Trading it all in..

Ricky91t

Well im currently using a HP nx9010 its running on XP professional sp3 with 1gb of ram (128 shared gfx) and a P4 3.06 ghz processor and a 120gb hardrive.

I'v recently been reading up on the Acer Aspire One which has up to 1.5gb ram 120gb and 1.6ghz harddrive.
Basically I love the fact its small and will fit into the top of my camera bag unlike my hp as the screen is much bigger.It has a decent screen still and i can easily install Xp on it.
But is it really worth it?Will i notice huge differences?
Have many of you done this(on any "web book" for your average laptop)
Thanks in advance

ytareh

Get the Advent 4211 in PC World for 379 euro it comes with XP on it and is awesome .Probably better than your old machine !

Ricky91t

ytareh wrote: »

Get the Advent 4211 in PC World for 379 euro it comes with XP on it and is awesome .Probably better than your old machine !

Well thats thrown a cog in the works
Thanks for the quick reply,i'll keep that in mind

Alanstrainor

Well the pentium 4 3.0Ghz processor will be far superior to the 1.6Ghz atom as far as performance is concerned. The atom will draw a lot less power and so suits the netbook. Now, it all really comes down to what you use your laptop for, if it's just web browsing, and light office work and pdf's ect. Than perhaps a netbook would suffice, but you also have to realise that you will be staring at a tiny 8.9" screen the whole time which may be a tad annoying, and the keyboard will be cramped for typing up long documents.
Do you have a "main" pc/desktop to use at home? if yes, than any netbook would be handy travel mate, or even something small to carry around the house.

EDIT: With all that being said, i've found that i rarely use my "main" laptops cd drive and that i've been using my advent 4211 almost non stop since i got it! That has a 10" screen so is a bit of a compromise between ultra portability and usability.

Ricky91t

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Well the pentium 4 3.0Ghz processor will be far superior to the 1.6Ghz atom as far as performance is concerned. The atom will draw a lot less power and so suits the netbook. Now, it all really comes down to what you use your laptop for, if it's just web browsing, and light office work and pdf's ect. Than perhaps a netbook would suffice, but you also have to realise that you will be staring at a tiny 8.9" screen the whole time which may be a tad annoying, and the keyboard will be cramped for typing up long documents.
Do you have a "main" pc/desktop to use at home? if yes, than any netbook would be handy travel mate, or even something small to carry around the house.

EDIT: With all that being said, i've found that i rarely use my "main" laptops cd drive and that i've been using my advent 4211 almost non stop since i got it! That has a 10" screen so is a bit of a compromise between ultra portability and usability.

Im only 17 still a secondary student,so i do abit of typing not much mostly on forums like here ,i shoot quiet alot of photos so the extra 40gb on the acer is quiet appealing if i do any photo editing it mainly with Adobe lightroom(uses 300-400mb of ram).I do have a very high spec home pc but rarely use it due to my laptop!Also screen size doesnt bother me used to have a compac with a 12" screen and can hapily browse over my wifi with my mobile.I supose i really just want a nice running laptop

AlmightyCushion

If you really need the extra hard disk space then you can get an external usb powered hard drive for around €110 or an internal one for about €80.

Alanstrainor

Cool, i have adobe CS3 installed on my advent, i cant say it's the fastest way to photoshop, but it works!:p
I'll be upgrading the hard drive on my advent in about a week or two, i have a 320Gb drive on the way!
Anyway, i'd advise heading out to pcworld or the likes and having a look at them all, since there's a good few to choose from these days.

Ricky91t

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

If you really need the extra hard disk space then you can get an external usb powered hard drive for around €110 or an internal one for about €80.

Yeah thats true do most of them just run on 2.5"?I read that some compacts laptops runs on 1.8's and things

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Cool, i have adobe CS3 installed on my advent, i cant say it's the fastest way to photoshop, but it works!:p
I'll be upgrading the hard drive on my advent in about a week or two, i have a 320Gb drive on the way!
Anyway, i'd advise heading out to pcworld or the likes and having a look at them all, since there's a good few to choose from these days.

Oh nice i have that too but assumed it wouldn't be powerfull enough nice to know it will run though!Never though of upgrading but how will you be getting os over?Ghost it on an external drive?

Think i will have a look in pc world at some point maybe tomorrow

Alanstrainor

They're standard 2.5" drives so they are. I think the easiest thing to do would be to ghost the drive to my external, but sure, i'll see what the craic is when i actually get the drive!

AlmightyCushion

Yep, the 4211 uses a standard 2.5" sata drive which are pretty cheap at the moment. I got two western digital scorpios from dabs, one for the laptop and one for my ps3 that I should hopefully be getting on monday.

Ricky91t

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Yep, the 4211 uses a standard 2.5" sata drive which are pretty cheap at the moment. I got two western digital scorpios from dabs, one for the laptop and one for my ps3 that I should hopefully be getting on monday.

THanks for all the help,
Did a quick search on yahoo and found this
http://flickr.com/photos/28215772@N04/sets/72157606036255027/
A nice tutorial o upgrade the 4211 from 1gb to 2gb
Its growing more appealing :cool:

Alanstrainor

It's got 1Gb memory built in to the mother board, and one spare slot, which you can use to pop a 1gig stick to up the total RAM to 2gigs. Which is what i've done:pac::D;)

AlmightyCushion

Ram is crazy cheap at the moment so you may as well upgrade that.

http://shop4memory.com/products/ddr2-so-dimm.asp

Pick the "1Gb G.Skill DDR2-667 (PC2-5400) SO-DIMM 200-pin module" for €26. That should work fine and is great value for money.

