F.I.L. currently has a 15 inch Dell laptop running Vista extremely slowly.
Uses computer for email, internet, is trying Skype and photos of the grandchildren. He also watches Youtube clips and has been known to search the 'net for live football games on , ahem , live streams.
M.I.L is now expressing interest in using it and so he is wanting to take this opportunity to get a new machine whilst she is interested.
I have a Samsung 12.1" netbook which he likes, and mines runs XP.
I am very much out of touch with whats what in computers, is Windows 7 the drain that Vista was or is it more akin to XP?
What sort of spec should he be looking for to do the above functions easily? Probably looking at the budget end of the market, ballpark figure £300-£350.
At this price is he best just to go into Tesco nearer Xmas and see what machines they have bulk -bought in the millions to get a keen price?
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Win7 is much less of a memory hog than Vista.
I'd go for something like this personally, as I wouldn't mind a 'refurb'
www.hotukdeals.com/deals/samsung-x120-ultra-portable-netbook/779343#comments
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Windows 7 performs quite well on Nicoles low powered netbook.
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Its 6 years old! oh dear indeed
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 2 Nov 10 at 20:27
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I've been pleased with my Windows 7/Samsung N150 netbook.
Decent value at about £300 brand new.
I reckon a fast internet connection is at least half the battle.
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Acer Aspire ones run well with either Win 7 or Ubuntu.
Mine originally came with windows XP but that got wiped within the first week.
Only £200 from tesco's
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I remember when I got my Samsung netbook it compared favourably to the Acer`Aspire one due to the Acer having an Atom processor and Samsung , well it had something else!
Is the Atom still the poor relative?
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...Is the Atom still the poor relative?...
I think most netbooks - including Samsungs - in the £200 - £300 range run one type of Atom or another.
I'm not a great watcher of moving pictures on the computer, but I suggest fil road tests a modern netbook.
The screens are not very high resolution and nearly all are only 10".
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no issues here.
It is reported as a dual core 1.66Ghz cpu when infact its a single core cpu with a pentium 4 hyper-threading add on.
Doesn't mean it is slow though.
I did upgrade the memory to 2GB and this made a huge difference in terms of starting up and general usage.
As you could imagine, it is slow for video encoding but then you wouldn't do heavy work on these little netbook's.
For everything else no probs.
Comparing operating systems on the same hardware, there is not much in it but Ubuntu has a slight performance edge compared to Win 7 but there is not much difference.
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As for the specs
160GB hard drive
2GB Ram (DDR 2 I think), was 1GB
1.66Ghz Atom CPU
10.6" screen at 1024x700 LED back light
With Ubuntu boots up into a usable desktop in 20 seconds and shuts down in 10 seconds.
Windows 7 was longer but not much difference
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The Advent only has 1GB of RAM which is a bit feeble, and the Lenovo has an HDMI socket which will make it easy for f-i-l to play his dodgy footy streams through a modern telly.
Neither has a very fast processor, but I suppose there's a limit to what you can expect for £300.
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Cheers Iffy, thats what I was thinking as well, for the budget it shouldn't go too far wrong.
Anything will be better that his 1gb Acer running Vista with no left click mouse panel working.....
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The lenovo is a good price, its still a current (just) model - The lenovo web site has them on sale at £299.
I would snatch their hands off. Lenovo support is good too. Acer has no support.
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Well I bought the Lenovo from that website this morning. Think the price was about £270 or something.
By coincidence someone at work was looking for one to fulfill the same criteria - back onto website and price up to £299. Phoned them but they wouldn't budge!
Went onto Lenovo'sown website and bought a better version of the same computer (bigger screen, bigger HD and Bluetooth) for £286!!
Think its a damn good deal if anyone else is looking for something like that.
Lenovo website isn't great for detailed specs so I had to phone for confirmation re HDMI and webcam.
shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/gbweb/LenovoPortal/en_GB/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=FD6DB49790C7411D933567FC361231FB¤t-category-id=0A2D5975D5CF4595842A873CCCB60267&action=init
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Netbook recommendation for f.i.l - spamcan61
