The Ultimate Netbook Buyer's Guide Comments

Great feature, I enjoyed reading it. I think if I was after a Netbook it would be very hard to ignore the Samsung NC10...

Thanks for that - it was interesting and thorough, i'll be emailing links to this guide for family and friends over the next few months!

Good article and very thorough. I bought the Samsung NC10 yesterday and was glad to see it finish with distinction in this round-up of netbooks.

The HP Mini 1000 however, doesn't seem to be the netbook that people think it will be. As evidenced on Engadget, it is pretty much the same as the good netbooks currently available, but only comes with a 3 cell battery as standard. If you're asking me, HP hasn’t done enough to make their new netbook stand out from the crowd.

I agree that battery life is one of the major features to look out for in a netbook - but the Mini-1000 makes up for it's mid-sized battery and proprietary VGA connection with a BIG dollop of style. The thing is just gorgeous.
This Christmas I'll opt for a Xbox 360 for the family, to see how things pan out in netbook land in the new year.

I's have to disagree. Netbooks are meant to be portable, and that means battery life comes before all else. A 3-cell just isn't going to cut it in a netbook nowadays, especially when the NC10 has such good battery life.

I'd rather have an ugly workhorse than a pretty brick.

Thanks for the excellent article. I'm planning on buying a netbook and its been really helpful in cementing that I want to get the NC-10.

excellent article summarising what we currently however it would have been great to have a section on what is possibly upcoming in 2009 and the direction that some of the manufacturers maybe taking

I'll tell you what direction they will be taking. 3G internal modem, higher resolution screens, bigger battery capacity and the new dual-core Atom processor. This can be seen from the individual news reports online and from consumer demand.

Excellent article. Has definitely helped clear muddy waters.

This article is crying out for a comparison table - which should of course note the keyboard layout. I amongst many people cannot abide the US-style tiny single-height "return" key.

Also, regarding the Wind and clones. I'm sure it originally came with an 80Gb HD not a 120gb, just like my Advent 4211. MSI have really fiddled with the components though; early ones used a different Wi-fi card and were not "N" compatible. They have also changed supplier for the touchpad too, it being made by Synaptics in the early models.

I think clone differences are mainly restricted to hard-disk size, though there may be one or two that don't come with Bluetooth. The Advent 4211 left out the slip case that MSI supplied with the Wind.

Not to bad an intro for anyone looking at buying a netbook.
I have an Advent 4211. At the time of purchase some months ago nothing else i had seen could touch it for the price.
It is almost everything i want in a netbook. It looks good, i like the basic utiltarian solid look and feel of Advent products. The keyboard is a good size and good to use. It works well as a netbook on the 3 network at my place of work where i wanted mobile broadband access. Its one big major flaw is appalling battery life.
Thats not enough to think about chopping it in though for a newer model unless there is one that is substantially cheaper with longer battery life plus that there is a chance of getting a good price for the 4211.
Spec wise there has not been that big a move forward (i think)to really make anyone think about upgrading to a newer model.
As the original 'Eee' was a revolution thats whats needed now rather then a steady evolution (like the new Samsung) so perhaps its time for dual core Atom, better graphics, etc.
Perhaps the killer device for the future is a netbook/smartphone - a bastard child of an iphone and an Eee 901? ;-)

Great round-up - nicely presented.
I am a very happy Eee 901 (20GB) owner and agree totally with your observations about the pros and cons - no doubting the whole 'horses for courses' thing, for me it was battery life and draft-n wireless that made it a no-brainer :-)

Well, I am delighted with the Aspire One. I just wanted a photo storage unit with Adobe Elements (which I have uploaded) to do nightly backups of my pics when on holiday. Just did 9 weeks in East Africa and was terrified that a memory card might pack in. So now I am going to use it for 10 weeks in West Africa after Xmas. Then we'll see how rugged it is. As for battery life,well I get to see electricity every 2 or 3 days so that's enough. Internet, occasionally if you are lucky but in Africa, much off it has the speed of dial-up. Horses for courses as I see it.

I love my NC10, but looking at reviews for the upcoming Sony TT (and I believe there's a review of it due here very soon) got me thinking...

It's the same weight as the NC10, but with better battery life, an optical drive and a bigger and gorgeous screen with a 1,366 x 768 native resolution. If they removed the drive, put in a slightly cheaper screen, swap the Core 2 for an Atom & remove a few of the other high end features (fingerprint reader, graphics card, etc) but keep the build, keyboard & the rest I wonder what price they could get it down to. I'm sure someone could do some math looking at the price of the components. Without the optical drive they could make it even thinner as well. It would be a "luxury" netbook (much like the ASUS S101) but lighter, thinner and better built. To my mind that'd be the "ultimate netbook"; come on Sony, join the party!

HK - Sony will not be joining this party; the TT series are the latest in Sony's long line of Business UltraPortables, like the Fujitsu P series. These are not Netbooks! The TT will be around 4 to 5 times the price of a Netbook. I suggest you go back to page 1 and re-read this excellent article.

I'm a bit new to netbooks. I've got an old laptop and am about to upgrade and so after a few clarifications.

I mostly just use the laptop for browsing internet (70%), uploading photos from my camera (15%) and itunes (15%). What's a netbook like for viewing media - I'm thinking particuarly things like i-Player etc.

Particuarly with this new Samsung netbook, it seems that a netbook would be suitable for all this and I don't need to spend twice as much on a laptop. On the rare occasions I watch DVDs, to what extent is a seperate usb dvd drive a viable option? Any good?

Very useful review - one question please: Can I replace the custom o/s with Ubuntu without losing any functionality?

Loved the feature. I really wish a company would come out with true netbook customisation options--so all we'd have do was pick 'n' mix as opposed to making it a game of opportunity cost.

As for recommendations: how about a netbook for a bit of a backpacking trip? My phone supports HSDPA so that can function as a modem--although I'm wondering if speeds over USB or Bluetooth translate well? Something sturdy and good for the simplest of image manipulations (cropping, resizing, adjusting brightness/exposure--basically stuff you'd do with holiday snaps) would be nice. And when needed, for the odd bit of video-watching. A good-size/feel keyboard is a must.

And to make this tough, preferably on budget :P.

Cheers in advance.

The Asus EEE PC 1000HE (http://www.trustedreviews.com/laptops/review/2009/02/12/Asus-Eee-PC-1000HE/p1) has a few significant improvements over its predecessor, the EEE PC 1000H -- most notably its battery life. Asus claims that the 8,700mAh six-cell battery provides a potential battery life of 9.5 hours; under normal usage conditions with the wireless enabled you could expect about 7.5 hours. Also, the new isolated-key style keyboard fixes a minor annoyance with the right-Shift key and Up-arrow cursor key position. So it's a contender, worth mentioning here in the comments because it wasn't yet released when this article was posted.