Netbooks

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>So I'm entering college in the fall, and I'm trying to work out what laptop I want to buy- this'll be my first laptop, and (for some time at least) my main computer while at school. Eventually I'll get around to building a workstation. I'll be taking math and computer science classes. </p>

<p>I have been drawn to the netbook side of things. They're cheap ($300ish), have very good battery life, and shouldn't be a pain to carry around. However they have smallish screens (10in), no CD drive and aren't going to have much in the way of computing power. Am I going to be frustrated by the limitations of a netbook? I expect I'll get a cheap mouse, keyboard, monitor and external DVD drive.</p>

<p>Edit: I'm looking at the Asus Aspire One or the Eee PC 1000HA- there's not a whole lot to choose between them, even on head-to-head reviews.</p>

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<p>How much more would a cheap laptop run you, once you factor in all these extras?</p>

<p>I personally would go with a laptop, due to the lack of power/memory/HD present in netbooks.</p>

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<p>Well, to be fair, if he’s planning on building a workstation, he’ll need a mouse, keyboard, and monitor anyway.</p>

<p>I see no reason why you can’t use your netbook to ssh into your workstation. You get the portability of a netbook and the computing power of a workstation.</p>

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<p>personally I wouldn’t get one as a primary computer.</p>

<p>If you had a desktop as a primary computer a netbook could work well, since you would really just use it for things that wouldn’t require a lot of power. But as Adam said once you factor in the price of a monitor and an external DVD drive you might as well get a cheap laptop with a bigger screen if you’re going to be using it as your primary computer at all.</p>

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<p>We have a lab of netbooks at our college, and they are great for Web-based assignments or writing short papers. I think that you would not like to have to bang out a long research paper on that tiny keyboard though, and you won’t like to squint at the small screen for hours. Lastly, they are pretty slow compared to typical conventional laptops. I think a conventional laptop with a 13"-15" screen is the way to go.</p>

<p>My daughter stands by her 12" Mac iBook G4, which comes pretty close to netbook proportions. Even though it is now a few years old, it runs rings around any netbook I’ve used.</p>