Laptop vs netbook

[Criseyde]

Okay, so I spilled coffee all over my laptop a couple of days ago. Cleaned it out, it ran for two more days, now it's dead again. It doesn't have a battery, and it doesn't know when it's plugged in.

I need to get a new one, especially since I'm planning to take a class or two this quarter. But I currently can only afford a netbook, on my own. I can't afford a laptop. If I get a full sized laptop, my mom has to help me out. She's willing to, but I don't want her to -- I'd MUCH rather buy it myself.

But in terms of work -- my ultimate goal is to do instructional design, but it looks like I'll have the opportunity to start working as a consultant doing web design and writing stuff in a few months, so I want to brush up my skillz in the meantime (they are several years out of date, ha) and take that opportunity. My problem is that I don't know if a netbook will have that kind of capability. I have some knowledge about computers but the hardware has always been a mystery to me.

So I don't want to drop a few hundred bucks on a netbook that isn't even going to be useful any more in a few months.

Are netbooks just tiny laptops at this point, or do they have significantly limited functionality?

TIA.

[Merr]

The memory tends to be very limited. I keep running into problems with mine because of it and have to delete very basic progs like Adobe and flash player. Other people I know have been forced to buy extra memory and install it themselves to deal with the issue. That said, for classes and such, netbooks are brilliant as they're so light and easy to carry around everywhere.

When I had problems with the memory the tech's advice to me was that netbooks are primarily for typing notes and for browsing on the internet. For anything more, a laptop is better.

[Criseyde]

Originally Posted by Merr

The memory tends to be very limited. I keep running into problems with mine because of it and have to delete very basic progs like Adobe and flash player. Other people I know have been forced to buy extra memory and install it themselves to deal with the issue. That said, for classes and such, netbooks are brilliant as they're so light and easy to carry around everywhere.

When I had problems with the memory the tech's advice to me was that netbooks are primarily for typing notes and for browsing on the internet. For anything more, a laptop is better.

Ah.. then I definitely need a laptop, no questions at all.

Have laptops come down in price since I last looked?? I'm doing a bit of browsing and the prices are suspiciously low. Not that I'm complaining, mind...

[Merr]

Originally Posted by Criseyde

Ah.. then I definitely need a laptop, no questions at all.

Have laptops come down in price since I last looked?? I'm doing a bit of browsing and the prices are suspiciously low. Not that I'm complaining, mind...

I think they're pretty decent. I don't know if they do it where you are but sometimes you can get 'free' laptops as part of cell phone deals. You pay maybe 30 dollars a month and get a SIM inside the laptop so you have internet literally wherever you are, even if it's on a train. It's very useful. Might be worth looking into if you don't feel like you can afford the cash up front, but I'm sure you will find something affordable.

[CoolBee]

I've only had netbooks for the past few years and haven't run into any memory problems with acrobat or flash players.

The netbooks I have are far more powerful than the pcs I did my entire PhD on (which involved a database of over 1 million records and very many calculations) just 10 years ago.

I have full MSOffice, play full movie videos, have movie and sound editing software - eg Audacity and so on.

The only time I get a memory issue is if I have a file that is over 1GB in size really so not sure what size files you are likely to be dealing with? I don't do design work, so not sure what capacity you need for that. What might a typical software be?

IMHO the downsides of netbooks are: no integrated DVD drive - I use an external for that, but if you were using a lot of DVD/CD you might find that a pain - and also on one of my netbooks, it doesn't have the embedded number keys (ie NOT the top row, the ones that are the equivalent of a number pad on a normal keyboard) which i didn't notice until I needed them and which is more frequent that I knew!

[Criseyde]

Originally Posted by Merr

I think they're pretty decent. I don't know if they do it where you are but sometimes you can get 'free' laptops as part of cell phone deals. You pay maybe 30 dollars a month and get a SIM inside the laptop so you have internet literally wherever you are, even if it's on a train. It's very useful. Might be worth looking into if you don't feel like you can afford the cash up front, but I'm sure you will find something affordable.

