Are all netbooks the same?

20goto10

Are all netbooks the same except for size and ergonomics? I've been researching and I'm trying to pick the one with the best quality screen, but I'm slowly starting to realise they all might have the exact same screen, am I right? I mean apart from size.

kikel

Sort of, You will find that alot of the netbooks share the same screen as in the are the exact same part number but they may have different GPU's running the screen

Alanstrainor

They will have the same screen sizes, but the main thing to keep an eye on is the battery life, as this can vary quite a lot. From 2 hours to 9 hours, and imo these machines aren't great without long battery lifes.

20goto10

Thanks guys. The strange thing is you don't see the GPU in any of the specs, not that I've come across. Which led me to believe they all come with standard motherboard, chipset and GPU.

Yes the long life battery is a must. I also plan on running visual studio 2008/2010 (crazy I know but I reckon its possible!) so I'll be looking to put 2gb of ram in it.

kkelly77

20goto10 wrote: »

Are all netbooks the same except for size and ergonomics? I've been researching and I'm trying to pick the one with the best quality screen, but I'm slowly starting to realise they all might have the exact same screen, am I right? I mean apart from size.

I have also just started researching which netbook to go for. From a quick look on the interweb most seem to have an Intel Atom CPU, 1Gb of RAM and ~160gb HDD.

I couldn't seem to find any with more than 1gb of RAM. Can they even take more memory in them ?

K

Evolute

Oh they can definately I saw a netbook in curry's or Harvey Normans before christmas with 3gb of ram and 360gbs HDD was looking for a decent one for the mother so I cant quite remember which shop it was in.
But you can certainly get different netbooks and online shops do not help at all you need to go into the shops and have a look because I have noticed that most pc online shops have a crap selection of products

kkelly77

Evolute wrote: »

Oh they can definately I saw a netbook in curry's or Harvey Normans before christmas with 3gb of ram and 360gbs HDD

What sort of price range Evolute?

Evolute

Oh sorry lol I'm off in my own world today haha.
It was around 450-500 but Id say it will be cheaper now in the sales(I say around because I looked at about 20+ netbooks that day)

novarock

The Acer Aspire one d250 is capable of running with 2gig RAM on one stick.

I have one myself, great machine, loads of battery life ~6.5 hours but actually working as opposed to idle. Ive had it since June and it has run seamlessly on XP.

In terms of ability to run Visual Studio I wouldnt know for sure. I use it to record multitrack audio with Cubase no problem though. Thats taking in 6 inputs simultaneously in very high quality. Ive had no issues thus far.

The screen has quite nice definition, but the graphics card is standard, so beware playing bluray sized files or trying to do any heavy video editing.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=477422

20goto10

kkelly77 wrote: »

I couldn't seem to find any with more than 1gb of RAM. Can they even take more memory in them ?

The majority come with 1gb but alot have the capacity to upgrade to 2gb, but they only take one stick.

Voodu Child

The Atom N450 is launching right now. I would say nearly every manufacturer will launch an N450-based netbook within the next month.

Advantages over the old N270/N280 include a modest improvement in performance and a fairly big improvement in size and power consumption (battery life).
Price shouldn't go up so personally id wait.

Dell have just thrown up their new one on the US page, and i reckon you'll see a lot of new models from other manufacturers over the coming days. You'll also see some cool stuff like the Broadcom HD video decoder (compatible with XBMC) so your cheap low powered netbook just got a hell of a lot more useful.

Karoma

Aye. Plus, there's a new Ion version due out around the end of 1st Quarter/Start of 2nd Quarter. Netbook spec's should pick up considerably this year - if you're in no rush, I'd say wait until ~April.

20goto10

That's the problem, there's always something better just around the corner

Voodu Child

Its true that theres always something better around the corner, and if you wait for it, there'll be something better again coming soon, so its often a bad idea to 'wait for new tech'. But in this case, new or refreshed netbooks are literally launching as we speak.

The Intel non-disclosure-agreement on the N450 (and others) ended on Jan 4th, and CES is running over the next few days, so pretty much every manufacturer is putting out new models. Check one of the tech news/blog sites and you'll see a rake of them, with more to come.

20goto10

It appears the wait is over already:
http://ireland.dell.com/ie/en/home/Laptops/inspiron-1012/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-1012&s=dhs&cs=iedhs1&ref=lthp

Thanks lads, you've saved me buying an instantly outdated kit

Now the only question is do I buy a dell or wait for something else. Dell have served me well over the years, I don't see why not. Anyone any experience with the Dell Mini?

tech

im in the market for a Netbook also, It looks like you can only get 1 gig of ram in this mini? Id like a 2 gig min???

ytareh

The 2gig of RAM upgrade made little or no difference in my NC10....a 92 second task took 90 seconds...big deal...

tech

ohh thats not even worth upgrading then

pontovic

Last year most netbooks came with Windows XP as they didn't have the power to run Vista, a resource hog. They were all limited to only having 1gb of ram and 160gb hard drive space max, as stipulated by Microsoft as a condition for continuing to bundle these new machines with XP.

Now that Windows 7 is out and running well on modest hardware, these limitations have been lifted and we will see a slew of new configurations coming, namely discrete graphics for better video performance, more ram and bigger hard drives.

Watch out for new hardware from AMD and Nvidia.