Considering Replacing My Netbook
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Jonathan Woodall
May 3, 2012, 1:52:17 PM5/3/12
to AkronLUG
Right now I'm running around with an ASUS 1005HA.
I use it with a full-sized keyboard, monitor and mouse when I'm home, but I also use it when I'm out at coffee shops or the like, and occasionally when I'm out buying inventory for my used book business.
The battery life is starting to stink, and the hard drive appears to be on the way out.
I'm considering an ASUS Eee PC 1215B.
The Amazon page is here:
And the ASUS page is here:
Thoughts?
Primary application will, unfortunately, be Windows business apps (Access is mandatory for one of my business processes) and running Chrome.
Any better options in a similar form factor?
Bill Mayhew
May 7, 2012, 8:38:22 AM5/7/12
to Akron Linux Users Group
In general, Comsumer Reports magazine consistently rates Asus as one
of the brands with the lowest repair rates.
Having said that, this model seems to have more than its share of
problems. The split of reviewers on Amazon is about 51% positive and
49% negative. It seems some units have an issue with the touch pad,
but that can be fixed by opening the computer and removing a few tape
stips.
I have two inexpensive Acer notebok machies that I bought at
Microcenter and have given two away as gifts. They seem like pretty
solid comptuers for the sub $300 price point. If you aren't trying to
run a Windows 2008 SQL Server instance on your laptop, then they're
fine for everyday use. If you were break it, you wouldn't cry too
much becuase you don't have too much money wrapped up in the machine.
It is an admittedly small sample, but none of the four Acers I know
personally have developed any problems in the last few years of
operation. The newest acer has a very vibrant and great looking LED
illuminated screen. That is better than what I expected to get on a
cmoputer that only cost $279.
On May 3, 1:52 pm, Jonathan Woodall <tomjone...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now I'm running around with an ASUS 1005HA.
> I use it with a full-sized keyboard, monitor and mouse when I'm home, but I
> also use it when I'm out at coffee shops or the like, and occasionally when
> I'm out buying inventory for my used book business.
> The battery life is starting to stink, and the hard drive appears to be on
> the way out.
> I'm considering an ASUS Eee PC 1215B.
> The Amazon page is here:http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-1215B-PU17-BK-12-1-Inch-Netbook-Black/dp/B...
of the brands with the lowest repair rates.
Having said that, this model seems to have more than its share of
problems. The split of reviewers on Amazon is about 51% positive and
49% negative. It seems some units have an issue with the touch pad,
but that can be fixed by opening the computer and removing a few tape
stips.
I have two inexpensive Acer notebok machies that I bought at
Microcenter and have given two away as gifts. They seem like pretty
solid comptuers for the sub $300 price point. If you aren't trying to
run a Windows 2008 SQL Server instance on your laptop, then they're
fine for everyday use. If you were break it, you wouldn't cry too
much becuase you don't have too much money wrapped up in the machine.
It is an admittedly small sample, but none of the four Acers I know
personally have developed any problems in the last few years of
operation. The newest acer has a very vibrant and great looking LED
illuminated screen. That is better than what I expected to get on a
cmoputer that only cost $279.
On May 3, 1:52 pm, Jonathan Woodall <tomjone...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now I'm running around with an ASUS 1005HA.
> I use it with a full-sized keyboard, monitor and mouse when I'm home, but I
> also use it when I'm out at coffee shops or the like, and occasionally when
> I'm out buying inventory for my used book business.
> The battery life is starting to stink, and the hard drive appears to be on
> the way out.
> I'm considering an ASUS Eee PC 1215B.
Byron Moran
May 7, 2012, 8:45:02 AM5/7/12
to Bill Mayhew, Akron Linux Users Group
My roommate has the netbook you are considering purchasing. He runs Fedora 16 on it. I've used it plenty, I enjoy it and so does he. I was considering buying one but for my needs I ended up purchasing an ASUS Transformer TF-101 instead. Obviously you wouldn't be interested in that but the point is I didn't need a full netbook, but if I did I would purchase that model. I'm a pretty big ASUS fan.
--
Byron D Moran
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Bill Mayhew <wtma...@gmail.com> wrote:
In general, Comsumer Reports magazine consistently rates Asus as one
of the brands with the lowest repair rates.
Having said that, this model seems to have more than its share of
problems. The split of reviewers on Amazon is about 51% positive and
49% negative. It seems some units have an issue with the touch pad,
but that can be fixed by opening the computer and removing a few tape
stips.
I have two inexpensive Acer notebok machies that I bought at
Microcenter and have given two away as gifts. They seem like pretty
solid comptuers for the sub $300 price point. If you aren't trying to
run a Windows 2008 SQL Server instance on your laptop, then they're
fine for everyday use. If you were break it, you wouldn't cry too
much becuase you don't have too much money wrapped up in the machine.
It is an admittedly small sample, but none of the four Acers I know
personally have developed any problems in the last few years of
operation. The newest acer has a very vibrant and great looking LED
illuminated screen. That is better than what I expected to get on a
cmoputer that only cost $279.
On May 3, 1:52 pm, Jonathan Woodall <tomjone...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now I'm running around with an ASUS 1005HA.
> I use it with a full-sized keyboard, monitor and mouse when I'm home, but I
> also use it when I'm out at coffee shops or the like, and occasionally when
> I'm out buying inventory for my used book business.ASUS Eee PC 1215B
> The battery life is starting to stink, and the hard drive appears to be on
> the way out.
> I'm considering an ASUS Eee PC 1215B.
> The Amazon page is here:http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-1215B-PU17-BK-12-1-Inch-Netbook-Black/dp/B...
>
> And the ASUS page is here:http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_PC/Eee_PC_1215B/
>
> Thoughts?
