On Christmas Eve I announced via Twitter the sad passing of Mrs A’s laptop. I was on the phone and from behind me I could hear the unmistakable sound of a hard disk in the throes of death. By the time the conference call had finished, the Windows desktop had disappeared and had been replaced by a black screen with the words ‘disk error’ (or something to that effect). Attempts to bring the old beast back to life failed. And it was an old beast – a single core processor of dubious ability, half a gigabyte of RAM and a hard disk which constantly struggled for space. For the best part of a year I’d been telling Mrs A we should replace it, usually in response to a complaint about it’s speed or the fact that it would give up it’s wi-fi connection at regular intervals.
The hard disk failure has now forced the issue, even if it might be possible to retrieve some of the data (most importantly the contents of Mrs A’s Thunderbird e-mail account which apparently contains items of incredible importance). Thus I started to think about a suitable replacement. Mrs A’s computer usage doesn’t demand a high-spec laptop – it’s mainly e-mail and Internet shopping – so a Macbook would seem to be an expensive option. Something around the £350 mark, with a dual-core processor and 2 gb of RAM is more than enough. I’m not being a skin-flint, Mrs A will testify to my Christmas generosity, but the cheapest option is a netbook. Would it be too small though? Would the portability be a worthless factor given that it would rarely, if ever, leave the house? So here I am considering the technical and logistical issues of a laptop versus a netbook.
Mrs A’s response… “hey, I could buy a Juicy Couture bag for it to fit in”. I rest my case.
I have an Acer Netbook at home and have been very happy with it. It is fine for email, websurfing, shopping, social networking, and such. I have used it to connect to work and check on things, but if I was going to be doing a lot of programming or intense photshopping, I would want a bigger screen.
Common misconception that you only want portability to LEAVE the house. Portability is awesome inside the house as well. My netbook is used on the couch or in bed more often than at a desk!
Oh – and I recommend the OlliePops netbook laptop bag in hot pink.
Much as I hate to suggest it, there is a big Apple event planned for the end of January where they will probably enter into the Net Book arena with their own offering for launch in March. It will probably be a big iPod Touch but imagine the brownie points you could amass if it as good as Mr. Jobs seems to think it is.
Only thing is though, can Mrs. A hold out that long? On the minus side, a bit of a wait and probably a bit more than 350 quid. On the plus side, a possible 3 month online shopping hiatus which could save you the extra money for the Apple.
I’d suggest a Samsung NC10, they’ve dropped in price and when I looked at the Netbook’s this was an overall top performer on most comparrison websites and Which too.
Spence
You may have heard the old dialog showing the difference between men and women…
Man: “What car do you own”
Woman: “It’s a blue one”
Says it all!