Netbooks

[Emmielu]

Considering buying a netbook but have no idea what i'm supposed to be looking for. Can anyone recommend a brand or specific netbook with reasons why you pick that particular one please?

Looking at specifications it seems they all offer similar performance. They tend to have an Intel Atom chip, or the AMD equivalent, about 1GB of RAM and either a 160GB or 250GB hard drive.

A mate has a Samsung something or other, and he loves it, as all he uses it for is surfing the net. Anything more onerous than that he uses his pc for.

For a start, you need to say whether you are familiar with Windows XP, Win 7, or happy to try Linux, and whether you want one brand new (200-450 pounds) or from Ebay/ etc (50-200 most likely).

I have found some Win XP Asus EEEpc 701 notebooks for around 75 quid on Ebay, and in a local CashGenerator / CashConverters I bought a Samsung NP-NC10.

The Asus EEEpc is really small, and light, but in some ways may be too small (screen scrolls up and down as not all of the window can be displayed at once, but OK for me checking e-mail etc). The Samsung is closer to a laptop and has a bigger screen.

Best get into a few shops like Comet, Currys, Tesco (perhaps) and see if you can play with any, to see whether a 7" or 10" screen would be what you prefer. Then you can see what you are willing to pay and decide on new or second hand.

PS Some older models may have only 4 GB or 8 GB storage (solid state drive, so it isn't quite as fragile as one with a hard disk in, because it is just circuits, no spinning magnetic disks at all).

Just took a quick look and popular 'names' like Dell, Acer and HP, all being sold in "buy it now" listings on Ebay for 75 to 125 pounds, depending on seller estimate of worth and sometimes down to the capacity of the drive...

Anything from 16 GB SSD (solid state) to 80 GB or 250 GB around the 120 mark.

Bear in mind most 'brand new' machines will include a cost of around 50 quid for Windows 7 which will bump up the 'new' price a fair amount from the ones on Ebay.