Netbook Created 15 years ago2009-09-05 07:31:59 UTC by satchmo

I have finally given in to temptation.

I've ordered one of those netbooks last night.

Has anyone else bought one? What do you think of this one from Samsung?

I got one so that I can bring it to work and do stuff on the computer during downtime when there's no patients. I don't expect it to play games, but maybe Half-Life will run on it.

I got an Acer Aspire One when they first came out. It's great for uni because I need to travel quite a bit and it's lighter (and cheaper!) than a big laptop.

I haven't tried running Half-Life on it, but somehow I have a feeling that it wouldn't work I should probably try it anyway and see what happens.

One issue I have is that the default 3-cell battery only lasts 2 hours or so at full charge. This was pretty bad last year when I had a 3 hour lecture that was mind-numbingly boring and I had nothing to do for an hour after the battery ran out! You can buy a 6-cell separately, but it's not worth the cost in my case. Looks like the one you ordered has the 6-cell battery already though

They're good as long as you don't use it to do much. If you find yourself doing a lot of typing or other activities that may be hindered by the small size, it might be time to get something larger.

@ satchmo: That Samsung netbook you got at $444.99 is fairly expensive as far as netbooks are concerned. You can get a low end, regular laptop with cd-rom, bigger screen, windows vista and more for about the same price, if you know where to look. Now, I am not saying netbooks are bad, in fact I got one myself not too long ago with about the same specs of yours from Tigerdirect for about $100 less: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4545380&CatId=2509

Of course, if anybody here (at least in the U.S.) really wants to save and get a netbook with the same specs as mentioned above and free shipping to boot, cheap-ass Wal-Mart has this one: http://www.walmart.com/MSI-Wind-10-Mini-Laptop/ip/10965536

I have to admit though I am not familiar with this "MSI" brand, so there is a chance there might be a quality risk with this one, especially at this price.

half life runs on my girlfriend's little netbook, though it was kinda choppy and froze up every now and then on opengl. ;o

OpenGL you say? Try to run it on DirectX next time to see what happens....

Tito, MSI makes motherboards and all kinds of stuff. Didn't know they made whole computers, but they aren't a no-name.

I didn't know Samsung made netbooks too. A coworker had an Asus EeePC and then switched to an Acer Aspire One, which he said is the best one out there. Also, a friend got an Acer as well and she says it's way better than all the others. Both got it with a 6-cell batt. And it costs just a little over $300.

OpenGL you say? Try to run it on DirectX next time to see what happens....

I don't know why, but I could never get HL to run on DirectX mode on my desktop pc. It always says an error has occurred when changing video settings or something like that. I always thought it wasn't implemented

I actually bought mine from Amazon, which sells the Samsung netbook for $429, free shipping and no tax.

I know I am sacrificing power with portability, but that's the whole point of netbooks. Just like people knowingly pay more for laptops compared to desktops, the premium goes into the compactness and convenience.

The Samsung netbook weighs less than 3 lbs and the battery life is more than 9 hours. That alone beats out all the notebooks out there.

I won't really know whether I'll like the idea of a netbook until I get mine, so we'll see what happens. I have never owned a laptop or notebook before. I always used desktops because they're more powerful, more upgradable, and a lot cheaper.

Now I am trying the other end of the spectrum.

Half-Life will run on anything, even my ten year old small-footprint net PC.

I can run it on my old Pentium2(450 mhz) , 64 ram, 16 mb video card.

I ran HL on a 10 year old laptop with no hardware acceleration. 226MHz Pentium MMX, 2MB video memory, 32MB RAM. Yay software mode!

and 640x480 res guinea pirate ? on the pentium 2 I could run it in 800x600

I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly don't feel like an admin will shout "offtopic !"

I ran HL on a 10 year old laptop with no hardware acceleration. 226MHz Pentium MMX, 2MB video memory, 32MB RAM. Yay software mode!

That's really old. Did that come with Windows 3.1 or at least Windows 95?