Rip it and run the image off the hard drive. Optical drives are power-sucking space-occupiers.

[MinisterofDOOM]

That's exactly what I take issue with: if the netbook is going to require me to also have my "real" computer on hand to get even the most basic functionality, it isn't doing me any good. Optical drives only use power when in use. Having one on hand when you need it is, I would think, better than being relegated to waiting until you get home and can use a computer worth its weight in excrement to do anything.

I've done the whole rip dance trying to get DVD-media games onto my old PIII dell. Zip contents to spanned file across multiple CDs. Do the dance, waste TONS of time. Stupid.

I completely understand the appeal of (though don't share the need for) a basic computer with ridiculous battery life and a tiny form-factor. But some of the packaging decisions of netbooks are baffling. Slot-loading optical drives have very small form-factors. Optical drives don't operate when not in use. I fail to see how not having one is a worthwhile tradeoff. The funny thing is, as gutless as netbooks are, you really can't ever make full use of even that limited power because the REST of the hardware configuration is so limited.

I mean, hell, what happens if I want to reinstall Windows? Does it even come with a Windows disc?

Portability is great...unless that portability means it no longer does anything I want to take with me anywhere.

[Jesda]

Almost no one with a netbook uses an optical drive routinely. That's like giving Prius owners a tow hitch from the factory.

You're overestimating the abilities of the Atom. Its there to run Word and Firefox or take the place of old single-purpose machines utilized as print, file, and mail servers on small home or office networks. The low power consumption means a $250 Acer with an N270 Atom will pay for itself after one or two years. I'm about ready to retire my 1.2GHz HP printing/shipping server with this:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.a ... 6883103228
Less physical hardware, fewer fans to keep clean.

There's a Broadcom mpeg processing card out there that lets netbooks do 1080 video, but its not very popular since 1080 video on a small low-resolution display is silly.

[MinisterofDOOM]

You're overestimating the abilities of the Atom.

Nope:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04 ... ok-gaming/

Manufacturers are undersupporting it. Atom's not that weak. Intel's GMA 950 is but not everything requires 3D power.
For comparison, take the PIII Dell I use expressly for legacy gaming (its 4:3 monitor and Windows 98 mean it'll run stuff my newer machines don't agree with software-wise). That thing is GUTLESS, but I honestly have more older games than newer games, and I can play a hell of a lot of them on it. I can't play MOST of those games on a VASTLY more powerful netbook because of that one single hardware failing: the lack of any optical drive.

Of course, the netbook would have onboard WiFi, something I can't even get with my laptop through external adapters anymore (no more win98 support ). So that'd enable me to play Steam versions of Half Life and Battle.net downloadable copies of Diablo II and Starcraft. But Diablo (1), Homeworld, Warcraft II...can't play those. And the Atom can certainly handle them.

You say optical drives in netbooks are like trailer hitches on Priuses. I say a netbook without an optical drive is like a Prius without seats.

[Jesda]

Optical drives are like floppy drives. No one frequently uses them anymore, especially when an SD card stores eight times as much as a DVD. You can install Windows XP off an SD card, but I keep a USB DVDRW behind a glass case in case of emergencies. Gamers usually play at home anyway.

You buy a netbook for portable connectivity. That's all the customer base wants to do with them. That's why they're bundled with 3G wireless plans. Your needs make up about 10% of the potential netbook market, and those people just buy a standard laptop for slightly more money or buy an optical portable. Its more pleasant to watch a DVD or play a game on a 12" or larger display anyway. Broadcom makes a PCI device that will allow netbooks to run 1080 content, but the low-res screens can't show it anyway.

Part of what makes a netbook a netbook is the price, not just the chip. You exclude items that users seldom utilize to reduce the cost, weight, and power consumption. The internals tend to follow a low-cost cookie-cutter design and use a common supply chain for manufacturing. A mobile optical drive would not fit in a netbook as-is, not without spending money to design the hardware to fit around the drive, and at that point the higher price makes it purposeless. Its far more practical to let the user spend $40 on an external drive for the few times he needs to install software.

If you want more features, it requires more design and more parts, which all costs money, and then it costs more to buy, and it stops being a netbook. Margins on them are so thin that its pointless to add a component that would only please a small fraction of buyers. At only $200-$300 per unit, you have to consider distribution and freight costs, and the added weight of a few ounces makes an impact on the bottom line.

Its BAD business.

[RCA]

I agree with Jesda

SD card readers in netbooks are your optical drives.
MoD you represent a small segment of the netbook market.

[Kompresshun]

Wal-Mart has an eMachines netbook, identical to the Acer except for the color, for $219 new. The woot deal is a refurb, but you dont have to pay sales tax with Woot.

I tried to find the eMachines netbook, they don't have it at any Wal-mart here locally and I couldn't find it online either. I'm happy with the Acer for my wife but wouldn't mind taking a look at the eMachine...

The nettop machines are pretty cool too though, i've been tempted to get one but can't see where I would really put it to use. I use my laptop for pretty much everything and the desktop fills the rest of the void. I wouldn't mind having one in the garage eventually to use for FSMs and diagnostics though.

As for the optical drive, I agree with Jesda too. I can't even think of the last time i've used an optical drive on my laptop, well other than installing Adobe CS last year. On a netbook I couldn't ever see the use for it though, everything I would ever install would be downloaded or stored on my desktop computer in the office, which I can access through the network and get to any files I need. That or i'd just throw it on a flash drive and copy it over.

[yourbullit]

i didn't really read everyone's responses but if you like to be able to change your wallpaper(desktop image) then you will hate windows 7 starter. cause for some reason it disables that feature even though when you right click on pics the option shows.


may want to upgrage