Originally Posted by CoolBee

I've only had netbooks for the past few years and haven't run into any memory problems with acrobat or flash players.

The netbooks I have are far more powerful than the pcs I did my entire PhD on (which involved a database of over 1 million records and very many calculations) just 10 years ago.

I have full MSOffice, play full movie videos, have movie and sound editing software - eg Audacity and so on.

The only time I get a memory issue is if I have a file that is over 1GB in size really so not sure what size files you are likely to be dealing with? I don't do design work, so not sure what capacity you need for that. What might a typical software be?

IMHO the downsides of netbooks are: no integrated DVD drive - I use an external for that, but if you were using a lot of DVD/CD you might find that a pain - and also on one of my netbooks, it doesn't have the embedded number keys (ie NOT the top row, the ones that are the equivalent of a number pad on a normal keyboard) which i didn't notice until I needed them and which is more frequent that I knew!

Thanks to both of you. I think I actually can afford a laptop. I thought the prices were a few hundred $ more than they are. I've never bought a laptop before -- my last one was free, and it trucked for 4 years before its untimely run-in with my coffee habit. So if I can have a full laptop without resorting to my mom's checkbook, I'd rather do that.

The brands I'm looking into right now are Asus and Toshiba, but if anybody has a particular favorite brand (the budget is $600, so Macs are OUT), please feel free to weigh in.

Edit: I honestly like to hand-code HTML, it's much cleaner but programs could be Dreamweaver, Flash, possibly Photoshop.

[agsags]

Consider getting smaller, lighter laptop and hooking it up to a large LCD - especially goodfor design work (and portability).

[scotthegeek]

if your just take notes a netbook would be good but they do have a small screen and don't have dvd drive. I hardly use my laptop but I felt for $100.oo more you get a full computer but I'm a bit of a geek. I also thought the keyboard would be bigger and easier to type on. I'm not sure what to advise

Scott

[Aminka Ozmun]

Hi, Criseyde,

I use my boyfriend's old Acer netbook and it's been fine for just writing. He has Dreamweaver and Photoshop on it, too, and from what I can recall those programs ran fine but I think PS would slow down fairly painfully if not run alone!

My opinion is that as a web designer I'm not sure you would want such a small screen to work with, not to mention the limited memory. I think netbooks are really net, though, but I can't imagine any visual work on them!

Oh, BTW, be careful: as of last year, netbooks coming out with Windows 7 were using a special "handicapped" version of it, supposedly optimized for the more limited resources of a netbook computer. I don't recall that it was very important, the differences between versions, and hopefully someone more technically up-to-date can comment on this, but I thought I should mention it, FWIW.

[Lil Chris]

Aminka,
You're correct. It's called a starter version. I'm not totally up to date on the specs, but one would most likely want to avoid it for design/development work.

[BillyTheAdult]

I basically just had the same decision to make. I wanted a small computer for school and I figured on getting a netbook but when I started looking I could get a cheap laptop for just a few bucks more. I ended up getting a small laptop for literally $20 more than a netbook would have cost me ($349 instead of $329) and got 4 gigs of ram instead of 2. 500 gb of storage instead of less than 100. Full windows instead of starter, and a real dual core processor instead of the atom , which I don't know anything about that goes in netbooks. The laptop is only 14" so it's still quite small (which I wanted.) If it was me I would look for a deal like this. I'm much happier with this laptop than I would have been with a netbook.

As far as brands I personally don't trust most of the mainstream brands. I had an hp that quit after about 15 months, right after the warranty ran out of course. I tried to replace with a dell, that stopped working within three days. I exchanged that at the store for the exact same model which only lasted one day. After that I started doing massive research to find out what won't crap out right away and basically learned that when it comes to laptops almost no brands are reliable. Basically it came down to Acer or Sony for laptops if you want it to last longer than 18 months and sony is a bit pricey. Of course it's somewhat luck of the draw, and I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have had their dells and hps for a while. I ended up buying an acer desktop, which has been going strong a couple of years now, so recently when I need the laptop I bought Acer again. I also bought it at costco (my parents account) who doubles the warranty to two years and if you put it on an american express card (also my parents) they will add another year.

