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Advice on Netbooks

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wraith808:
For better or worse, I went with the Acer Aspire AOA150-1635.  I started to think about why I wanted it, and the smaller size made the difference.  I'll post about my netbook experience when I get it in case anyone else is in the same situation of looking for one.  Like every other device that makes it to the consumer level, there's so much obfuscation and confusing terminology when dealing with the netbooks, that it's hard to make a good decision without a lot of work.

Thanks for all of the comments; the really helped to gel my choice.  :Thmbsup:

4wd:
I'm interested in the SSD Vs HDD issue.

The advantages of SSD are supposed to be silence, robustness, power usage.
The advantages of HD are supposed to be size and speed.

For relatively simple usage (eg just note taking), is the speed of the SSD a real issue? Does it make a big difference to load times? Better power usage is an important factor if you are likely to need the machine on most of the day with no access to power sockets.
-Dormouse (July 01, 2009, 10:53 AM)
--- End quote ---

Regarding the power usage angle: people with HDDs have reported the same battery life as those using the same battery in SSD versions.

The simple use angle: it depends on the operating system.  W.r.t. the AAO netbook, Linpus loads faster and is faster for all program operations because it writes less to the SSD, whereas XP runs like an absolute dog with complete system slow downs every 30s to a few minutes as it does a lot of small writes keeping the filesystem up-to-date, etc, etc.

If you want to use the stock SSD that they provide with the AAO, (and the eeePC), with XP, then to make it anywhere near usable you should install the Flashpoint driver or it's equivalent.  This will take all those little random writes and turn into a single sequential write with minimal impact on operating performance.

Note: Flashpoint downloads have been disabled for the moment.

wraith808:
Ok, so I'm wishy washy.  I'm still getting the Acer, but I'm getting the 10 inch.  :-[

justice:
I was using the SSD AAO and when i pressed start it took longer than 2 seconds to bring up the start menu, more than a second for the menu to disappear after clicking and more than 10 seconds to bring up an internet explorer window. By that time I'd fired up my ipod touch and browsed to the site in question.

And why Acer decides to ship an SSD netbook with mcafee security center installed and google desktop search so that it takes literally 5 minutes to boot up is beyond me.

Dormouse:
Regarding the power usage angle: people with HDDs have reported the same battery life as those using the same battery in SSD versions.

The simple use angle: it depends on the operating system.  W.r.t. the AAO netbook, Linpus loads faster and is faster for all program operations because it writes less to the SSD, whereas XP runs like an absolute dog with complete system slow downs every 30s to a few minutes as it does a lot of small writes keeping the filesystem up-to-date, etc, etc.
-4wd (July 01, 2009, 07:49 PM)
--- End quote ---

Wouldn't need XP. Quite happy with Linux. Weight, usability, battery life are the most critical factors. Long start up times could be a problem.

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