> Primary application will, unfortunately, be Windows business apps (Access
> is mandatory for one of my business processes) and running Chrome.
> Any better options in a similar form factor?
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Byron D Moran
The University of Akron - Computer Engineering
IEEE Student Chapter Robotics Chairman
Matthew Shannon
May 7, 2012, 10:42:20 PM5/7/12
to Akro...@googlegroups.com
In my experience netbooks are sluggish and can be hard to type on for more than a few minutes at a time. Having repaired quite a few of them I can tell you that you have to be careful which one you get. The ASUS 12" models are probably fine in this regard, but a lot of the 10" and 7" models don't have full laptop sized hard drives, and some even have RAM built into the motherboard. The ones with the SSD type drives (4, 8, 16 GB usually) have mini PCIe SSD drives which are expensive for the amount of storage you can get if you ever need to upgrade. I have seen some that come with 1.8" hard drives (same as in an ipod) and those are around $80-90 for 120 GB. Netbooks are very light though, and usually thin as well. Battery life is also usually very good.
Have you considered a 13" laptop? Not much bigger but a whole lot more power. If you're not opposed to used I am considering selling my Dell XPS 1340. 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB Ram, 320 GB Hard Drive, nvidia 9400m, DVDRW, battery works about 1.5 to 2 hours. Windows 7 Home Prem x64 installed with key. It has a few scratches on the case and a bad headphone jack that I removed. There is a second jack that works though. $300. Where I work in Kent we also have a Dell XPS m1330 (1.8 Ghz C2D, 4 GB Ram, 160GB, DVDRW, nvidia 8400m, extended life battery, Vista Home Premium x64 installed with key, condition is nearly perfect looks brand new, $325) and a Dell Inspiron 1318 (2 Ghz C2D, 3 GB Ram, intel video, 500 GB Hard Drive, DVDRW, Vista Home Prem x64 installed with key, new aftermarket battery. $325)Jonathan Woodall
May 7, 2012, 11:55:31 PM5/7/12
to AkronLUG
Thanks for the response.
I'll bear your offer in mind.
Bill Mayhew
May 8, 2012, 2:31:10 PM5/8/12
to Akron Linux Users Group
I agree with Byron that keyboards on netbooks can be a huge
compromise. I recommend going somewhere so that you can try out in
person the keyboard of the netbook model you are considering buying.
Yes indeed, if you get a netbook with a solid state drive, the upgrade
path may be quite thorny. I bought a pink Dell Mini 9 that was a
close out deal at Sam's Club. It didn't take long to fill up the
factory installed SSD, which was only 16G. It turns out there are at
least two different form factors for mini PCIE SSDs and beyond that
you have to worry about whether it is IDE or SATA emulation. In the
case of the Dell Mini 9, there was only one manufacturer, Run Core, a
company in China, that makes an upgrade SSD that works reliably in the
Mini 9. It cost about $80 to upgrade to a 64G SSD.
Right now, I have three netbooks: Dell Mini 9, Acer Aspire One, and a
very old Asus EEEpc Of those, the Acer Aspire One is probably the
most comfortable as a general use PC becuase it has the best keyboard,
especially the best keyboard layout. The Aspire One also uses a
regular 2.5 inch mechanical SATA hard drive... not as speedy as an
SSD, but much easier to swap out if/when needed. The Aspire One is a
bit quirky in that it boots UEFI with only the BIOS emulation exposed
in the F2 setup screen. There were a lot of strange lock-up and power
managuement issues at first and it took Acer a couple of years to get
stable firmware delivered. I think on any modern UEFI based netbook
that any similar bugs have been largely worked out by now.
I also agree with Byron that unless you need the small netbook form
factor, then you can get more for your money in the 13 inch notebook
class. In a notebook, you'll get a regular mobile Intel or AMD
processor and not the Atom processor typical in netbooks.
compromise. I recommend going somewhere so that you can try out in
person the keyboard of the netbook model you are considering buying.
Yes indeed, if you get a netbook with a solid state drive, the upgrade
path may be quite thorny. I bought a pink Dell Mini 9 that was a
close out deal at Sam's Club. It didn't take long to fill up the
factory installed SSD, which was only 16G. It turns out there are at
least two different form factors for mini PCIE SSDs and beyond that
you have to worry about whether it is IDE or SATA emulation. In the
case of the Dell Mini 9, there was only one manufacturer, Run Core, a
company in China, that makes an upgrade SSD that works reliably in the
Mini 9. It cost about $80 to upgrade to a 64G SSD.
Right now, I have three netbooks: Dell Mini 9, Acer Aspire One, and a
very old Asus EEEpc Of those, the Acer Aspire One is probably the
most comfortable as a general use PC becuase it has the best keyboard,
especially the best keyboard layout. The Aspire One also uses a
regular 2.5 inch mechanical SATA hard drive... not as speedy as an
SSD, but much easier to swap out if/when needed. The Aspire One is a
bit quirky in that it boots UEFI with only the BIOS emulation exposed
in the F2 setup screen. There were a lot of strange lock-up and power
managuement issues at first and it took Acer a couple of years to get
stable firmware delivered. I think on any modern UEFI based netbook
that any similar bugs have been largely worked out by now.
I also agree with Byron that unless you need the small netbook form
factor, then you can get more for your money in the 13 inch notebook
class. In a notebook, you'll get a regular mobile Intel or AMD
processor and not the Atom processor typical in netbooks.
Jonathan Woodall
May 8, 2012, 3:31:30 PM5/8/12
to AkronLUG
I'd like to thank you all for your input.
Regarding keyboards, I'm on a 10" ASUS 1005HA netbook right now.
I plug a keyboard in for serious work. The onboard keyboard only gets used when I'm in 'surfing only' mode or answering very short customer service questions for my business.
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