[Criseyde]

Thank you all. I have my new laptop now, and I'm very happy with it. (Or maybe I'm just happy to have a laptop again.. ha!)

[Criseyde]

Originally Posted by BillyTheAdult

As far as brands I personally don't trust most of the mainstream brands. I had an hp that quit after about 15 months, right after the warranty ran out of course. I tried to replace with a dell, that stopped working within three days. I exchanged that at the store for the exact same model which only lasted one day. After that I started doing massive research to find out what won't crap out right away and basically learned that when it comes to laptops almost no brands are reliable. Basically it came down to Acer or Sony for laptops if you want it to last longer than 18 months and sony is a bit pricey. Of course it's somewhat luck of the draw, and I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have had their dells and hps for a while. I ended up buying an acer desktop, which has been going strong a couple of years now, so recently when I need the laptop I bought Acer again. I also bought it at costco (my parents account) who doubles the warranty to two years and if you put it on an american express card (also my parents) they will add another year.

Really -- I did some research too, and found that the most reliable laptops are Asus, Toshiba, and Lenovo Thinkpads. My old laptop was a Thinkpad and it lasted four years (and was still going strong, except the battery) when I spilled coffee on it. But this time, I've bought a Toshiba.

I guess we should compare notes on whose lasts longer, lol!

[Andrew Brunelle]

I would never buy a netbook, only because they are really small. I like a full keyboard. I love my laptop. Cost me $600 a couple of years ago. You can always finance it with monthly payments. You could get a netbook, but it will be a compromise, and who wants to live with a compromise?

[nasars]

I bought a 10 inch screen, HP-Mini 110-3500 netbook with dual core ATOM N570@1.66MH processors, 320 GB HD, 1GB RAM for 350 US dollars about 5 months ago (Upgraded RAM to 2GB RAM for 25 US Dollars) with Windows 7 starter edition pre-installed.
Working like a charm. I'm running MS Office enterprise 2007 and some other resource intensive applications for connection to office SAP modules successfully.
It is only when I run VMWARE (To use some legacy applications in virtual XP, Unix and other Operating systems running under windows 7 host), I see significant decrease in performance of netbook.
So netbooks are good for light/normal usage only with added advantage of lower price.

[CoolBee]

Maybe I should clarify - my netbook running Windows XP (SP3) has no problems running lots of stuff at once. My Netbook running Windows 7 Home Premium does have issues.

[Bradman]

You can get a small laptop for around $300 at Walmart. It should work for you. Look at the memory size, processor speed, and hard disk size. You might even find a comparable notebook these days that would work for you. That's about it, nothing too daunting about it. Might want to make sure you're getting a DVD drive if getting a notebook.

[metamorph]

I bought a netbook (samsung n230) after my laptop died. I upgraded memory to 2Gb (cost me 20 quid and installing it was easier than brushing your teeth). I use MS Office 2007, Adobe Professional, Adobe Photoshop CS5, etc without problems as long as I do not use them all at once. Plus, I am not really into tricky graphics design. I love the small size, and only recently took it on a vacation with me.
Downsides are definitely the small screen. It gets really hard on your eyes after a while. Windows 7 Starter is not really a problem for me. In fact, I actually disabled most features to further increase the speed of the computer .

If I had really much money, I would buy a macbook or a lenovo thinkpad. They are quiet,fast, reliable, and not too hot on your lap. But for now, a PC and a network are just a good combination for me.

[SleepBro]

A good laptop will cost around 500 bucks nowadays. They used to be way more expensive, and not really worth the extra money. But now they're affordable and everyone can get one.

[True Believer]

I have a netbook, I have never owned a laptop so my argument for a netbook may be a little one dimensional. Apart from not been able to use a disk drive I am not missing anything and that hasn't been a problem.

As you are going to be doing design though isn't a Mac more adequate for your needs? Again I'm not sure as I've never had a mac either as i had a PC before my netbook.