Can you give me some advice about laptops v/s netbooks?

Netbooks

Laptops

Netbooks are smaller, less powerful, lighter and cheaper.

Laptops are larger, more powerful and more versatile. However, that comes at a cost – weight.

They are about the same. A netbook is far more compact then a laptop and very convienient, but disk space might be inferior to that of a laptop. Both are student friendly. And the netbooks cost way less. I’d go with the netbook.

I just bought a new netbook and regret it. The keys are too small for my large clumsy fingers, the white-on-black keys are hard to read and the screen is too small to read without a headache.

It depends on what you want to do on your laptop. Games? Graphics? Anything involving speed, power and disk storage? Stick with a traditional laptop (whose low-end prices are about the same as a Netbook’s). Yes, Nets are light, but they’re also highly limited, hard to type on, slow as molasses, don’t have built-in DVD drives. I’ve bought and returned three of them.

Netbooks are less powerful, slower, and have less storage and memory. Of course, they are more powerful, faster, and have more storage and memory than a five year old laptop. They are often lacking in things like DVD rom drives. It all depends on what you are doing and on the specific netbook. I could not have used one in college because I had to do a lot of programming and run some pretty substantial software, but if she just needs to do basic office tasks and access the internet, I like the netbook idea. I had a friend who had an Acer Aspire 1, and I found the small screen and keyboard didn’t really bother me, but I have small hands and good eyes. You can also get a roll up keyboard pretty cheap if she needs more real estate.

this might help

My only problem with a netbook was the size of the keyboard. I am used to a full size keyboard and it tough to touch type on the smaller keyboard.

Netbooks are very, very compact.
They’re designed for, as the name would suggest, surfing the net.

You can certainly word process on them, and listen to music. Generally they don’t have large harddrives, so don’t expect to keep your entire music collection on there plus games plus movies plus other software.

Their keyboards are painfully small (at least, as an adult male with large hands).

It really depends on what you need it for.

I needed a second system since I didn’t want to lug my tower, the 20“CRT monitor, and a few car batteries and an inverter to run the thing. My priorities were price (I am not rich) and portability.I had no issue sacrificing a bit of power since I planned to do all of my real computing on the desktop system. I also didn’t need the optical drive for the same reason. Besides, I have a USB enclosure for one if I need it.

I couldn’t find a laptop that offered me an acceptable blend of price and portability. And most of the netbooks I tried were anemic and sluggish. The Asus Eee was a joke, the HP Mini 1000 was pathetic, and the otehrs left me similarly unimpressed.
However, the Acer Aspire One was pretty snappy; it could do real-world tasks almost as quick as my tower so I went for it. It only chokes on stuff like transcoding a WMA into an MP3. It seems to play movies and run most games I’ve tried (System Shock 2, Warzone 2100, Fable:The Lost Chapter, and more) just fine, though Fable stuttered a little bit since it needs at least a 64MB video card.

I find most keyboards too large. I am on my tower right now and wishing I weren’t because of the keyboard. My netbook is actually considerably more comfortable for me to type on than any laptop or desktop keyboard, though that is a matter of personal preference. Also, the portability of the 8.9” version is pretty damned good. It’s literally ¼ the size and weight of my friends laptop. I can slip mine into a three-ring binder.

Laptops are better if you want (or need) a bigger screen, need something a bit faster (most people don’t need as fast a computer as they think though; imagine a little old lady driving a Ferrari at 35MPH on the freeway) and don’t mind the extra weight/bulk. They often have an internal optical drive, but I use my drive on my tower so seldom (I transfer stuff via wifi or USB Flash drive) I don’t really consider that to be a plus.

Which way you go depends on what your needs are. What are you planning to use the system for?

@Sarcasm I have 160GB and that is more than enough for my music collection, games, movies, etcetera. And I can hit the CAPS LOCK and the Enter key one-handed with ease yet find the keyboard fine. Like I said, personal taste. In other words, your mileage may vary.

I won’t go smaller than a 17 Laptop so the keyboeard is a good size to type, and they often have a good size HDD and a CD rom. they usually cost around $600 – 2,000.00 depending on the Frills you want!

@phil196662 I have yet to see a 17” laptop that didn’t feel like I was carrying around a paving slab. Maybe I need a wider lap…
Anyhoo, can you recommend a lightweight one (under 5 pounds) that size?

