Anyone own a Netbook?

[speedermike]

I've been looking at Netbooks/tiny laptops for a few weeks now, and I was wondering if anyone has experience with them.  I'm not a PC person, and I really am not that "into" computers.  I just want to be able to use one without lots of fuss.  I am working on a lot of new writing, and have to do a thesis paper for grad school starting in the fall, so I want something portable.  I don't need it to watch video or listne to music.  All I want it to do research on the web, and write.

I'm looking at the Dell Mini 10, and it seems decent.

I've tried out Word Pad, which seems to come with all PCs, and it's sufficient for writing.  I don't want Word because I have no need for Excel, and other nonsense it comes with.

Any thoughts?---Thanks

[efranks]

I've had an Acer Aspire One for a few months now and really like it.  This is an 8.9" screen with Windows XP.  The downside to it is the keyboard is kind of small and I have big hands, but if I'm sitting at a proper desk it's not bad once you get used to it.  I like the touchpad on it more than I like them on larger laptops but I also picked up a wireless mouse for it that works great.

If you are going to be doing a lot of typing on it then the Dell netbooks, especially the 10" version, have larger keys and are somewhat better for typing.  I looked at the HP version and the keys on that were also of decent size but I didn't care for the layout of the board.

I've also looked at the EePC netbooks and they were fine but looked kind of toy-like and I didn't care for them for that reason.  I think I paid somewhere around $350 for my Acer and that came with the larger battery and a wired USB mouse.

You can use Notepad or Wordpad out of the box with the Windows based netbooks but you could also download and install OpenOffice if you wanted.  If you haven't heard of it it's basically an open source version of MS Office and the word processor is compatible with Word and other equivalent software. 

The Acer has decent horsepower for what it is (1.6MHz Atom processor, 1GB memory, 160GB hard drive).  I like MS Office so I installed Office 2003.  I also installed GIMP and IrfanView for quick photo editing and an FTP client and FrontPage for website updates.  I updated my Imperial Holocron website from the floor of Wizard World Philly this year with it, worked like a charm.  The wireless network card has really good range.

The nice thing about the Acer is that it has 3 USB ports, built-in wireless and wired network cards and a multi-card reader.  I popped my camera's SD card into the Acer to upload photos for that web update I mentioned.  The Acer also has headphone and mic jacks, monitor out and a webcam.  Oh, and with the wireless network running, and the upgraded battery, I easily get 5 hours of use out of it before it needs a recharge.

   E...

[name]

I bought my wife an Acer One in pink for her birthday last January.  She lurves it.  Got the upgraded battery...definitely worth it.

It's decent enough...great for web surfing and light apps.

My only caution would be going into grad school with one, it may not do all you'll need it to.  What type of degree are you working on?  What kind of writing do you expect to do?  If you're doing a lot of research, especially if you're running any statististical packages, you may not find it to be adequate.

[speedermike]

Thanks for the tips.  I'm literally just using it for writing in locations other than home.  My degree will be a Visual Arts Education.  No statistics here, just lots of observations.---Mike

[name]

one other point of feedback on the Acer....tonight I was surfing on my wife's because I was too lazy to get my own laptop out.  Noticed that the wireless antenna must be weakish on it...where my laptop pulls a good to very good signal in the living room, hers waffled between low and very low from the same place on the sofa.

[Nicklab]

I may be getting a netbook this weekend.  I need to bring a computer with me to SDCC and I don't feel comfortable bringing my laptop.  I've been reading some good things about an Asus model.

[speedermike]

I picked up am Acer Aspire One...seems fine for now.  I'll see what it's like in after a few months work!

Thanks for the help

[Nicklab]

I picked up an Asus Eee PC the other day.  Not bad at about $300 from Best Buy.  It does what I need it to do and it's much more portable than my regular laptop.  But the big deciding factor was that it had comparable features/specs to bigger name brand netbooks that were considerably more expensive.