Hello, I'm in the market to purchase a new laptop or netbook. I've been considering the Samsung N110 I was wondering if anyone owns one of these and can recommend them? Also if anyone can suggest alternatives to this netbook, or should I just go for a full sized laptop. I've got between £300 -£400 to spend. Thanks in advance
All netbooks are preatty much the same. You want my advise. I say wait until year end for the Lenovo netbook and other OEMs to come, because these will be powered by Nvidia ION platform. That means you should be able to enjoy HD movies, full screen Flash video's (youtube and other video sites) smoothly, possibly 2GB of RAM (which I think it's the bare-minimum for any computer), have the Aero experience, Windows 7, great battery life and more, all for the same great price range.
I wouldn't necessarily say that all netbooks are the same for example 2 key discriminants for me were battery life and size. Some netbooks are tiny and with man-fingers such as my own are a real pain to type on. The Samsungs (I have an NC10) were that little bit bigger and made touch typing a possibility for example. The other key difference of course is the battery life and here Samsungs excel. Mine lasted me an trip across the Atlantic including mucking about playing Planescape Torment in the airport (although admittidly I turned the thing off for a nap on the place for a couple of hours). In terms of spend I was more than happy with the NC10 (which can apparently run Windows 7 HP). The benefits of the N110 appear to be a bit more space (particularly the touchpad) and a bit more battery life (8 hours IRL according to one review I quickly googled!) for an extra £30 or so. However you can pick up the NC10 for just under £300 and the N110 for just over. The just over bit for me is in that awkward low-end laptop territory. Tehrefore I would say for you it depends on how mobile you want it to be. If you're going to leave it at home, and the important thing are clarity/size of display and keyboard but not battery life then consider a laptop. If it is more important to be on the move with it then definitely go for the netbook. Either way though you wont be playing Crysis on either, but stuck to Plants v Zombies, Time Gentlemen Please etc if gaming is something that is important. Having said all that, GoodBytes recommendation above to wait for the new tech seems a good one if you've got the time to wait.
Aye, the new tiger point platform is due out later this year. Brings a new gfx chip to the table and the new pine view cpus. I'd guess your not going to see much in the way of product releases using it this side of christmas. With the cpu and gfx both being integrated, it's unknown how (if) it'll work with ION. The main benefit of tiger point is going to be better battery life - fewer chips and smaller manufacturing process. Products using the current atom and ION are apparently ready to go - but they are waiting until Windows 7 on October 22 before release. These should play back HD content better, although given flash (youtube, iplayer, etc) relies on the CPU these will still be limited to SD content - unless you like it choppy! The only other major differentiation is screen resolution. Most common is 1024x600 however a few with 1366x768 have started to appear (from Dell, HP and Sony at least). I couldn't afford to wait so after extensive research (can't stand the track pad on the Dell and the HP is way way too expensive) I got a Sony Vaio W and it's an awesome little machine. Also came with a free (albeit rubbish) mp3 player as part of a promotion. It does come in at the top end of your budget though at £399 + £20 for 2GB RAM (comes with 1GB as standard like most XP netbooks thanks to Intel/MS).