@jerv ; well, actually it has never left the house, but gets to be on laps! My thought is Go Shopping and try the keyboard First for hand fit! If she has small hands then if it feels tight for you then Maybe- I would figure that she’s going to keep it Five Years so not too big!

@phil196662 Mine moves around a lot, so portability is more of an issue with me. People are amused/amazed by the small bag I use as a “laptop” case. If I need a big screen, I can use either my tower or the VGA port on the left side of my AA1.

Next time I buy a portable computer it will be a netbook. Unless my phone can do it all by then, which is likely.

@Snarp ; but your phone screen is soo small! It’s always nice to have something nice to surf…

I want it for my daughter to be able to surf the net and to play games on. That’s really about all she’s interested in anyway. My work computer has everything else I need for the ‘grown up’ stuff.

@baileysmom12 ; then perhaps something comfortable to use that’s not too small.

@phil196662 I’ll buy a desktop for the house.

@Snarp ; Think about this thought… Are you going to Expand? add HDD’s, more CD rom’s or video cards? if your not going to do these then get a Laptop Because you can get a Bigger monitor and plug it in, then the laptop takes less space and can be stowed easilly instead of a Big Desk to deal with. My reason for getting one!

@phil196662 I can buy parts and build my own desktop a lot cheaper than a comparable laptop. Space isn’t really an issue. And yes, I would like to be able to expand and play around with the machine.

@Snarp ; Wonderful…The funnest part of computers is the Box of parts and wires, going home and Vohwallah-—beep—- first boot to the dos prompt!

Personally I think 17inch laptops are too big. But I want good power and space. So I compromised. I have a 15 inch laptop that has good speed and power. Also I find that the keyboard with the 15 inch is very comfortable and I have big hands. If I found a netbook that I liked that was fast and sleek then I’d buy it. But only for surfing the net. Possibly for doing some checking of documents I have and transporting them to different places like college.

Also a major plus people above didn’t mention that much, BATTERY POWER. Netbooks these days have up to 12 hours battery life!! My laptop barely gets over 2 hours!

@baileysmom12: you mention games, so I recommend a laptop over a netbook, but make sure that you don’t just buy a laptop, it should really have a discrete graphics card rather than an integrated GPU in order to run recent games at acceptable framerates.

@the100thmonkey True that! Of course, with a gaming laptop, don’t expect to be able to stay unplugged for long. Most of the ones I’ve seen tend to drain batteries pretty quickly (2 hours or less).

I asked a local shop keeper here; netbooks are smaller, display (monitor) sizes are 11’ (inches) / 14’. Netbooks don’t come with DVD/CD drives. They have everything else, not sure about camera. Laptops have larger display about 17’/18’/19’ (not sure about these).

I can’t stress enough how right @the100thmonkey is. If she isn’t going to be playing graphic intensive games, and if she isn’t going to use large specialized software on her own computer, then get a netbook. But if she is going to play graphic intensive games, then just buying any old laptop is not going to cut it. It must have a quality discrete graphics card. Manufacturers will try to make it look like their machine has a discrete graphics card, when in fact it is integrated with the CPU. This is not acceptable for graphics intensive operations like gaming, video editing, etc. If this is important to you, pay very close attention to the graphics card.

@Snarp The way I see it, if you’re doing that sort of stuff then maybe a desktop system is a better choice anyways. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen a decent portable video card yet though.
And by decent, I don’t mean strictly performance. Most of the desktop video cards I’ve seen have heat sinks about half the size/weight of a netbook and draw enough to suck a laptop battery dry in minutes. Travelling from wall socket to wall socket pretty much defeats the purpose of a laptop as far as I am concerned, and that doesn’t count the lapwarming factor

Her Answerbag profile says that her daughter is 11. I don’t think she’s going to be worrying about playing Crysis on max. I don’t know what 11-year-old girls do play though. I was playing Diablo 2 at that age.

@Sarcasm I think I was playing on my (then new) Vic-20 at that age. My netbook could handle Diablo 2 so maybe the graphics capability isn’t a real issue.

When I was 11 I was playing Zork on my first generation PC.

Netbooks suck. The End !

Great contribution…

I am very happy with my laptop. I got from costo.com.