Skittle

I went for the Advent as the keyboard is much better for typing on. It has a full size Enter and Delete key which makes all the difference when you are typing. There are a couple of things to be aware of though:
1. The battery life is short 2-2.5 hours, there is a bigger battery planned for later this month.
2. The drivers that are installed on it for the touchpad are wrong, it'll work fine, but if you want to use the pad to scroll, it won't work as advertised.
3. The installed WiFi driver is pants, upgrade it as soon as you get the machine.

Otherwise, it's an absolutely cracking machine and I'm very happy with it. I was intending to hold out for the Dell machine, then they released it and for the price, it wasn't as good as the Advent.

I do a fair bit of traveling on planes, and the Advent is absolutely perfect for it. Bare in mind that by the start of next year there's probably going to be dual-core versions of the atom processor.

Just on a side note, when I first got the Advent I was worried taking it out on the bus, my worries were set aside when I got on, as I saw two other people with Advents out and using them!

Ricky91t

Skittle wrote: »

I went for the Advent as the keyboard is much better for typing on. It has a full size Enter and Delete key which makes all the difference when you are typing. There are a couple of things to be aware of though:
1. The battery life is short 2-2.5 hours, there is a bigger battery planned for later this month.
2. The drivers that are installed on it for the touchpad are wrong, it'll work fine, but if you want to use the pad to scroll, it won't work as advertised.
3. The installed WiFi driver is pants, upgrade it as soon as you get the machine.

Otherwise, it's an absolutely cracking machine and I'm very happy with it. I was intending to hold out for the Dell machine, then they released it and for the price, it wasn't as good as the Advent.

I do a fair bit of traveling on planes, and the Advent is absolutely perfect for it. Bare in mind that by the start of next year there's probably going to be dual-core versions of the atom processor.

Just on a side note, when I first got the Advent I was worried taking it out on the bus, my worries were set aside when I got on, as I saw two other people with Advents out and using them!

Thanks, for that!

1.My laptop battery lasts half of that!Could buy a new one but 1 hour is fine for me
2.Will happily use a wireless most most of the time
3.This is my only concern!Whats actually wrong with it?bad signal or connection dropping all the time?

chris85

ricky91t wrote: »

Thanks, for that!

1.My laptop battery lasts half of that!Could buy a new one but 1 hour is fine for me
2.Will happily use a wireless most most of the time
3.This is my only concern!Whats actually wrong with it?bad signal or connection dropping all the time?

never had a problem with the wifi on my advent 4211. I connect to a few different wifi connections at different times and never had a problem, not even setting them up.

Also the scroll function is fine on my touchpad, works perfectly with every program (except google chrome but thats a problem with chrome which hopefully they will fix soon).

Great machine i have to say and may upgrade hdd and ram soon, may do the ram in a fe weeks time. although i must confirm that this does not affect warranty as there is some confusion over this

Ricky91t

chris85 wrote: »

never had a problem with the wifi on my advent 4211. I connect to a few different wifi connections at different times and never had a problem, not even setting them up.

Also the scroll function is fine on my touchpad, works perfectly with every program (except google chrome but thats a problem with chrome which hopefully they will fix soon).

Great machine i have to say and may upgrade hdd and ram soon, may do the ram in a fe weeks time. although i must confirm that this does not affect warranty as there is some confusion over this

I noticed that on a youtube video there is a sticker over a screw hold you need to remove to take off the casing!Nice to know it doesn't effect warranty.

Also i don't really need a long ranger wifi antenna built into the laptop iv allready got 2 routers in the house which cover it perfectly so range wont concern me

Skittle

Before updating the driver the WiFi was sporadic at longer ranges. With the newer drivers, its much more stable.

Alanstrainor

Skittle wrote: »

Before updating the driver the WiFi was sporadic at longer ranges. With the newer drivers, its much more stable.

+1, mine was the same, well worse actually, it would just drop the signal no matter how strong the signal was. But a quick download off the msi site had it sorted.

Ricky91t

Skittle wrote: »

Before updating the driver the WiFi was sporadic at longer ranges. With the newer drivers, its much more stable.

Sorry i read your quote wrong,though you were talking bout the wifi card

Ricky91t

Thanks all and sorry for the dragging up of an old thread, after almost getting a Acer aspire one i'll now wait till xmas and get the advent 4211

Allmightycushion how did the western digital scorpio install go?

And anyone out in a 2gb ram stick and disabled the onboard?

Thanks



(didnt want to make a new thread)

Alanstrainor

I didn't put a 2gb stick in, infact i had to remove my corsair 1gb stick to avail of the new bios update which incorporates up to 24% overclocking at the touch of a button. With the 1gb corsair 667mhz ddr2 on-board my machine would crash when overclocked, so i've removed it until i can figure out what the sceal is.
Afaik, it's not a common problem with it, the extra processor speed is nice though. Quite handy running more intense apps.

ytareh

OOOohhh got a link for that new BIOS Alain?!Was it a software based update or did you need floppy /USB drive etc ?Whats the story with the RAM problem and overclocking ...does the 24% make a diff in real world applications ?