Netbook bleg

[adamsmithjr]

Dear expert friends,
AdamSmithJr's mother-in-law is buying a netbook. She wants to use it for email, simple word-processing tasks, and surfing the internets. She was about to go to Dixon's when in slow-motion I said, "nooooooooooo... let me see if there is a better way".

So: any perspectives on decent brands, whether she needs this Windows 7 she

Comments

[bateleur]

It's actually possible that she does want Windows 7 since it will probably be the same price as XP and be shinier and more hand-holdy. Good stuff for power users and good stuff for the layperson is not always the same stuff. This is particularly true if she's not ordering the cheapest machine possible (because the main downside of Windows 7 is that it is a bit more resource hungry than XP).

That said, I'm not seeing a lot of Windows 7 netbooks for sale yet, so if she's buying right now then XP may be the choice by default.

(Can't recommend any specific netbooks, sorry - never used one.)

[adamsmithjr]

Thank you, sir!

[triskellian]

I have an Asus Eee 901, which I'm very happy with - it's a nice balance of small and light with keys big enough to type on (although it takes a little bit of practice, and the keys are too small for people with big hands). I didn't like the version of Linux that it came with (Xandros), but that's mostly because I found it too simplified - for a fairly novice user it would be great, and not at all as scary as Linux might sound. And it worked seamlessly with my home wireless.

[adamsmithjr]

Thanks - are you sure about the Linux? I'm scared of it, let alone Mrs Monks...

[triskellian]

It's the least scary OS I've ever used. By quite a long way. Which was why I changed my mind about it - I like my OSes to be at least a little bit scary ;-)

[daisho]

The Eee PC flavour of Linux is pretty user-friendly from my brief play with it, I must admit, but as price isn't a particular object here, I think the familiarity of a Windows OS is probably worthwhile.

[daisho]

Asus kicked off the netbook craze with the Eee PC, and still produce some very competent hardware, but they're no longer necessarily offering the best products. Something from the Samsung N-series is, pound for pound, likely to be the best bit of kit. There's a considerable spec range to choose from, with the NC120 probably the best all-round choice

[bateleur]

it might be worth enquiring in the meantime if the N series machines are part of the free-upgrade-to-Win7 scheme

For a machine with no DVD drive? That might be too painful to contemplate!

[daisho]

Nah -- just share a DVD drive from another machine over a network and install it that way.

A pre-install would be better, though; there's no denying it!

[adamsmithjr]

Indeed - thank you sir!

[ocultado]

Dell has just launched the 11z and 13z in the UK - both come preloaded with Win7 (which is a good thing - I got to play with it a bit the other day), and are extremely light, and pretty, and I'd buy one. The numbers indicate their screen size (11 inches diagonal across the monitor, or 13). The 13z has a CD/DVD drive.

I have the Eee701 (a 7 inch), and while it would be fine for email and surfing, I think it would be a pain for word processing purely down to the size of the keys. Having said that it came to the Caribbean with me and fitted in a sandwich bag in my handbag. While the Xandros OS is (as others have mentioned) a bit of a barrier to people who want to do lots of things, it's very simple when you just want to open a Word-ish document, or an internet browser.

[adamsmithjr]

They'll like the idea of a Dell. They've heard of them... Thanks!