Netbook Advice Needed

[amirgtr]

1. What is your budget?

$400 and below. I'm looking into used netbooks too.


2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Don't really care.


3. What screen resolution do you want?
720p at the very least (1280 x 720 )


4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Nahhh


5. How much battery life do you need?
4 hours.


6. Do you want to play games with your laptop?...
Nahh, but even if I do it'll be older games. Midnight Club II, maybe NFS Most Wanted...nothing crazy.


7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop?

I do wanna be able to watch movies with it without lagging like crazy. HDMI is not a must but is a big plus, same goes for webcam.
I wanna mostly use it for school, typing lectures. I'll definitely use it for tuning my car PCM (so Mac/Linux is outta question).
I'll be doing some light photoshop and web designing too.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Not that big of a deal...as long as it's a standard form (ie 2.5" SATA) so I can change it.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Craigslist, ebay, newegg, maybe one of your guys even. Anywhere.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Yearssss

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
I was gonna ask this. Do I? I have an external USB DVD drive, can I install operating systems off that? Because that's the only real use I have for DVDs.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
Any brand that's not flimsy.

13. What country do you live in?
Land of the free and home of brave.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Don't want anything slow and laggy. I can put up with a lil lag but I don't have time for constant freezes. Might mean I need a dual core. Who knows.
Yup. That's all.

Fire away folks. I'll look into every suggestion. I appreciate your replies in advance.

 

[Klosteral]

Ok. Are you sure you want a netbook or do you want an efficient and light notebook laptop? There is actually a difference.

To be honest, there is not really that much out there that is "good" for under $400 but I will have a look. These laptops may run your games but probably only on minimal settings. In order for decent performance, you may want to spend a bit more.

In terms of keeping this a long time, you must remember that laptops cannot be upgraded. I would personally recommend spending more but the choice is yours.
Here is what I have found:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834107062
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220857

Tell me what you think,
-Klosteral

 

[WindowsTeam_Kevin]

I think you should take a look at the Toshiba Satellite C650 - It's pretty small and portable, and for $379, I'd say it should be able to do all that you need and more. Check it out here - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pc-scout/laptop-details.aspx?pcid=810ebaff-0086-df11-990f-02bf9d3bf32a

Kevin
Windows Outreach Team

 

[jsc]

#3 totally eliminates the class of small computers known as netbooks. Netbooks are typically 1280X600.

Kevin's recommendation is for a low end, full sized laptop (matches requirement #2) that is within your budget. "Big and cheap" gets you more computer than "small and cheap" in two ways. You have a larger computer (1) with better specs (2).

Netbooks are great for their intended purpose - small, compact, great battery life. They are great for travel and portability. For general purpose computing, however, they are adequate at best. A netbook is a great supplementary computer, but a barely adequate primary computer.

 

[amirgtr]

Thanks for all the recommendations guys.

So if I was to buy a low end, perhaps a used, laptop with the specs I specified, what would you recommend?

Also I decided to get a laptop that has HDMI for sure. We're buying a big TV and it'd be awesome to play movies on it from a laptop.

I was looking at this:
http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/sys/2145276683.html

 

[Klosteral]

If that fits your needs, it looks excellent for the price. I say go for it!
The version of Windows 7 alone is worth about $90 off that price, and it has a great battery life of 6 hours. Go for it!

 

[gnice3d]

Just a reminder that you do not need a DVD drive to install an OS. Vista/Win7, MacOs and the more popular Linux distros can be installed from a USB flash drive.. In fact, the decreased seek times with flash storage makes the installs much faster, unless you have a crap flash drive.

MS has a tool to copy your install media to USB and Ubuntu has it built in and can be done from a live session.