So I just bought myself a netbook. And I reaaaaallly didn’t want to, but it worked out.
I kinda like the thing.
I bought it because I’m now working on a project at work that’s online, so I can do weekend work from home rather than having to schlep in to Manhattan and waste a lot of my weekend in transit. But the problem is, the project requires Internet Explorer, which Microsoft no longer supports for the Mac. And then, I need to be able to open links to native documents, which are all in Windows format. While I have Open Office, I can’t even see the links because the program I have to use won’t work on anything but a Microsoft platform.
I thought I’d maybe use the computer lab at school, since I did pay an access fee and all, but the site doesn’t work there, either, possibly because it’s disabled on shared computers. So off I went to J&R and got myself a cheap little netbook. It’s really not bad; I don’t have any trouble seeing the screen, it’s got a trial version of Office so I can access everything but PowerPoints (which just won’t load for some reason, but I just skip those for the time being), it’s plenty fast, the keyboard is reasonably comfortable, it’s very light and fits in my purse. The only drawback is the 3-hour battery (the version that’s $80 more has a 6-hour battery) but since I will primarily be using this at home or at a coffee shop with outlets, it doesn’t really matter. Oh, and the fact that you can’t view the entire window in your browser, but I’ve already gotten the scroll-click-scroll thing down.
I may use this for my travel computer, since it weighs nothing and it’s cheap enough that I can easily replace it if it gets lost, stolen or dropped. It’s also cheap enough that it’ll pay for itself in no time since it will allow me to bill a little extra time evenings and weekends.
I considered getting one of these to replace the clunker of a desktop that we have in the living room. We really only use this for surfing the internet, e-mail, etc. Plus I like the travel factor.
I might have to get one of those or something like it in a couple-few paychecks. I have a crappy old P3 laptop that I got off craigslist a couple years ago for not much less than that, and the specs make your little netbook look like some kind of NASA supercomputer.
I’m kind of an old-timer so I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that you can now get something with over 100GB of space and 1GB of RAM for less than $500 nowdays. Really??? I remember when a 4GB hard drive and 256MB of RAM was a great big stinkin’ deal. *rocks in chair* Why it seems like just yesterday…
i soooooooooo want a netbook. when this desktop finally gives up the ghost, that’s what i’m going to replace it with. glad to hear a good review.