The Great Laptop vs Netbook Debate

[Omniscient]

I have had many laptops in the past 10 years. However this year I bought a Dell Mini9 netbook and I am very satisfied. I may never buy a full sized laptop again.

Many think netbooks are just cheap gimmicky toys but I disagree. They tend to be powerful and get the job done. You can run Win XP pretty well or Linux very well on just about any of these. On my Mini9 I have a 16gb solid state drive and I only use about 1/2 of that. It's more than enough for travel and mobile usage.

The weight of netbooks is superb. I can even hold it with one hand and type with the other with ease.

Fully functional laptops are still expensive, weight too much, and are still under-powered. It's my view that getting a full sized desktop accompanied with a netbook is the better value and it's usually about the same price. Why grab a laptop with even a 16" screen when you can have a desktop with a 19" at least.

One negative to netbooks is their keyboards. The Mini9 is a fair keyboard but I played with an HP netbook and felt the keyboard was better. It was darn close to a full size keyboard. The Asus EEE is imho a piece of crap. It's not a very good design and it does feel cheap.

So let's debate the netbook vs laptop.

[Skawke]

Laptop is better if you use it for everything. Like home, school, work, and games.
Netbooks are generally for work and school.

[Keyreaper]

Id find a Laptop more useful at home or at an office where maybe the other place you would put it is in a laptop case. They are quite faster than netbooks, although for those of you that would disagree, I'm fine with that. *edit*- Oh and you'd have a place to set it down to work, e.x.- a desk!

Netbooks how ever are made for ON the GO applications. Such as air-travel, national travel, or even to just carry around when you are bored, so you might wanna surf the web.

[mon3yexploit]

i prefer the netbook with school etc.

but a laptop for running programs such as video editors, etc.

[Raptor Jesus]

Id find a Laptop more useful at home or at an office where maybe the other place you would put it is in a laptop case. They are quite faster than netbooks, although for those of you that would disagree, I'm fine with that.

Netbooks how ever are made for ON the GO applications. Such as air-travel, national travel, or even to just carry around when you are bored, so you might wanna surf the web.

I'd prefer a laptop for the same reasons that HaruhiSuzumiya said, but a netbook IS nice for the on the go stuff. I'd find it only useful if I had a sprint wireless card or something.

[RPicard]

I would love to get a netbook. I don't travel too much but I get around enough to make use of one. Any thoughts on the Acer Aspire One?

[Keyreaper]

I would love to get a netbook. I don't travel too much but I get around enough to make use of one. Any thoughts on the Acer Aspire One?

Give it a 4/5 it loss a point because the 512mb of ram makes it a little slower than the real potential it has, and the short battery life just sucks. Its like what 2 hours... I don't think it would make it throughout the school day. Otherwise than that, I don't think I can say anything else about it.

[Raptor Jesus]

Well, I would get an Asus EEEPc because from what I hear, it has the most compatibility with backtrack4 and has great battery life.

[RPicard]

Thanks Keyreaper, I think once I head off to college (not any time soon) I'll end up with a netbook. Seems that the HP's are pretty nice.

[Raptor Jesus]

Well, since nvidia came out with the Tegra CPU, I wouldn't buy a netbook till it becomes a standard. It allows the extremely small zune-hd to render 1080p HD videos flawlessly, play basic games no problem, and be a fast little computer, too.