Netbooks

I've got an old 12" iBook in a drawer at home that I'm going to put up on ebay for a $300 soon and I'm thinking about getting a Lenovo S10 netbook. Just want something to tinker with really, maybe to take with me on the plane or what not.

What are your thoughts on this, anyone recommend a better device?

If your needs are pretty basic, and you travel frequently, I think I'd go with one of the $299 ASUS EEE PCs. They run a Linux install with a bunch of preloaded applications that cover most of the bases. And since it's Linux, you're not going to have to worry about the maintenance and malware issues you would with a Windows machine. Also, at $299, if it gets damaged or stolen in your travels, it's not a huge loss.

Just my $0.02. I haven't had to travel as frequently as I've had to in the past, but if they made these back when I was traveling, I'd have been all over them.

The S10 looks like a decent NetBook. A few months ago I picked up the Asus Eee PC for $349 and really like it. I chose it over the others because I couldn't find one with a large enough hard drive at the time and the Eee has a 120 GB drive, but it's not an SSD.

My main reason for getting it was the SD card reader to offload pictures from my D80 in the "field" and for portable "light internet usage" with my iPhone (using pdaNet).

I read somewhere online that someone managed to get OS X to run on their Eee, mine came with XP on it and I installed Vista Home as a dual boot and believe it or not, Vista doesn't run too sluggish (running one or two memory-conservative apps simultaneously, haha). XP runs pretty snappy even with Symantec Anti Virus installed.

Not interested in Linux at all, drives me crazy (and I'm an IT guy so go figure). Having a windows device does make me feel kind of dirty these days, but I can put up with it unless it's vista.

The card reader idea is good, it would be another feature I could use. Of course my Sony Alpha uses CF cards so I'll still need to hook it up via usb...

Oh, and you can run OS X on the S10, found a couple of videos on you tube attesting to this, although I'm not a big hackintosh fan...

I actually just traded an S10 to a user on here. My wife uses one full time.

If all you're worried about is rocking some tunes and surfing the web, it's fantastic... but the screen makes it not so great for anything else.

I was really hoping to use mine as the world's most complex photo dump drive, but... as much as it's perfectly capable of running Adobe Lightroom... importing and actual photo manipulation is slow and a pain with the tiny screen.

I threw Vista on mine and my wife's. Ignore the FUD, there's nothing wrong with it. More importantly, Vista will actually recognize the max 2.5GB of RAM while XP will only recognize 2GB.

Food for thought, thanks for the input everyone.

I've always liked the dell mini's. Looking at the Lenovo I may have found something new.

Eric559 said:

I've always liked the dell mini's. Looking at the Lenovo I may have found something new.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I was looking at the HP but wasn't impressed by the price and it looked cheapish. Then I saw the lenovo at circuit city and was really impressed by the look and build quality. Always liked the IBM thinkpad style of design, rugged and simple.

I really like the netbooks because they would be great for traveling, or just keeping with you no matter where you go. I hope Apple does come out with one eventually. It would be much easier toting one of those around on business trips than an MBP (along with my work computer).

The Thinkpads aren't much to look at, but they seem pretty well built. I use an R60 for work and would have bought one for personal use if I hadn't made the switch.

the ibook 12in isnt small enough? or wont do the job?

What are the specs on the iBook? I might be interested in it if you are going to sell. I need to pick up a cheap Mac notebook for my parents.

I just picked up the S10 a few days ago. It runs OS X but I havent figured out how to get the sound working. Otherwise its a pretty fast little machine running Leopard.

FYI: not really supposed to discuss running OSX on computers that aren't made by Apple.

If you want to get technical, it's the hackintosh process that we're really not supposed to discuss. Nothing wrong with talking about it generally or in the abstract.

I have had the chance to compare the Acer Aspire One, Lenovo S10 and a couple of others and to ME the Lenovo is the best of the lot. Excellent build quality and with the same install of XP feels faster than the Acer and the others I got to mess with. The screen is very nice for it's size and much easier on my eyes than the Acer at least or any of the 8.9" Netbooks.

The Lenova just looks and feels better and for sure seems faster. I got way higher WiFi Signal on the Lenovo than the others also. On the Acer Aspire One, most of the neighbors networks did not show in the list and the Lenovo showed them all and at decent signal level also.

Just for the record, my friend gave me his Acer Aspire One for helping him with his new house wiring and network. He then bought the Lenovo and loves it.

For the poster who asked if the iBook 12" was not small enough? For some uses no at least for me. I own a 12" G4 iBook and love it but use the little Netbook when I go places that I would not want to lug the iBook. The netbook is that light.

back to asking about Apple and Netbooks...

So... any rumor or wisdom about Apple and netbooks? I would REALLY like to have a "MacMiniBook" about the form factor of the new Sony P series. I do NOT want a Sony/Win... I want a Mac... But I am getting old waiting for Apple to build one. The MacBook AIR is just the wrong machine hitting basically no market niche that I can see - with the exception of Wall Street guys who want to show off... ANd that is not a niche I would want to try to wring money out of lately.

Anybody got a crystal ball wrt Apple directions?

---jon---

sticklen said:

Anybody got a crystal ball wrt Apple directions?

---jon---

Click to expand...

Not here. But if it's any clue, on the Q4 investor call, Apple specifically said they have no plans to enter the netbook market, but they are monitoring it. The exact quote was:

• COO Tim Cook: We're watching [the "netbook"] space. But, right now from our point of view the products in there are principally based on hardware that's much less powerful than we think customers want. Software technology that is not good, cramped keyboards small displays... And so, we don't think that people are going to be pleased with those types of products. But we'll see. We are watching the space, as you know about 3% of the industry or the PC industry last year was in this netbook kind of category. And so, it's a category we watch. We've got some ideas here. But, right now we think the products there are inferior and will not provide an experience to customers that they're happy with.

Click to expand...

In other words, don't hold your breath.

maz94protege said:

the ibook 12in isnt small enough? or wont do the job?

Click to expand...

Oh, no it's old G3 500mhz white. It does have an airport card and combo drive, and is maxed out with ram, but its too slow for what I need and it needs a new battery. I'm not looking for a desktop replacement, have 2 of those Something simple that I can use when traveling and when I have clients with windows issues that I need to trouble shoot quickly (sans boot camp reboot).

I bought an Asus eeepc 900A, I paid $275, and they are down to $199 now. It only has 4GB. I bought it primarily for websurfing while I was on the couch and taking along. It's perfect for that.

However.. the 4GB doesn't even give enough space for Firefox to work properly. Once you update it, the HD is completely full and it wouldn't work properly. There is an SD card slot for extra saving space.

You can put Ubuntu OS on it (there is one made just for EEEPC's) and free up a lot of space. I did that as well as buying a new 16GB SSD for $40. MUCH BETTER!! I love it. They are easy to tinker with, plenty of online support, and have great qualities.

ETA: Ubuntu reminds me a lot of Mac OS which is why I love it so much.

There is a guy on ebay who sells dell netbooks with OSX running on them .